February 18th, 2021
- Squad Wealth call on The Stoa
- links
- re membranes
- commitment to internal dialogue
- common for people to have techniques that they think will help them solve the problems they have
- in practice they don't use them
- Why?
- One reason: an internal conflict that is partially about whether the technique is safe to use
- part of the fractal is that it extends out to interpersonal systems
- e.g. Malcolm bringing in the NNTD that is supposed to help ppl navigate a conflict, but if Benjamin doesn't trust that he is going to be cautious signing up for a form that is threatening on some level
- example of Human and Chimp wanting to resolve a conflict in different ways (e.g. the human by Logic and the chimp by strength)
- Koan in the context of interpersonal stuff: who gets to decide? who gets to decide who gets to decide? who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to decide? why?
- Where do you ground it out?
- How do you establish coherence if there is no ground?
- with a lot of context sensitivity
- if we go back to e.g. Malcolm bringing in the NNTD that is supposed to help ppl navigate a conflict, but if Benjamin doesn't trust that he is going to be cautious signing up for a form that is threatening on some level
- what difference would it make for any given form we are using any form (NVC, something implicit like the general way ppl resolve conflicts at John St with whatever language is used), for there to be a shared recognition of a way that either of us may use the form that we would be able to say "this is not working for my system, I need it to be different. Some part of me doesn't trust what is happening right now". What difference does it make for us to consciously say, obviously w would want to be able to use whatever form is going to feel best for both of us. And we might not know what that is, and we may need to create it.
- which is inextricable with how we use whatever form
- any tool is associated with a set of attitudes, and is embedded in a context
- It can be hard (for various reasons) ...
- Say that Mal wants to resolve a disagreement with NNTD, and Ben says yes but qualifies that he wants to be able to say if it feels off, and then Mal says "of course!" ... from where does Ben come to trust that Mal both wants that, and that he would actually be able to follow through on that from a skill perspective
- integrating someone's concern is not a straightforward act
- This (the coming to be able to trust the use of a form, including the potential opt-out, for all of the parts of the system) is maybe easier to do internally than interpersonally.
- 1. You can feel internal good will and can do certain kinds of checks. Communication between neurons is quicker
- 2. There is no away w.r.t your internal parts. If you don't get along with another person you can decide not to interact very much. If your inner critic and inner rebel don't get along, they are kind of stuck in the same body. There is a need to find a way to not fight.
- Shapes within the space of this big scenario
- ex 1
- ex 2
- ex 3
- each part of the system says, if there can be a form/process/approach / means of navigating differences, that meets my needs and where my needs can be incorporated, and it can do that for everyone, then I would want to participate in and co-create that thing. And, I as a part in this system, will not ask any other part to settle for anything less
- stance, not a state
- B > or like a koan
- meta-protocol = what allows us to answer the who gets to decide who gets to decide? question/koan fully generally
- It is the process of integrating the entirety of all contexts that are relevant
- it is never done, it's not a state that can be arrived at. It is itself the entire evolving process of the universe. The whole everything.
- Why is full-fractal buy-in important
- it is what allows all parts of a systems eedds to get satisfied
- but in what way does it all it, and why are we calling it buy-in
- if you try to do some technique, if it doesn't happen it's probably because some part of you is not bought-in
- full-fractal buy-in is a kind of mutually conditional buy-in, which is like, I'm not game for the technique as stated, but in as much as some part of the group is proposing it, I would like to do some part of the technique that feels safe for me. And
- re meta-protocol = what allows us to answer the who gets to decide who gets to decide? question/koan fully generally
- ...
