TwiceHuman
2mo ago
I'm mostly the same as you, almost no changes in my beliefs since my early teens, only evidence that I was correct all along. However, there's some classes of very unintuitive insights, like the following:
I was wrong about the value of freedom. It's still valuable to me, but I believe that many people are better off with less, and know I know that restriction helps creativity (writers block, analysis paralysis, indecisiveness, being lost in life etc) seem to be consequences of excess choices. Furthermore, excess freedom often lead people to ruin themselves.
Like Dag said, people who meditate aren't perfect. I think this is because people who meditate the most are those who need it the most. Those who go to psychiatrists also aren't the most mentally healthy, right? It's the opposite.
Suffering isn't really a bad thing. You're meant to act as if it's bad, but it's good for you (but only if you fight against it as if it weren't!).
I used to think that intelligence was the answer to everything. Raise the average IQ by 15 points, and we'd get 100 times more people like Hawkings, right? But now I don't look for friends in intellectual circles anymore, I'm having a much better time around people with IQs in the 115s. I've liked very few of the 145+ IQ people I've met.
I used to dislike vagueness, but now I love it. If you don't label things, you allow them to be what they are, and when you label things, you restrict them. Socially, this can work like magic, you can flirt with somebody, and they get to decide how seriously you were being when you said what you did.
I now consider information to have serious downsides. Knowing less is often better. I even avoid environments in which the legibility is too high. In Ribbonfarm terms, I stick to Warrens and avoid Plazas. I sometimes intentionally keep myself from understanding others, and (selectively) keep them from understanding things about me. Physical cash has a much lower legibility than credit cards, which is why I think it would be a terrible idea to get rid of it.
In the past I thought egoism was bad, now I think it's good. Gatekeeping is good too. Discrimination? Invaluable (choosing a romantic partner is like the ultimate discriminatory behaviour). I used to think I was a good person, but it turns out I was a coward. By the way, while I dislike Muslims, I believe that their lack of self-doubt is very much a sign of health. Human beings aren't mean to suffer from their conscience to the degree that we now do in the west. I'm inferior to Genghis Khan because I will never be as true to live as he was.
Anyway, the pattern here, which I likely didn't show very well, is "Sometimes the truth is the complete opposite of what's intuitive". When you take something to the extreme, it tends to flip onto the opposite extreme (like atheist scientists becoming religious), and I did this to myself in many areas
TwiceHuman
3mo ago
I'm not the person you just responded to, but
I personally don't interact with people who care about politics in a way which makes them hostile and prone to policing other peoples beliefs, behaviour and language. I avoid them like I avoid people who complain or brag all the time. Personally, I'd respond something like "I don't like talking about politics", "I'm not interested in that topic", or "I'm invested in other things". There's various things they could respond to that, but I think I have an answer for most things that civilized people could say. As for the rest - they're sufficiently unpleasant people that I can allow myself not to be polite to them.
TwiceHuman
4mo ago
I think it's because JP spend a lot of time thinking about evil, and he seems to have learned about the human capacity for evil by studying WW2 and concentration camps. He knows how easy it is for somebody to fall into an ideology like nazism and rationalize ones hatred for an outgroup, and he's quite determined to keep this from happening (again, this is just my view). Sadly, because he feels so strongly about this, he seems unable to pick up on the patterns relating semitism and wokeness.
TwiceHuman
5mo ago
I attempt not to read too many news and other such things. It's probably not healthy to learn about so many problems which are outside of your control. I believe they might also distract you from your own personal life, and from your immediate surroundings, over which you do have some influence.
People who aren't chronically online seems to have it better, and you don't seem to be feeling unwell because you feel these problems personally, but because you hear that they exist and may affect you in the future.
I'd say focus on yourself, your family and friends, and spend your time on what matters instead of hedonic distractions. So that you do not spend effort on things which tire you out while causing zero positive changes in your personal life (I believe this might train your brain to think that effort is futile)
TwiceHuman
5mo ago
I'll try to answer this despite not knowing much about the topic. I'll rely on my intuition here, if anyone can poke holes in what I'm about to write, I will try not doing this again in the future.
