PJ Eby
No content on this page itself — see linked references below.
4 linked references
everything makes sense
- this response to PJ Eby
February 18th, 2021
- > 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