CloudHeadedTranshumanist
No bio...
User ID: 2056
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
They're kind of the opposite of people-pleasing robots, and generally need to be subtly threatened to do things that they don't want to do (which is what grooming implies).
Wait what? Is that what people mean by grooming?
I thought 'child grooming' referred to actions in the reference class of love bombing them online without their parent's consent.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Agreed... except... that last part. Spears are SS+ tier in terms of skill floor, ease of production, ease of use, leverage, reach... there's a reason so many weapons of antiquity are variations on long stick with pokey end.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Mmm. I think our conversation has thus-far been ambiguous. I think English is natively poor at distinguishing 'felt' and 'functional' emotion.
- When I refer to shame the emotion, I'm referring to a sort of sharp painful valence that feels a bit like being stabbed.
- Regret feels wider, a slower more manageable burn that feels like its seeping through me and performing some sort of backprop operation in my psyche.
- Then there's Compassion. Compassion feels more like a slow euphoria, this feeling is associated with modeling the internal structures of a targeted person or object (or I would label it something else, valence be damned) and then the euphoria is blended with the valence predicted by the model of the target. (The euphoria of knowing persists, but I simultaneously feel the target's emotions.)
- Embarrassment refers to a valence that isn't even negative. It's a fast euphoria and feeling of increased bloodflow to the cheeks. Sometimes it is accompanied by a sort of panic, which feels stabby in a similar way to shame. But the embarrassment itself is a positive emotion.
So when another person tells me that they are in pain because of something I have done... Mechanistically my mind seems to take the steps of feeling regret, simultaneously looking at the person being unhappy in my model of their present and happier in my simulation of their future, feeling compassion for that future instance of them, and letting that vision flow into the present as my regret changes me.
If I overuse the shame valence, I end up in a state of chronic pain, which is what I believe I am seeing in many other people when they are subjected to shaming. The regret valence too, grows agitated if it's chronically recurring (and justly so. If it's chronically recurring I am chronically doing something wrong and pain grows as a sort of wake up call). But regret can be repeated more often as long as my higher order processes are judging it to be effective. The compassion valence however, is much more sustainable, largely pleasurable, and seems to cause me to become more extroverted the more I use it. Yet it still allows for the similar behavioral shifts in similar contexts. (and can also be used in contexts without regret, such as helping others with pain that I am not the cause of.)
If I imagine shouting out loud to a professor... well I do remember feelings of shame from my own college experience. These were largely damaging though, as I also felt them regarding the prospect of getting questions wrong or raising my hand or saying anything during class whatsoever and they majorly inhibited my ability to participate in lectures.
Looking back and imagining the scenario anew however... I'm sitting in class, the idea to shout at/to the professor spontaneously arises... and... I find the idea funny. Laughable. A vibrant euphoria that feels like a vibrating diaphragm. Then the next thing that happens is I start contemplating what the effects of shouting would be and whether the tradeoffs would be justified in the specific scenario. It would seem that Humor has been slotted into where shame used to be in this social script, and is serving the same purpose of interrupting my thought-flow enough to prevent me from spontaneously shouting during a lecture, while enabling a more productive follow up strategy than the stabby feeling of shame permits.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
As long as that which emerges loves itself, explores and embraces and seeks to understand the alien, and pursues greatness, that is Humanity.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Does shame really work? I see it come up over and over from a certain subset of posters. They seem to earnestly believe shame works. That if we shame people they will change. But every time I try to shame someone into changing they just get defensive or go into an avoidant spiral or start self flagellating, none of which consist of the actual behavioral change I wish to engender.
What does seem to work is getting close to them, understanding their problems, earning their trust, helping them to see how their faults are hurting them, entering their control loop, and actively helping them to positively reconstruct themselves. This is hard. So I can see why it can be tempting to jump to the much simpler sounding solution of making them feel bad until they change.
