roche
1mo ago
I'm not the only one who loathes old English poetry, right? Chaucer is great, Shakespeare is great... and then it's about two and a half centuries until you reach something enjoyable again. Awkwardly mythology references, cloying saccharine language, each stanza flowing out like a nursery rhyme and resolving itself in that lame self-satisfied way, with an aftertaste like stale bread. It is a wonder that they who read the King James Bible produced it.
roche
1mo ago
Working memory is a passive process, it's not what we use to consciously model things. Not sure what we'd call the modeling area of the brain, I've heard sensorium used.
It may be that the ability to hold slightly large/more concepts in your mind is responsible for the spontaneous causal associations you describe.
It's a bit of a mystery really. All we know for sure is, working memory/modeling ability/intelligence are strongly correlated. When you and I say modeling ability we're probably thinking about shape rotation or figures and so on, but I believe each form of intelligence has its own type of modeling ability, which is accompanied by a strong working memory (at least in that field). So I suppose there's no knowing which is the 'essential' component, the two always occur simultaneously.
roche
1mo ago
I would be careful associating working memory with the brain's ability to actively model complex problems. The latter is a conscious process, while the former is unconscious. An 80 IQ person can, with pen and paper, rotate any shape or model any system given enough time, or calculate out a 6-move chess sequence that Magnus Carlsen could perform in seconds mentally, but he could never have the spontaneous causal associations in his mind that naturally occur to more intelligent people. The lack of this faculty, and exclusively this, is what precludes low IQ people from complex things. This is why the computer analogy is weak. And why low IQ civilizations just can't get it together. If it were only a matter of processing power, nothing would stop them from busting out the compasses and graph paper. But intelligence is really a phenomenon of the subconscious, of the brain noticing a pattern and showing this to the conscious mind. For that reason it can never be taught or compensated for.
roche
1mo ago
Rather than just trying to remember rotely, deeply engage with the knowledge by connecting it to other knowledge. You've now added multiple recall points to your brain for the single fact, and as long as any of them are intact, you can get the fact.
You remind me of this article
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/03/25/how-to-ace-your-finals-without-studying/
Back in high school, I was on the "academic bowl" team (it's academic jeopardy) and our team captain was some dude with glasses from Myanmar. His skill at the game was truly astonishing, and when I asked him how he learned, he said he spent hours reading wikipedia each night. Unsurprisingly, I tried a few variations on this and none of them bore fruit. But as @self_made_human mentions, there's a degree to which this memory faculty feels sort of natural, like we're each given the capacity we need for our interests. If you find yourself going on Wikipedia binges, making deep connections, reading tons of books and forgetting them shortly after, most probably it's a defect in your natural memory; you should be remembering everything you have interest in. Otherwise it's likely a disease.
So, no, it isn't - it's redundant encoding that gives you more threads by which to remember. In CS terms, I no longer have to linearly loop through my list-o-facts; instead, I map quickly to the needed fact via any of a number of hashes (connections).
This is a good analogy. We don't often talk about how inefficient the written word usually is.
roche
1mo ago
I'd really love to improve my memory, but the popular approach to this sort of baffles me. Memorizers construct large memory palaces and winding trails to recall specific, precise bits of information, like numbers or the words of a speech down to the letter, and this is synonymous with memory improvement. But is this not just trivial recall that could be handled easily by a computer, or a scrap of paper? Consulting my internal memory palace is no different from consulting a library. And it's obviously additional. When we talk about memory, we really mean that natural faculty through which things float into our mind as they appear relevant, the source of all creativity. This faculty of memory can be improved through exercise and health and frequent use, and reduced through idleness and so on.
...But is that it? This memory pretty much determines your intellectual life, it determines whether a book will benefit you or be meaningless. Memory is everything. So where are the great writers and studies showing how to optimize this function? Surely it's not just "eat vegetables, do cardio, sleep well", right?
roche
1mo ago
Do you have any tips on determining which books contain useful wisdom?
Know thyself. Also, know your methodology. If you're deep into statistics and not big on deduction, you're going to be locked out of nearly all intellectual history. That a book covers something you care about is irrelevant if its type of logic is meaningless to you.