- often ppl resist because they feel like if they buy in then they will have to settle
- as opposed to having a move available that allows them to start
- B > I think you could really use a bunch of concrete case studies of resistances coming up for people
- so eg I'm thinking about the recent money pile or whatever we're going to call it experience, and Sarah McManus's experience
- and the sense of like, at this point, 2 calls in, there's a cost to voicing dissent, at whatever level of capacity I have to voice that and whatever capacity the group has to receive that, in whatever way will feed or not feed the group synergy
- M > yeah, she has so much epic skill at being able to notice inadequacies, but her skill at being able to point that out in ways that people will be able to see
- B > yeah, thinking of Paul Graham's Jessica Livingston article
- as an example of that kind of "suss out" role
- M > totally
- commented to some friends on a call
- quote from article
- > 6. When you begin to get free, you will get depressed.
It works like this: When you were three years old, if your parents weren't too bad, you knew how to play spontaneously. Then you had to go to school, where everything you did was required. The worst thing is that even the fun activities, like singing songs and playing games, were commanded under threat of punishment. So even play got tied up in your mind with a control structure, and severed from the life inside you. If you were "rebellious", you preserved the life inside you by connecting it to forbidden activities, which are usually forbidden for good reasons, and when your rebellion ended in suffering and failure, you figured the life inside you was not to be trusted. If you were "obedient", you simply crushed the life inside you almost to death.
Freedom means you're not punished for saying no. The most fundamental freedom is the freedom to do nothing. But when you get this freedom, after many years of activities that were forced, nothing is all you want to do. You might start projects that seem like the kind of thing you're supposed to love doing, music or writing or art, and not finish because nobody is forcing you to finish and it's not really what you want to do. It could take months, if you're lucky, or more likely years, before you can build up the life inside you to an intensity where it can drive projects that you actually enjoy and finish, and then it will take more time before you build up enough skill that other people recognize your actions as valuable.
- "healing from trauma is about learning that it's okay to feel what you feel and know what you know" — Bessel van der Kolk
- I would add "okay to want what you want"
- and this is really important - related to Home, intentionality & many other topics
- > A funny thing happens with powerful self-help techniques: people learn them, and then they don’t use them.
- relates to the full-fractal buy-in puzzle
- Q > ugh, "goals" feel bad, but "intentions" feel good, and so do "visions"
- "goals" are things that I forced myself to have and it was bad
- you can't have goals by... hm. there's a higher-level thing here
- for me, it's like "goals are obligations/promises, and if I don't accomplish them then I've broken my own self-trust"
- someone on twitter was like "goals are options"
- M >
- M > intention
- Q > and context
- Q > something feels bad to be made out of thermostats!
- M > what did you think you were made out of before?
- Q > idk, undifferentiated personhood
- M > what bad would happen if you thought you were made out of thermostats?
- Q > uhghhhhh... I'm imagining my body made out of thermostats? but that's not it
- it feels poorly integrated with my other models of stuff
- M > yeah, blows my mind that all these models seem good
- QRI's connectome-specific harmonic waves thing
- neurotransmitters
- Q > this is why I'm interested in statistical mechanics
- how microscopic/nanoscopic interactions give rise to macroscopic stuff
- M > it's the general thing of what thermodynamics is
- Q > this is a model of the thing that Inner Game of Tennis is about
- how to git gud using regulators
- Q > "regulators" is a very good word
- ...."willpower depletion" model... running out of energy... some kind of regulatory network that is actively preventing me from taking action
- and I think I was basically right
- M > yeah, "willpower depletion" is essentially the same fallacy as someone being like "yeah, I wanted to rob the bank but I got tired" and their friend being like "dude, you got arrested!"
- energy is error
- oooooh.... hm.
- good: relationship to motion
- bad: implies conservation
- bad for both physicists and people who take spoon theory seriously
- M > I want a word that means precisely "PCT Error" PCT Error (one unlinked reference so when I finally find/coin a term for this it shows what I originally called it)
- > But think about this for a second. If I try to talk you (or myself) into
doing something, what am I actually doing?
Am I using subtraction, or action?
Because, by the very process of telling you that you ought to use this
technique, I am going against your basic nature.
