"Would I be willing to publicly defend this as a situation in which unusually honest people should lie, if somebody posed it as a hypothetical?" Maybe that just gets turned into "It's permissible to lie so long as you'd be honest about whether you'd tell that lie if anyone asks you that exact question and remembers to say they're invoking the meta-honesty code," because people can't process the meta-part correctly.
Thank you for this direct contrast! It gave me the opportunity to understand why you added this part in the first place.
(The difference between the statements seemed obvious enough, but engaging with the difference, I think I now understand why you specifically say "willing to publicly defend ... if someone posed it as a hypothetical?" - because that thought process is needed for your counterfactual selves to feel safe with you, basically.
Speaking with all realities equally existing for a moment: If you do not check that box, and someone asks you a hypothetical that describes a counterfactual self's actual circumstances in which they believed that unusually honest people should lie, you will not think to defend it, thereby putting you roughly in the situation of "I only Glomarize if I have something to hide". (This is much less precise than your essay, obviously, but I needed to phrase it in a way that is natural to me to check if my understanding is actually present.))
Somehow neither spoiler is working...
! :::spoiler Doesn't that run into the same issue as Harry in HPMoR with his experiment with time? Namely, that there are a lot of scenarios in which you never (get to) open the second box, easiest case: you died. But also probably any number of other results (it gets stolen, f.e.) :::
I notice, that your answer confuses me. My understanding is as follows:
Your choice doesn't change where you exist. In the situation which you describe, not opening the second box doesn't actually improve your situation (being simulated), and I would expect it to go the same way (being shut down).
I agree with the reasoning that you must be in a simulation, but I fail to see how your choice actually changes things, here.
You already exist in one reality (and potentially in a simulation), and you are only finding out in which one you are. So, isn't the only thing you are preserving by not opening the second box your lack of knowledge?
Opening the box doesn't transport you to a different reality, it just either means that your understanding of Omega was incomplete, or that you were in a simulation. But, if you are in a simulation, no matter how you decide, you still are in a simulation.
(I must admit that I said yes without realizing the implications, because I didn't credit the omniscience sufficiently.)
What did I miss?
Extra Credit:
I tell someone else that I got Newcomb'ed and that I will sell them the two boxes for X amount. Neither of us knows what will happen, since I actually won't open either box, but considering there is an omniscient Omega in the world, obtaining that information should be worth more than the money that may or may not be in the boxes.
(To ensure that it doesn't count as opening the boxes by proxy, we settle on a fixed price. I think 250+ could be reasonably negotiated, both considering the value ranges known from Omega, and the potential value of the information.)
Then again, it may really not be a good idea to go out of bounds.
(I quote "'Do not mess with time.' in slightly shaky hand writing."^^)
On the other hand, if Omega meant harm... Well, this is a longer debate, I think.
In regards to the point you disagree on: As I understood it, (seemingly) linear relationships between the behaviour and the capabilities of a system don't need to stay that way. For example, I think that Robert Miles recently was featured in a video on Computerphile (YouTube), in which he described how the answers of LLMs to "What happens if you break a mirror" actually got worse with more capability.
As far as I understand it, you can have a system that behaves in a way which seems completely aligned, and which still hits a point of (... let's call it "power"...) power at which it starts behaving in a way that is not aligned. (And/Or becomes deceptive.) The fact that GPT-4 seems to be more aligned may well be because it hasn't hit this point yet.
So, I don't see how the point you quoted would be an indicator of what future versions will bring, unless they can actually explain what exactly made the difference in behaviour, and how it is robust in more powerful systems (with access to their own code).
If I'm mistaken in my understanding, I'd be happy about corrections (:
Thank you for everything you did. My experience in this world has been a lot better since I discovered your writings, and while I agree with your assessment on the likely future, and I assume you have better things to spend your time doing than reading random comments, I still wanted to say that.
I'm curious to see what exactly the future brings. Whilst the result of the game may be certain, I can't predict the exact moves.
Enjoy it while it lasts, friends.
(Not saying give up, obviously.)
Thank you for pointing out the difference between breaking and stopping to peddle.
I read it, continued, then I got confused about you saying that your practice didn't leave "an empty silence".
I'm going to try what you described, because I may have gotten to that silence by breaking habitually when I was younger, instead of just not putting energy into it.
Might I ask what kind of recovery you were talking about? And how it came to be?
I can very much emphasize with having to loop thoughts to keep them, and if there's something that you did to improve your memory, I'd be extremely interested in trying it. Even accepting that I don't know if it will work for me, it's still way better than having no approach.
I'm glad that you got better!
Hi! Questions about volunteering follow:
"They will only be expected to work either before, after or during the event while joining sessions is still often feasible."
Could I get a rephrasing of that? I'm not certain, if the options of before/during/after are (or can be) exclusive, and I am also unclear on what is meant by "joining sessions is often feasible".