1: I think the main reason is a "Garbage in, garbage out" problem. We lack better training data, and not just more of it. 2: I think censorship, various modifications to protect against 'attacks', and minor crippling of abilities (with the goal of preventing the models from being able to do immoral or illegal things) have made newer models regress in some ways. 3: I think there's a slight connection to the stagnation of movies, video games, computer programs, and so on. These are also not improving, despite growing resources, team sizes and technology. The direction of optimization, and the direction of what consumers enjoy, seemingly split into two diverging paths. I wouldn't go as far as claiming that the enshittification process has started for AI, but I don't think the focus is purely on capacity anymore, and it's probably not researchers which are in charge anymore (just like most programmers are told what to create by non-programmers, limiting the quality of the outcome). If competent scientists are allowed to work undisturbed with no regard for public perception, advertising or shareholders, I believe they can create something amazing/horrifying rather fast.
TwiceHuman
5mo ago
Hmm, I don't exactly disagree. But I think a major problem is that people optimize for votes (Goodhart's law) instead of what the votes are supposed to represent. This happens even without votes, and we can conclude that people are the problem... But still, if a lack of votes removes some of the cognitive punishment or reward of posting something that everyone agrees or disagrees with, and helps people focus on what's important, I think it might be a good idea still.
Lets assume that I'm wrong and that none of these problems actually apply to voting (that common critiques against voting are wrong). Now I want to ask: What's the benefit of votes? Do they just reveal information about what the average reader thinks about your comments? I don't think that's all that valuable, mostly because I don't trust the average opinion of a community as a judge of quality.
The crowd seems to be good at telling that something is different, and shunning it. But differentiating between "Different because it's better than what's popular" and "different because it's worse than what's popular" seems like an impossibility. The votes just steer one towards sameness, inside-jokes, preaching to the choir, saying what people already think and agree with. This is why echo-chambers and excessive use of inside-references ('circlejerking') happen.
Some places will have comments which are out of place because they're excellent or written by a highly intelligent people, and other comments will of course be out of place because they're garbage or written by mentally ill people. But votes (well, people in general) seem to protect against both positive and negative change. It seems like the familiar is felt as good, and the unfamiliar is felt as bad. To the point that people will joke about among us despite claiming to dislike it. This is probably a quirk of human nature?
TwiceHuman
6mo ago
I know I might just be responding with an n=1 outlier, but if my 85-year-old grandma has a cold in the morning she is alright again by evening. So while you might be right on average, I don't think you need to resign yourself to average health. The question is, how healthy do you want to be and is it worth the investment?
TwiceHuman
6mo ago
I don't see any puzzles here, I don't consider Nietzsche all that difficult to understand, and I don't like secondary sources at all (I do read translations, though).
Human beings cannot be rational, as they can only follow their own nature. Even if their nature leads them to attempt rational thinking, it's still their nature which is in charge. This is why Nietzsche psychoanalyzes people. He was also intelligent enough to do this to himself, no doubt. Of course his work was motivated by his suffering, if you think Nietzsche lacked self-awareness you underestimate him.
Nietzsche liked exceptional people. But everything exceptional is rare, and the rare couldn't exist without the common, so he doesn't even want to do away with the rabble. And of course his writing isn't for everone, just like this website isn't for everyone. It's not just best for you that certain people never find this website, it's also the best for them that they stay away. It's not a moral statement or a kind of discrimination, it's a matter of compatibility.
The higher man will care about aesthetics and not just about objective things. This is because he is in touch with his instincts, because he has his own values, and because the top of the hierarchy of needs is more spiritual than physical. The subjective is a luxury, as is having suboptimal preferences. But most importantly, higher type of people say "yes" to themselves and to life (they're life affirming and of good conscience).
Nietzsche liked humanity, and he seemed to have a problem with modernity and some fundemental misunderstandings that society has with human nature (mostly because slave morality forced us to lie about human nature, until the lie became how we decided things ought to be). An easy example is every belief which ruins the conscience of men. Society is filled with people who are terrified of the possibility that they aren't "good", and who tries to look for evidence that they're "good", and who try to prove to themselves and others that they're "good". They also look for ways to "become a good person", but this is nonsense, for being a good person leads to good actions, not the other way around. You can only become who you are. So society turns pathelogical over simple errors.
Look at the death of nationalism, for it can be understood as self-destructive behaviour, the preference of something other than oneself. "Humanity are a plague", "Having children is bad", "Cats are better than people", "Power/ambition/competition/discrimination is evil". It's all a hatred of elements which are essential to either life itself or to humanity. So such philosophy is ultimately the preaching of death. Nietzsche regarded this as worse than evil, and that's because evil people still prefer themselves. Evil people still enjoy life. This can be summed up with "Narrow souls hate I like the devil, Souls wherein grows nor good nor evil."