The other problem with books is that they often aren't timely/relevant unless you have the ability to connect them to modern knowledge/issues. Social media and other technological advancements have significantly changed the world.
If you care about "underlying causes across time, perspectives, and domains", then timeliness doesn't matter. Time is the vector that allows us to see meaningful change in our world, so if you want to know things like "Why do humans go to war?" or "Why do we have money?" you need to study history. It will not have immediate practical advantage, but it's knowledge in the true sense and helps you build up a grasp of underlying causes. If some knowledge becomes outdated, it is not wisdom. Modern scholars would accuse the classics of being outdated, yet Napoleon studied Alexander and took over Europe.
roche
1mo ago
but what I’m looking for is very ill-defined and non-specific.
Aristotle defined wisdom as the knowledge of general causes and underlying prinicples.
[T]he man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the master-worker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of wisdom than the productive.
If most of the internet is shallow, that's because it floods you with the lowest form of knowledge, perception. Wisdom is knowledge of underlying causes, and that's what SlateStarCodex focused on in its heyday. Rather than honing in on particulars, he attempted to create sweeping principles like Moloch that explain phenomena across all walks of life. It's not a new approach, the late 19th century especially was a golden age for this type of exploration. So I would recommend you do some deep dives there, and abandon your hopes that the internet has any more of it. This is a very rare style of thinking. Most people of any era are dogmatists who cling to failing theories because they lack the ability to make their own. You could show them all the examples that led to Moloch, but they wouldn't generate the theory because they can't do that. It's a real hopeless quest trying to find people who can nowadays. Ditch the 'net, read books.
roche
2mo ago
Wireheading, definitely.
Another perspective that's been knocking around in my head is that for ~150 years, we've been burning through residuals from Christianity, and we're discovering that things we took for granted aren't human universals. Your point about promises is exactly right. The last few years have made me feel exactly like those Great War veterans who complained about the decline in manners, values, and behavior in the youth. It seemed like we'd reached a new equilibrium but something tells me we're about to slide even further.
roche
2mo ago
Do you see an end to pop culture within our lifetimes?
Undeniably, we've reached the bookend to the 80's blockbuster era of mega franchises like Star Wars. But the vibe of recent years is not only "These corporate products suck" but a subtle apathy toward media in general. Songs are going viral on TikTok, hitting #1 for a single week, then disappearing. Obscure songs from the past are going briefly viral and then disappearing. We see and consume more media than ever, yet paradoxically we care about it less than ever too. There are no new phenomena like the Deadheads or 80s goths where media spearheads an alternate lifestyle. There are no new games we continue talking about for years after release. Fanbases are less passionate, less distinct, and shorter lived. Fanfiction is less popular. Being a gen Z fan of the smiths or deftones means having their greatest hits in your playlist while not knowing any of the band members besides Morrissey, Marr and Chino, let alone their history, their gear, their influences, famous gigs, etc. Modern artists get this treatment too. People just don't care anymore.
Do you guys notice that in your hobbies too? I.e. younger "fans" totally lacking the ability to nerd out? Do you sense the general level of passion drying up?
roche
2mo ago
I'd class the suffering of the affluent as a different type of suffering. Because when you're starving, facing the possibility of homelessness, facing disease etc., there is a sense of realness and gravitas and urgency to what has befallen you, it is a genuine pain, whereas the suffering of the affluent is a reverse of this; it's not very painful or urgent but it's also completely meaningless, so it manifests as frustration. Put another way, a society that has largely eliminated the extreme negatives of life has flattened the spectrum of human experience, so that for an affluent person to feel any sense of meaning or depth to his life, he must obtain some extremely positive experience. Otherwise life will feel flat and empty. The vast majority of us though lack the means to get some extremely positive experience, so we're stuck living mundane, flat lives. Our pain is not exactly pain -- it's a vague, dull pang of awareness that life can be much more.
roche
2mo ago
People that are smart, and are interested in writing, will generally not be interested in video game writing. They'll want to be authors, or journos, or work in more prestigious arts like film.