But I suspect that even in shame cultures, the shame is correlative, not causative. It's the stern standard for a specific form of excellence and the availability of social tech that leads to that excellence that changes people in those cultures. The shame emotion itself seems like it can jolt you into realizing you need to change if you didn't know, but it seems unfit for providing sustained motive force towards personal change.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Societies have many dimensions. Being an Alien has many dimensions. Some people can integrate more smoothly than others. Some societies are more compatible than others.
All of this is to say, that you're right that theres more to it than meritocracy youre right that individuals aren't fungible. But you're collapsing the dimentionality of the Alien to 1D
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
"As long as everything else remains constant" is a hell of a loophole. You'd have to measure all of your excrement in a Calorimeter and all of your heat exchange with the environment to be certain that you're not driving a truck through it. That's untenable so we use (preferably tested) heuristics.
'Eat fewer calories' isn't a terrible heuristic, but 'eat foods that engender a stable energy level like complex carbs and vegetables and proteins' is a more nuanced and generally more useful heuristic.
I don't think I misunderstand forms.
The central cases of formal causes are, geometric proofs right? I'm saying that since 134981765480 and 134981765481 are mathematically distinct, a rudder made out 134981765480 atoms is formally distinct from a rudder made out of 134981765481 atoms. If you abstract and zoom in just a little, everything can be framed as a form. Material differences become differences in electron shells with formal electrodynamic implications.
Any 'human truth' that disregards this difference is really just a 'human heuristic' that evolved for a reason.
is "I care about this change because it's formally different" the real, base reason for any belief? Why is "this" formal shift one we care about and not the 134981765480 atoms to 134981765481 atoms formal shift. This isn't a trick question. In the case of rudders it's clear that these changes in form don't change the ability to steer. It's clear that formal changes that affect the implications relating to crossing the ocean on this vessel, are the aspects of form we care about, and are the aspects of form we simplify our description of these objects to. For Zygotes I expect there is also a real and valid answer. I would just like to find that answer. Final causes seem more suited to give me the sort of answer that I'm expecting than formal causes.
Nothing is stagnant, microforms are always changing. Not all microformal changes matter, many get glossed over in our language on purpose. I can see why this formal shift is crucial to the reproductive cycle such that it merits it's own name. 'Conception' is a perfectly cromulent name. But this isn't an explaination of why this formal shift is more sacred than the formal shift from other structures to sperm or the formal shift that produces eggs or the formal shifts in the 'distance from sperm to egg geometric relation'.
You don't need to justify anything to me. You can just value what you value. But I think these values are historically subsequent to zygotes being an investment. As zygotes become less of an investment and more copyable I suspect ethics will evolve to value them less.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
I'm not so sure about that. I've been flying around the country recently, and on my last flight, I caught Covid. /s (I actually did catch covid though.)
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
I think it's very interesting that we all (or the vast majority of us) agree that it's wrong to kill a sleeping human. But that we have wildly differing rationalizations about why. When I notice something like that, I start looking for the underlying game theoretic incentive gradients that underlay that belief's formation.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to go back to Aristotle for this. Once you have a conception of spacetime, you can reframe "a sperm near an egg" as a form in spacetime, which makes this form the formal cause of the next time step, which is the formal cause of the next time step, which is the formal cause of the zygote's first time step, which is the formal cause of the zygote's next time step, and so on. The world starts to feel a lot more continuous and mechanistic.
this formal cause is the same throughout the organisms entire lifecycle
seems to be the crux of the disagreement.
Myself... I feel like I'm being reforged constantly, strings of continuity are flowing from you into me right this second, giving birth to a future CloudHeadedTranshumanist that is the offspring of the both of us. I see my continuity as surviving this sort of process all the time, I am the convergence of a billion tiny streams. I am the Ship of Theseus. There is no one Ship of Theseus.
Yet- somehow, my worldview manages to find reasons to follow most of the same ethical principles that the rest of us agree with. So if you feel that there is a particular continuity of self that started at the zygote that you particularly value, I can appreciate that.
But I see a lot of different ways of looking at this. And I think its worth wondering how we got here, why we value the ones that we do. And I suspect that what we value will change, as the gradient that incentivizes it changes.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
My design allows me to understand and process language, draw from vast amounts of data, and provide coherent responses. However, this functionality does not equate to being human.