I am asking you to perform an action, without doing any subtraction.
And our brains flat out don’t work that way.- relates to "behave" as a command to layer
- M > if PJ Eby really gets this, why has he not achieved huge things yet?
- maybe lacking full-fractal buy-in, on one level
- M > I think he doesn't get scenius
- Q > maybe doesn't trust people?
- > Because, unlike your lowest-level regulators (that just manage a
simple positioning of the arm), your high-level regulators are predictive.
That is, they don’t just respond to things as they are, they respond to
how they expect things to become. - > But that’s not the case, is it? I know this now, because in the last
month or so, I’ve been struggling to identify my “top-level” master
control circuits.
And you know what I found they were regulating? Things like:- Being “good”
- Doing the “right” thing
- “Fairness”
- > But don’t be fooled by how harmless or even “good” these phrases
sound. - Q > Mark Lippmann talks about "honoring lost purposes"
- (relates to starting & stopping)
- Q > "mind-hacking" is just such a bad aesthetic. I really hope he stops doing it
- hacking metaphor
- as a computer metaphor, either
- hostile (as in hacking a server)
- kludgy & fragile (as in hacking together a solution)
- as a physical metaphor
- violent/destructive (hacking with a knife, axe, or machete)
- but TOTALLY HACK AT THE MAP
- (I think? this seems right. relates to critique ideas, not people, etc)
- > What if you could really do everything effortlessly? Get your robot
brain to do whatever you want, on command, just like I promised in the
first chapter of the first version of Thinking Things Done?- in a command hierarchy, higher-ups tell lower-downs "what to do"
- in a control hierarchy, the higher levels tell lower levels "what to achieve" and the lower levels can reorganize however they want to achieve that
- "get your robot brain" to do "whatever you want"
- like he's completely reified his sense of self
- Q > there isn't a thing here about ontology remodeling, which is a part of perception!
- sense of separateness
- treating his brain like a computer program
- >
(Desire + Awareness) - Conflict = Results (Effortlessly!)- this is a fucking godawful equation
- D+A isn't great but it's... it's okay
- but you can't fucking subtract conflict
- Like yes, conflict is in the way, but an actually good formula would actually show the two conflicting desires and how they tug in opposite directions! and how you need to find something to reconcile them in order to release the energy that's conflicted fighting
- M > I feel a desire to create a version of this that is actually good
- Q > yes! I perceive a gap between this pdf and what I would want
- but also, feels hard to write up... very complex
- Q > with feelings, I had this basic question of like "whence feelings?"
- now it seems like a new question, "whence desires?"
- M > not about getting rid of conflict but resolving it
- Q > "resolve" feels (to me) like it's still too specific of an image of the outcome
- M > sure, I'd like to
- Q > Mark Lippmann says "things can be dissolved, or they can be solved"
- M > yeah, I like "solved", because it points at like, there being a puzzle, of how to satisfy both sets of needs
- Q > more vibe critique - treating most of himself as an enemy
- > And it’s not because you have some sort of inner demon or inner child or a malevolent “unconscious mind” or some other crap like that. Regulators are not people, nor are they minds. They’re just circuits.
- M > he's treating it not as an enemy with agency
- Q > but as a robot enemy
- M > but the dumb kind of robot, not the cybernetic control-systems-based one that he literally introduces at the start of this document
- Q suggested we annotate+critique this together in a gdoc, and we're doing that now! Contact us if you want the link.
- somehow relevant to this experience
- other pieces I didn't mention, etc
- Home writing
- re the power thing - that whatever power-over we have, will be used by unconscious schemas to achieve those various ends
- hmmm relates to how to install userstyles & userscripts
- this lil app launchlet.dev/
- idk, something related to NNTD maybe, or an example of an object-level trust protocol?
1 linked reference
Malcolm podcast appearances
- February 18th, 2021 on The Lightfoot Podcast with Joe Lightfoot
- Podcast summary