There was a pretty decent amount of art school grads hopping into gamedev back in the 90's. Thing is that real artists demand autonomy, so if you start imposing a ton of top-down rules they'll rapidly jump ship, and your team of would-be auteurs is replaced by a bunch of video-game loving dorks who doodle orcs in their notebook (no offense). Never forget that Team Silent formed from a group of ne'erdowells whom Konami placed zero faith in because they floundered in that corporate structure.
roche
2mo ago
Kuhn pointed out that scientific paradigms refuse to disappear until a superior alternative is discovered. You can say the same for ideologies. Communism will continue having supporters until you have a better answer than "Sorry, the rich have to horde all the wealth, that's just how it works!" Logic won't change anything. It's an -ism, a creed. You don't disprove it
roche
2mo ago
Yeah, I believe it.
Certain studios like Bethesda or Square Enix get a lot of heat for their poor writing, but across the board we don't see any great stories in AAA games anymore. Great stories require holistic coordination, which is the antithesis of modern game/film design where keeping everybody on the same page is by itself a kind of superhuman feat.
roche
2mo ago
I agree, Jews don't know where to stop in their criticisms. But that's a universal human trait. The problem is not "Jews like to destroy other moral systems" but rather "two or more distinct moral factions are incompatible with a healthy society and one will always try to trounce the other". To disdain them for refusing to integrate is natural, but on the inside there's an obvious tension of "Should we ever fully integrate, we may get targeted again but with our now weak communal bonds we'll be far more vulnerable." The best criticism you can give is that modern America doesn't seem like the Jew-persecuting type, but this cycle is so ingrained in them that mindless adherence to "They want to kill us!" is slightly justified. But I'm not in the position to fully dissect all that
roche
2mo ago
Jews have never been in a proper standpoint to understand Christian morality because they're the outgroup. All moral systems have profound flaws when viewed from the outside. I don't care what gentiles have to say about Jewish culture either because there's minimal chance they really get it.
roche
2mo ago
Has anyone else noticed that people in academic or intellectual hobbies tend to split in terms of disposition? On one hand, you have fact collectors; Those professors who read everything in a dry voice, who seem impartial to the conclusions or suggestions of whatever they might say, as if the raw accumulation of knowledge or data were the only goal, and who fill their books with raw, nigh uncategorized information. On the other hand, you have those who love intellectual topics due to their love of conclusions, and who see knowledge as a stepping stone to something greater. These types love to cherrypick, they make sweeping generalizations, they are often your world-famous intellectuals.
I don't have much to add to this dichotomy, but I believe it would benefit everyone if we recognized it. Partially because they are incompatible: Just as narrative writers draw ire from the fact collectors and their inaccuracies, so too the former is frustrated with the latter's awful signal-to-noise ratio. As one hard-aligned in the former category, I find myself learning more from a Thucydides than an Oxbridge historian or a Freud than a journal; even if I entirely disagree with their narrative it still produces something to collide against and draw sparks, whereas a collection of facts passes through empty air leaving no impression.
roche
6mo ago
I'm certain more time wouldn't change things for me. Maybe you're different.
roche
6mo ago
The overall feeling was, social media is equivalent to TV. Back in the 90s, fuss was made over the shocking statistic that Americans spend 6-8 hours per night watching TV, with the tone of "Clearly this is horrible and will have drastic consequences on us". 30 years later, Gen Y are doing completely fine. With this stuff, it's not about a deleterious effect psychologically so much as the opportunity cost of what you could be doing instead. I don't imagine most humans have ever spent "dead time" AKA energy-depleted time in a productive way. Rather, they'll just opt for the easiest road to stimulation which is casual socializing. Is it good that humans had to socialize in the past to stay entertained? Most likely, yeah.
