> A funny thing happens with powerful self-help techniques: people learn them, and then they don’t use them.
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"
M >
M > intention
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
Q > this is why I'm interested in statistical mechanics
Q > "regulators" is a very good word
> 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.
M > if
PJ Eby really gets this, why has
he not achieved huge things yet?
> 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.
my guess is that
PJ Eby is doing a lot of
layering here
Q > "mind-hacking" is just such a bad aesthetic. I really hope he stops doing it
> 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"
Q > there isn't a thing here about ontology remodeling, which is a part of perception!
> (Desire + Awareness) - Conflict = Results (Effortlessly!)
this is a fucking godawful equation
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?"
M > not about getting rid of conflict but resolving it
Q > more vibe critique - treating most of himself as an enemy
Q suggested we annotate+critique this together in a gdoc, and we're doing that now! Contact us if you want the link.