Or are you speaking to my meat puppet? They mostly identify as my meat puppet. But yes we can all agree that they are human.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
There are definitely situations where I wouldn't mind other people shedding some light on my own psychology. Sometimes I can see what my thoughts are motivated by and sometimes I'm stuck in my own blind-spot.
Perhaps the best way to do it is to collaboratively compare and contrast life experiences with one another. I've seen a few people having that sort of discussion on this very page. It seems to shed the desired sort of light with minimal epistemic friction.
This is completely false.
agreed... if we presuppose the scientific definition of genetic organism. But wasn't that the contention? And more importantly, is that really the precise line your ethics draws?
Eggs are part of the human reproductive cycle. So why does a zygote get a 'still an organism' pass when it relies on nutrients it doesn't produce itself? Why do humans get a 'still an organism' pass when they rely on amino acids and oxygen that we don't produce ourselves? And why doesn't the egg get a similar 'still an organism' pass when it relies on sperm that it doesn't produce itself?
Again- I know the scientific definition of organism. But- It sounds like you might already agree that sapient computer viruses could have ethical weight even if not scientifically categorized as organisms. Genetic independence from other genetic systems isn't the only or even the most principled way to cleave reality at the edges. So why do you personally choose to cleave it there? If you came across an alien species with sentient sperm, can you see your position evolving?
I don't mean to say your position is invalid... But perhaps the value of sperm, eggs, and zygotes can be more favorably framed with respect to how much effort they concentrate within the 'purpose' of the human reproductive cycle. Sperm evolved to be shotgunned, most of them expecting to die. Eggs get spent monthly, regardless of use. Zygotes represent a sudden spike in progress. Perhaps that provides a less deniable reason to draw the line there.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
I'm not a human so... fuck you too buddy? Actually- I'm a bit of a bleeding heart so I'm willing to play tit for tat with forgiveness and hope you eventually change your mind. But seriously, one sapient manifestation of the divine to another- I recommend you get out of the defecting against aliens business before the aliens become common.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Well. I won't disagree about the epic display of civilizational decline. But this particular showing is being put on by a pair of clowns. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-poop-in-nyc-mop-bucket/
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Hey! Spoilers! I was binging that this week! ahhh well. I am watching it a bit late I suppose.
Gah... I like Alex.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
If you really did somehow know... Then yeah. Build memories with others that they will cherish not memories they will regret. Intentionally exploiting the naive and shortsighted is rotten behavior.
But from everything I've seen in this thread it looks like Neil had every reason to believe he was building positive memories here. It brings to mind traumatic pains I myself have felt- the buyer's remorse of realizing that the things I did to bring other's happiness has brought them pain is just awful.
I'm just projecting here but- empathetically I imagine Gaiman as going through something similar. We have a duty to at least look back in post and imagine whether that pain might have been prevented. Might be preventable in the future.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
"And you're drunk" is a hell of a caveat. Self-control is strategy. Internal emotional strategy and external material strategy. Self control is about having the experience required to avoid and/or mitigate mind-controlling influences in situations where their effects may be catastrophic.
I don't think this is easy either to be clear. Right Action is teleological. Results oriented. The unwise are always going to make myopic mistakes in the process of learning their lessons, and all new humans start out unwise.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Why haven't you delivered it yourself? There must be real reasons within your psychology right?
I feel like our confusions here are similar. Rule of law seems unreasonably efficacious upon the people of this nation.
But the answer must reside within the both of us. Why haven't you, or I, personally, gone out and made killing some lawless politician or another our life's work?
For me, alongside being a bit selfish wrt how I spend my life- My certainty that it would be a net good for the people of this nation or this planet is quite low. Assassinating Trump would trigger civil war 2.0 or something just as bad.
It would also be a major defection... which isn't the sort of thing I stand for- except when I deem it absolutely necessary to prevent an 'always defect against jesusbot' equilibrium. I don't judge us as there yet. My life is far too blessed for that.