Our society was built on a web of super laid-back socializing, because everyone was naturally bored as hell without other people. The anxiety problem among zoomers is probably a direct result of this laid-back environment going away. Because a lot of us only start socializing once we're needy, once we have a void to be filled like loneliness or whatever. If we grow up casually shooting the shit, it really makes a big difference to social adjustment.
roche
6mo ago
From April 14th to April 20th, I quit using social media, forums, and any sort of online discussion space to see what would happen. The result is... nothing. Just a sense of under-stimulation which gave a nice opportunity to try out some hobbies. Ultimately when I have some energy, I'm gonna do chores or socialize or art, and social media is just for "dead time" when you run out of energy. It seems common sense that social media affects us a lot, but honestly I'm not so sure.
roche
7mo ago
If downers like alcohol bring out the "real you", then uppers like adderall and coke bring out the "fake you". The real you genuinely just wants to laze around and play games, so even if it hurts being a depressive P.o.S., there's always catharsis in the fact you're doing what your brain wants you to do. And if you drank some booze instead of popping an adderall, you'd go, "Work? Who gives a fuck about work! I'm just gonna drink myself into a coma and die in a couple years" etc. Even if it's wrong, that is how you actually feel about things, and adderall doesn't solve that so much as cover it up.
Can you pop adderall every day to stay productive? Sure. Build a career from that if you want. But the underlying problem remains. Stop taking adderall and all the problems come back. So will you take it every day until you retire...? This drug which stifles your creativity, which makes things feel somehow phony?
When we feel extremely sad or whatever, there's a massive wave of catharsis which makes us feel oddly satisfied and complete. And every time a depressed person boots up League of Legends at 2 AM and sips another cup of coffee, there's a mini wave of catharsis. It's his version of what happy people get when they do happy people crap like take a stroll through nature. You take that away from him, and he doesn't really have anything.
roche
7mo ago
Rationalist hubris is believing politics can be understood 100% rationally. Only to the degree you can place yourself in the heads of the emotionally-driven other will you understand what's going on. It was strange to me you got laughed off/brushed aside so often in the podcast, because your low res filter is much closer to how average Americans engage with politics than this abstract-1000-moving-parts-strict-heuristics-analysis-machine the ratsphere attempts to lug everywhere.
roche
7mo ago
Keeping on those placebos afterwards is somewhere between neutral if they otherwise keep their behavior the same, to severely negative if they e.g. think prayer is more powerful than medicine
It seems like you've never been around an intelligent religious person before. "Thinking prayer is more powerful than medicine" is not a problem that comes up. These people are essentially like you and me, except they have resolute moral standards and a shocking tolerance for hardship. Call it a placebo all you want, but don't allow yourself to forget: The crucial part of the "placebo" is that it actually works.
roche
7mo ago
About a week ago, I read some of the Old Testament for the first time since childhood. One idea which stuck out to me is that if you took this setting and removed God from the equation, none of this would make sense. I'm not talking about blatantly mystical things like the Great Flood or Eden, but rather the full world in which the Old Testament takes place -- a world of constant cruelty set against the endless desert sands and mysterious starry skies, and ancient genealogies with white-beareded men who appear as old as the world itself. Maybe God didn't strike down Sodom and Gomorrah, but city-wide destruction and mass rape and incest were evidently common in the ancient world, and you can feel this need to rationalize the ancient world and make it less tragic is a very strong theme in the Old Testament. Without God, it's something like a living nightmare.
When life gets really bad, we open up to religion in surprising ways. Best analogy is like... we're all houses built on shitty foundations. Sometimes a storm comes and chips at our eaves, but we repair it and we're fine. It's not until your entire house tumbles down that you can replace the foundation for a better one. Religion generally takes hold in moments of immense weakness, and makes us far stronger for the remainder of life. Zoomer tradcaths really are just larping because they haven't had that moment yet. It can only be a LARP until that happens, IMO. Faith isn't really irrational so much as sub-rational.
There's also the shit pacing. Look, I understand that BG3 is an early access, multi-year-spanning project, but hot damn does the story have such an awkward and spasmodic flow to it. Act 1 is good, act 2 starts off barren and then builds up into this bizarre crescendo that (vibes-wise) could pass as the end of the game, and then spits you out into act 3 which is completely anticlimactic because it feels like you were just at Mordor but now you're back at Tom Bombadil's.
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