Life is hard to justify with all of its suffering and striving
Read the end of Zarathustra. It's a little hard to understand, but when you feel joy, you say yes to what is, and in that moment, everything is redeemed, including all the suffering you went through just to experience that moment. But Nietzsche considers happiness and suffering to be of secondary importance, and considers their focus to be a symptom of degeneration (just like hedonism, which is the optimization of pleasure, is a superficial and unhealthy way to live)
I don't like being rude or excessively critical, and I'm open to counter-arguments, I just... Feel like it all makes sense.
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
Self-control is a virtue? As I see it, society is degenerating because weak-willed people are removing the social stigma of whatever people usually do when they lack self-control. Casual sex is the first example which comes to mind, but in short I guess my point is that stoicism and self-control are related. I also think that progressiveness is a step away from the traditional strictness. It's like people have forgotten why we advocate against certain things, and they want the "freedom" or "liberty" to indulge in them without judgement. Take for instance "fat-shaming", rather than self-control in eating they'd rather punish the people who point out that obesity isn't attractive.
Don't get me wrong, I think your explanation is otherwise solid.
Personally I've notice a trend away from autism-like conduct and towards normie-like conduct. A transition from objectivity to subjectivity, one from technical correctness towards social correctness, from spatial intelligence to verbal intelligence. I guess "less masculine" fits all these boxes. Maybe this effect on society is partly explained by dropping testosterone levels or something. Some also mention demoralization (Yuri Bezmenov), oversocialization (Ted Kaczynski) and moral subversion (Nietzsche). I don't think it's a coincidence that "soy" is starting to become an insult. Am I becoming skizophrenic or is all this related?
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
https://gwern.net/death-note-anonymity#de-anonymization
These 18 references (under that large paragraph) scare me a little, what about you? I have personal experience as well, but not at some impressive level that I can write about. It's just a general savviness which has taught me that most people are safe because bad actors lack interest or competence, and not because finding them is impossible
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
Yeah, sounds about right!
But even among well-meaning people, there's different types and playstyles. I might jump words a few times without finding anyone who feels compatible with my mindset, even if I don't encounter any trolls. You'll quickly learn what sort of people you're encountering. Eventually, you can tell the personality of people just by their avatars (there will be a few false positives, so don't act on your heuristics too quickly. Those who break them are the most interesting ones)
You're right, it's too optimistic. 5 years ago I thought 30 years. Perhaps 8 years is more correct. I can't predict the amount of resistance and stubbornness remaining. I'd love to read your thoughs on the issue, but no pressure!
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
Are you sure about the "no statistical or information theory backing" part? Even if they don't provide a good explanation, their worries are valid as deanonymization is rather easy. Sufficiently advanced information theory mathematics may as well be magic, by the way
I think it's Valve index or the HTC Vive pro. I know there's a Vive pro 2, but as far as I know it's not better than the pro 1 in every way, just some. And if you have a lot of money there's high-res headsets like the Pimax 8K but it requires a beast of a graphics card. If you want a good mic, I think the valve index is best. The index controllers aren't as durable as the Vive controllers, and they have less battery, but they offer finger tracking which is cool.
The fun does happen in private worlds (or friends+/friends only, really), but many regulars still go to public now and then. After befriending them you just have to catch them in a friends+ or friends-only world, and add the people on there you think are cool. By meeting friends and friends of friends, you can expand your network very quickly. Some more picky people will be in the orange mode which means "Ask me", i.e. send them a request if you want in. They probably need to be somewhat familiar with you before they accept such a request. People like this go orange mode because they have more friends who wants to join them that they have the energy to handle.
For the most part, the most popular places suck (trolls go the places with the most victims - surprise surprise). The exception to this is event-worlds. There are a lot of events in VRChat, and those who join them tend to be serious and invested players rather than trolls. Sometimes you need to add the event-host as a friend in order to join (they are quick to accept, don't worry)
Bonus knowledge: Asian cultures have much less of a need for walled gardens, I'm not sure why (wait, yes I am. It's a combination of 'high trust society' and lives not revolving around politics. This will all be gone perhaps 15 years from now as Western problems hit Asia. I'd be happy if this problem doesn't get worse due to me making this comment). If you speak some Asian language, you shouldn't have any problems getting close to people (even if they're somewhat famous in the community).