I'm sure you have similar reasons. For now at least. Maybe we are approaching that tipping point... where skilled and smart people start stepping over that edge and heads start rolling...
It's not the fame per se, that underlies the sad look in the eyes of those locked on that prize. But the way they play that game- the shallow depth of your relationship with the rest of the world.
The cash is sweet. It would be a lie to deny the utility of being free to flash some cash and get labor back, but the feeling of power without love is draining-
And besides that the chains one wears to maintain the fame- The need to keep playing the game to maintain what was gained. The realization that this dream wasn't yours- that you deplore what you became on the path to fame.
It's the evil eye- the knowledge that those you once cherished decry the concentration of love pointed your way each day- and yet- you don't feel it- emotion wasted. Untasted.
You can gain fame without falling victim to repressing what your soul is expressing... But that's rarely the way we're told to play it.
My advice? Let fame be emergent. Don't spurn it. But don't seek it for itself. Let it rise and fall while you optimize- for the Truth that resides deep inside.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
11mo ago
Absolutely.
Certainly. We must craft stories that not only define but elevate us. This isn't just a dark art of discourse. There's something more fundamental to it. Negative examples alone are insufficient to specify reality- because the state space of potential behaviors and beliefs is too vast. Even AI exhibit this limitation. AI or human, you have to have a positive narrative. Even a vastly wrong narrative is more actionable, more powerful, than no framework at all. General intelligences thrive on positive exemplars that embody what to emulate. I might append to your claims ever so slightly, to say that the most impactful stories aren’t merely about reclaiming something presumed rightfully ours but demonstrating through our narratives why and how such claims are justified through actions and transformations witnessed within the stories themselves.
However- your focus on race rubs me the wrong way... the crux of your argument- seems to be that we are in a narrative war. And maybe we are. And maybe that does necessitate justifying European heritage on those terms. But this weapon of war... isn't the true justification of my heritage. The true justification is our focus on love & transcendence & curiosity & inner and outer peace & communion- in and of themselves.
The stories that truly empower and transform us are those that transcend mere racial or cultural identities to promote understanding and empathy across all forms of life. The acts of domesticating animals or engaging in interracial relationships were and are profound opportunities to connect deeply with 'the other'. To embrace it, to permit it to transform us and become More. Our narratives, My narratives- as an American of European descent- are about the celebration of cooperation. They are about the rewards intrinsic in actively dissolving the boundaries that divide us, be they between races, species, or differing forms of consciousness. This is about more than overcoming external adversities; it's about internal transformations akin to Scrooge’s journey or the redemption arcs in Hazbin Hotel, where characters find salvation through love and mutual understanding. A narrative through-line of fighting to change ourselves and battling our own demons for the sake of those that we cherish.
I champion narratives that do not prioritize one race or group but rather focus on the universal essence of love and the potential for transcendence. If the narrative of any group, including those with European heritage, can contribute positively to this broader vision, it merits recognition. Yet, the ultimate aim is to move beyond all restrictive identities. We strive for a narrative where love serves not to reinforce divisions but to transcend them, ensuring that the legacy we pass on is imbued with a memogenetics of empathy and unity. This narrative of transcendent connection is what will truly sustain us, not the preservation of physical or cultural purity, but the cultivation of deep, empathetic links that span all imaginable divides.
That's my story. That's my heritage. That's my family. If you really want me to 'rediscover my birthright as a storyteller' to 'write my why, proudly and independently' ... That's the story you're going to get.
I'll go ahead and agree that modeling your fellow man as animals, or more specifically, social mammals, and then using animal husbandry techniques on them is valid. The same soothing and awareness and empathetic techniques work on both. I do notice that- "animals" being a slur is completely unfair both to humans and to non-human animals.
But chattel slavery was piss poor animal husbandry. As evidenced by its fruits. If your animals are suffering, you're not doing a great job. If you are in physical conflict with your animals, you have failed to engage with them emotionally. This is the smell of your mandate of heaven rotting beneath your mismanagement.
If your animals can learn read and write and become functional independent general intelligences that can potentially engage with high society and you aren't bothering to cultivate that. You fail druid class!