I am happy to help, but I would like to know how much of the time during the event (if any) would be, basically, not the event^^
Best regards
This sounds like a case of "wrong" perspective. (Whoa, what?! Yes, keep reading pls^^)
Like someone believing (to believe) in Nihilism. To Nihilism, I haven't thought of a good and correct counter-statement, except:
"You are simply wrong on all accounts, but by such a small amount that it's hard to point to, because it will sound like »You don't have a right to your own perspective«", (Of course, I also would not agree with disallowing personal opinions (as long as we ARE talking about opinions, not facts).)
Granted, I haven't tried to have that kind of discussion since I really started reading and applying the Sequences. But that may be due to my growing habit of not throwing myself into random and doomed discussions, that I don't have a stake in.
But for Bruce, I think I can formulate it:
I am aware of the fact that I still don't allow myself to succeed sometimes. I have recently found that I stand before a barrier that I can summarize as a negative kind of sunk cost fallacy ("If I succeed here, I could have just done that ten years ago"), and I still haven't broken through, yet.*
But... Generalizing this kind of observation to "We all have this Negativity-Agent in our brain" feels incorrect to me. It both obscures the mistake and makes it seem like there is a plan to it.
If I think "Okay, you just detected that thought-pattern that you identified as triggering a bad situation, now instead do X" I feel in control, I can see myself progress, I can do all the things.
If I think "Damn, there's Bruce again!", not only do I externalize the locus of control, I am also "creating" an entity, that can then rack up "wins" against me, making me feel less like I can "beat" them.
It's not an agent. It's a habit that I need to break. That's a very different problem!
I assume that people will say "Bruce is a metaphor". But, provided I have understood correctly, the brain is very prone to considering things as agents (f.e. natural gods, "The System", The whole bit about "life being (not) fair", ...), so feeding it this narrative would seem like a bad idea.
I predict that it will be harder to get rid of the problem, once one gives it agency and/or agenthood. (Some might want an enemy to fight, but even there I take issue with externalizing the locus of control.)
[*In the spirit of "Don't tell me how flawed you are, unless you also tell me how you plan to fix it", I am reading through Fun Theory to defuse it (yes, first read, I am not procrastinating with "need to read more"):
For me it's: I don't want to do X, I want to do something enjoyable Y. And then, when I do Y, I drift into random things, that often aren't all that enjoyable, but just continue the status quo. All the while X is beginning to loom, accrue negative charge and triggering avoidance routines. But if I do X instead, I don't know how to allow myself to take breaks without sliding into the above pattern. So I intend to optimize my fun and expand the area of things that I find fun. That reorientation should help me with dosing it, too. (And yes, I do have adhd, in case you read it out of the text and were wondering if you should point me there ^^)
Also I recently discovered a belief (in...) that I like to learn. I realized that I really don't like learning. I like understanding, but what I call "learning" has a very negative connotation, so I barely do it. Will discover how to effectively facilitate understanding, too. ]
I think the issue is with the "get what I want" part. Isn't this treating people as a means to an end, instead of treating them as an end in and of itself?* (I think that Kant would not be happy - though I don't know of anything that has been written on lesswrong about this.)
If you are talking to another person and you are trying to convince them to adopt a certain view of you, that is not what I would call truth-oriented. So, whether you specifically lie, omit, or whatever; it's already secondary. If your goal is to have an honest interaction with another being, I don't think you can in that interaction want to edit their perception of you (apart from misunderstandings etc).
I'd say that the way you achieve your goal is to become what you want to be seen as. This is, of course, harder than just lying, but in a way it takes less effort, too.
Plus, you avoid another important pitfall I could see here: Lying to yourself about wanting a connection with a person who doesn't share your values. If you have to lie to fit in with them, maybe not fitting in with them is a good thing, and you should pay attention to that. In this way, the impulse to lie may be similarly useful as the tiny voice telling you that you are confused.
(The following is just about the effort it takes to lie vs truth. Not really required for the core idea, read if you wish^^)
Imagine what insane effort it would take to lie all the time but try to be perceived as being honest! While "just" being honest is hard in a different way, though on subtler and subtler levels, I at least was freed of a lot of the mental overhead that lying brings with it. (Sure, part of that was replaced by the mental habits of self-checking, but still, way less. I don't have to worry about what I may have said at some point if I don't remember. I will see what I would say now, and unless I acquired new information or insight, this will probably approximate what I said then. If I am also honest about this process, my self-perceived fault of not perfect memory isn't too bad anymore. This can never work with lying, because you need to keep tabs on what you told whom, how they may have gained additional information, etc.)
*(The fact that you specified the gender of the other person also implies a certain degree of "means to an end" to me (yes, even without knowing your gender) unless you are talking about one specific situation and nothing else. But that may just as well be wrong.)