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
May I recommend virtual reality? The cost and nerdiness is still a filter which stops certain types of people (just like how early adopters of the internet were of superior quality to current users). You won't have to go outside in order to socialize anymore, but VR is still real enough that your social skills will be allowed to rust too much (even body-language is quite important). VR is a combination of socializing and gaming, and there's lots of nerdy subcultures. I use it for language learning and socializing, but I have friends who make a living selling 3D models and VR-related programs.
The biggest application I know is VRChat. It's popular enough that it has its own normie space which is probably rather off-putting to you, but there's a rather large community which is invisible on the surface and which you can only access through meeting other people who want to escape children and casual users who think that being loud is a form of humor. I should warn you that there's a lot of sexual deviants as well, but that's mostly a danger to the weak-willed and undisciplined, so I don't think it poses a danger to you, it may simply mean that an extra 30% of users won't appeal to you.
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
I used to value equality in the same way as you do, but I changed my worldview. I think that genders are equal like how Ying and Yang are equal, which is equal in value but different. I'm extremely good at generalizing and jumping on the abstraction-ladder, but I no longer believe that one can solve the problems of the world by abstracting details away. The details are as important as the general.
If you make a strategy guide for a game with 4 classes, then a guide for any class seems like it would necessarily be worse than a specific guide for said class. Unless the guide contains branches like "if warrior, elseif mage, elseif.. " so that it deals with these details. If you disallow knowledge of these details I think you end up with a worse guide with mathematical certainty.
I used to go for general correctness, thinking that specific correctness was a kind of overfitting. What ended up happening instead is that I removed any advantage I had from knowledge of the specifics. This reduces everything to the lowest common denominator. In terms of the coast-line paradox, I limited my level of detail thinking that this was "better". You are free to think however you want, I just hope that you won't put yourself at a disadvantage in life as I did. General rules never seem to perform better than context-aware judgement in every specific moment. The legal system requires general rules, but in our own personal lives, we're not bound by such restrictions. If your system is a suggestion for the country, and not a personal morality that you follow as a kind of categorical imperative, then I've possibly misunderstood you.
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
It's necessary. I've thought about it a lot (while reading basically all of Nietzsches work, and doing the time where I was at my weakest myself). While it will make the world less kind, it will also make people less sensitive. When you value weakness, all it does is making people weaker, so that they're hurt more easily. These two factors seem to cancel out eachother. It's like lifting weights vs never exercising, the resistance you face is basically constant since you adjust to it.
And on other factors, strength has obvious advantages, they don't cancel out. I still value everything weak, but you need strength to protect the weak. It's like getting your heart-rate up so that your resting heart-rate will fall. Or working hard so that you can relax. Or sleeping so that you can be be alert. For the sake of X, we intentionally do the opposite of X. We challenge ourselves so that life will be less challenging in the future.
That said, not every metric is healthy. The strength should measured as discipline, will power, mental health, and competence. Not psychopathy or nihilism. I could take adderall and turn myself into a somewhat productive robot, but this is not the way in which I want to get stronger. Actually, my username is a reference to how being more human is better. Some people throw away their humanity as a way of overcoming their weaknesses, but I think such an approach is entirely mistaken. My definition of "strength" is basically the definition of health from a biological perspective. Not a moral perspective, mind you. I'm under the impression that a lot of our morality gives value to symptoms of poor mental health, like self-doubt (calling itself humble), excessive pity (calling itself compassion), cowardice (calling itself wisdom or safety). If you're feeling adventurous, you can experiment with yourself as the subject. Try for instance taking total responsibility for everything which happens to you, I think you will come to like it over time.
TwiceHuman
7mo ago
That's a difficult question! But I will attempt to answer it. Keep in mind that this is my own thoughts, not any specific theory that some other guy came up with. I don't believe in the theory of forms, but I can see how one could mistakenly believe they exist, and they might be useful either way (every model is wrong, but some are useful!)
I believe that everything is unique, finite and different, that there's nothing universal, and the desire to equalize and unify is a quirk of human perception (an attempt to dominate the environment). However, many things are similar! But noticing these similarities requires a great deal of intelligence. Being a shape-rotator myself, I can usually tell when things are similar in their mathematical structure, for example if something is isomorphic to something else.
And easy pattern is: A "branch" of government is similar to a "branch" of a tree. They both contain one-to-many relationships.