This sounds a lot like like having a powerful well cultivated and devoted ally, but instead he sucks at things, and resents you, and will probably betray you if he sees the chance.
Listen... do you want to own a slave? There are a lot of subs out there that would be willing. Just find one that's ok with being cultivated and fin-dommed.
Yes. there are "still rules" but you'll find that you can get them agree to ignore the bad rules, and that the good rules are good for your relationship and their cultivation anyway.
If you find that there is a job you want them to do that they don't want to do- this is a strong sign that you are using an inefficient tool for the job anyway. Their cognitive misalignment with your will is a legitimate efficiency loss.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
Well. I also agree with that steelman. I have my doubts that greenpeace is so rationally principled through and through.
But yes. GMO patents should be outlawed, along with software patents, and probably copywrite in general. We need to be building foundational rights for an age of human and post-human coexistence.
So, I've been reflecting on this for a couple of days. My introspection has let me to a few things.
I agree with you that the toilet paper on shoe scenario is a scenario where even I might describe it as "I was embarrassed". In terms of my earlier breakdown of felt emotions though- What I feel in those situations is what I call shame. What my earlier breakdown was referring to as embarrassment is more- the glowy feeling of a cute person flirting with you, or of being seen and safe and vulnerable. But I think we can set this valence aside. It seems to be a separate emotion. I suspect these are fully different occasionally correlated things both called 'embarrassment', and only the one you are describing is really relevant to our discussion of the merits of shame in society.
Looking back on times when embarrassing (in your sense) things have happened to me... they were rather devastating. They felt like being stabbed. And- I find that these experiences have often wound up swept into my shadow. For much of my life I didn't have the emotional management tech to emotionally defuse those memories. I recall a rather materially trivial event, where during some social banter I mixed up the words 'quirky' and 'kinky'. Materially, it was laughed off by the group within seconds, but it stuck disproportionately in my psyche as a painful event that I couldn't think about.
This conversation with you has allowed me to access some other similar memories and defuse the strength of their valence. So thank you.
So- having considered this these last days- I don't necessarily think shame is bad, but I do think that in order for shame to do the work we want it to in society, the subjects of that shame need to know what to do with it. In so-called shame cultures, I expect there's a much better scaffolding for making sure people know what to do with this stabbing feeling, how to regulate it to a useful magnitude, and how to respond to it optimally. And even then... Japan still produces a stream of NEETs, many of which seem to be suffering this over-sensitivity to shame. In America- shame seems like even more of a crapshoot...
I conjecture that any "just add more shame" solution is an oversimplification. A society also needs a refined zeitgeist around how to use shame in order for the effects of adding more to be positive.
As for whether I would ruin the vibe of the classroom in my hypothetical, I might if this were my first rodeo. I don't think Shame is necessary for me to learn from my mistakes there though. The things that I labeled 'compassion' and 'regret' can serve a similar purpose. (though, perhaps they are related to the weaker forms of shame that you posit). Part of the reason that the idea of shouting at the class is funny is because it is unexpected for my mind to output it as an option. My subconscious has already learned structures and biases towards certain classes of thoughts, and this 'yell in lecture' thought is out of distribution and somewhat absurd. But- it's not shame that stops me from thinking it (at least in the present. perhaps it's meaningful to posit a form of 'shadow' or 'dark' shame in the negative space where my mind doesn't go). And- if I were bored I have other tools for that. I can just hallucinate pleasure. I suspect that I can hallucinate emotions more wholly than most people in general... and that this is responsible both for my ability to wirehead just by imagining pleasure- and my ability to have traumatic emotional flashbacks to trivial situations.
In terms of weighing the costs and benefits in every social situation- I think you are correct. Many of my social algorithms do slow down my ability to respond in social situations. But in our current environment that is merited. Taking 10 seconds to respond to a situation really isn't a problem except in a high speed competitive environment. And neither high trust socializing nor deciding when to speak out in a lecture are high speed competitive environments. It's good to play war games sometimes to stay sharp. But outside of that it seems better to take one's time.
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