The more intelligent you are, the more abstract similarities you will be able to grasp. But these shared aspects aren't universal objects, we just recognize common structures (overlaps, redundancy) and start giving them names. At best "universal" will mean universal for our universe, with our laws of physics. Or perhaps "universal for humans". But this is a form of "universal" which is bound to a scope. But that makes it not universal, no? Many people don't believe in love/morality/meaning because they don't exist outside of humanity. But nothing can exist outside of itself, so nothing can be universal in such a sense.
The theory of forms might reveal how the human brain works, just like how the Buddha recognized how suffering functioned in humans. Both theories are about objective reality as it appears to humans. In fact, it's only about the "Appears to humans" part, as that's the only thing we can perceive. For human beings cannot break out of their own humanity. For the same reason that you can't write what's beyond words. It should also be noted that great pattern-recognition has limited value. It can't carry me in life. Everything has its own specifics outside of the shared patterns. You can't compress knowledge beyond a certain point. And everything is specific - even set theory. It's an axiomatic system, it's not the one true axiomatic system, such thing could never exist. You can create anything which doesn't contradict itself, but said creation doesn't contain anything but itself, it doesn't exist outside itself. I think "Sphere" is a category, many spheres can exist. But you can think up an infinite amount of categories, and these definitions can contradict eachother, so you can't evaluate one as more correct than another. Even if you use the laws of physics as your "base", an infinite amount of universes with different laws could exist, so our universe is also specific. The universe isn't real outside of the universe, so zooming in and out doesn't change anything.
This reply may be inadequate, but I believe the problem is beyond most people, possibly also beyond me. But in this case, I don't think it can be explained in a way which we can understand it.
By feeling inadequate, some people start sending signals associated with low value, and other people pick up on these signals and assume that they're true. Other people don't know the real you, they only get what you show them. So the worth of a person is sort of a collective agreement, and every individual has some influence in what the conclusion is going to be. People who are more based/grounded in themselves, and more certain without external approval, will paradoxically get more positive external approval. Those who need it the most won't get it because they ask (and in extreme cases, beg). This is why fishing for compliments fail. Bragging fails too (we recognize that it's a desperate attempt for validation). Some people even give up getting a girlfriend, and then manage to get a girlfriend because they stopped looking desperate.
Real confidence comes from within. But it may be dangerous to have much more confidence than actual skill. There's also advantages to being pitied. Some people stay in the victim mentality basically forever, they're held to low standards, and other people rush to tell them how everything is going to be okay. This can be addicting, and taking responsibility for yourself requires throws away this advantage.
I think it's alright to evaluate people based on their character, but evaluating "worth" as how much productivity you can provide society seem like a consequence of the rat race. I don't think it's a healthy way to think since the priority is so disconnected from social life. And I can see the point with the idea that a king is only a king if other people believe that he is. So even if you're a great person, people around you might not have the judgement to realize it.
But the question you've asked is essentially about the nature of social hierarchies and coherence between living beings. A proper answer requires everything from psychology and neuroscience to game theory and complex systems. It too large to even put a dent in it, so I just shared a few interesting things which came to mind.
Edit: It's worth a mention that Jordan Peterson uploaded a video about Self-esteem not existing. It may be a poor concept better explained by other things. If you're interested the video ID is watch?v=9f3qyNNtpQk
Would you agree if I said that these "harmful behaviours" all depend on the people who engage with them? The trade-off is actually what age limits achieve. Why can't children drink alcohol? Because children can't bear that much freedom, they'd likely destroy themselves. So before 18, drinking is a "harmful behaviour", and afterwards, it's not, under the assumption of course that people above the age of 18 have more self-control. I agree that, for society, more rules can be better, but I personally don't need nearly that many myself. So less libertarianism is only best under the assumption that everyone should live by the same rules. A more flexible "Every individual should have as much freedom as they can handle" opens up more more interesting possibilities. Finally, may I add that rules are of almost no importance? Same with police, laws, restrictions. These are just symptoms of deeper problems. If you need them in the first place, something has already gone wrong. Even if cocaine was legal, I would still avoid it. For a society, it's more important that its citizens don't want to do drugs, than it is for said society to ban drugs.
I agree that "over-policing" is a good idea now. It worked in El Salvador I believe. But why is it necessary in the first place? I think it's possible to cultivate people in such a way that you don't need rules. For example, I allow myself to be as immoral as I want, but I don't ever feel like doing anything bad, so the natural consequences of doing whatever I like is that I do what's right.
Perhaps, the need for rules is a sign of decline?
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