Created: July 24, 2020
Modified: January 23, 2022
Modified: January 23, 2022
Otter notes
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- explicit models of uncertainty (8/28/20)
- Standing up for myself (8/28/20):
- It's much easier to feel righteous about standing up for my opinions, if I can frame it so that I believe I'm standing up on behalf of many other people who have the same opinions.
- For example, I'm outside right now running without a mask, and suppose I run past somebody that I view as judging me for this. If I frame my response as "I don't want to wear a mask", that comes off as selfish. If I frame my response as "exercise is important, and there are many people out there who are trying to start up their exercise habits, and mask policies that make them more difficult are costly to everybody", then the argument supports a pro-social identity. Being able to think that way, means being able to identify myself with some group of people like me.
- Now, fundamentally those people have to exist or else there is no real political power to these demands. So, I have to be right about human nature and human desires. But that's a battle I think I can offer win.
- Institutions are not necessary. (8/28/20)
- I think I often conflate very first principles, model-based intuitions about how the world necessarily must work, with real existing institutions in the actual world, even when the institutions themselves have lots of particular content not implied by the first principles argument. For example:
- I believe that capital must be allocated. I believe that decisions must be made. And that individuals are often better positioned to make big decisions that committees. This implies that there must be some sort of power structure, so that there's an individual responsible for the big decisions.
- The preceding argument is fine as far as it goes, but it does not at all imply that the current power structure is the right one, because we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. From the model-based perspective, it's also crucial and necessary that there are people fighting to change and improve the power structure.
- I think I often conflate very first principles, model-based intuitions about how the world necessarily must work, with real existing institutions in the actual world, even when the institutions themselves have lots of particular content not implied by the first principles argument. For example:
- I wasn't always slow:
- It's important to me to remember that I wasn't always slow. When I think of myself now. I think about stumbling over words about not being able to articulate, but I mean to articulate. I think about being in sophisticated social situations, and not knowing how to talk with people. I've always been awkward. And I've never known how to have a conversation with somebody I don't already know well. But in my day to day life. I used to think of myself as being relatively quick. When SuccessfulFriend and I used to talk. I wouldn't be able to keep up my side of the discussion. It wasn't awkward or from blanket. Or I think about going on a road trip with ExBoyfriend, and Nick, and Katie. I don't remember feeling awkward on that trip. That was a trip up on which everyone was smart. Interesting. And I felt like a part of the group. So it's not core to my identity to be slow.
- structural motive 7/28/2020
- Epistemic status 7/21/20
- It's important to be clear with myself what's the epistemic status of my room research notes. A lot of them take positions on the world. You know, it's like most work is bullshit or all models are wrongor this is all there is. These aren't positions that I'm building up as part of a permanent self. They are records of positions that feel significant to me.
- They've been supported by things I've seen in my life, in many cases. It felt compelling to me through millions of individual experiences that I have a hard time remembering, or writing down. Or they just felt logically elegant. But as a person I'm never going to commit to a position, except for the positions of wanting to learn and wanting to do good. And believing that I have a duty to be the best person that I can be. That's a preliminary list but you get the idea. Very core things.
- What I'm doing in Roam, for the most part is writing down positions that exist in my head. writing down what they imply, writing down their connections and writing down arguments for them, and sometimes, in the process, arguments against them. I don't have to be a unique person because I cling to these arguments. The thing that makes me capable and aligned is partly that I'm not going to be stuck on a position, if I realize that it's a poor predictive model or has compelling arguments against it that I can't rebut.
- mental models 7/14/20
- depression as artificial selection 7/14/20
- I wonder what the state of scientific opinion is on whether evolutionarily depression causes people to kill themselves mean obviously it does. So, question is, are they killing themselves, because it's a dysfunction in brain circuits that we'd be better off staying alive unhappy but still maybe reproducing, or is it actually desired behavior, in the sense that. I'm happy people are just going to be much less effective and they're going to be a burden on the people around them. So it's better for the gene pool if they're not around. It's kind of a morbid question. I'm not sure what it would even mean to have a persuasive answer to that question. But it's interesting. Um, I started with a different question.
- I forget what my original question was actually remember it was interesting. Um, I don't think this was my original question but a related question. Is this a similar question. Except, do I guess a related question, looking at sort of a social scale more than an evolutionary scale is
- staying quiet, not sharing your ideas. When you're depressed. Can we think of that as a malfunction or can we think of that as a evolutionary adaptation. That is good for the overall group welfare. The overall group's ability to collect correct ideas or useful ideas.
- I think you could certainly come up with models, in which it is favorable. But you could also tell cognitive stories in which
- other mechanisms of depression. Just make it impossible, or difficult for people to share. No, it's the nature of not having goals that you have no incentive to do anything in particular. So maybe a happy coincidence, can be multiple causality. I guess
- I would find it persuasive, or at least interesting to exhibit a model in which there was some parameter
- for some values of the perimeter. Depress people don't share information for some other values. People are still equally depressed. For whatever formal definition that you can come up with. They do share information.
- Transcribed by https://otter.ai
- remember arguments 6/2/20
- general rules 5/25/20
- this is all there is 5/22/20
- Mentorship
- Thinking about mentorship, thinking about teaching. And I have a mental image, being like a leader of a flock of birds in flight, swans. That I'm at some point in my life helping people who are just behind. I'm showing them a direction to go, getting them advice. As I think of that mental model, the dynamics overtake it. It's just part of a dance. As I'm teaching, I'm helping pull them up. They're gonna go off in a different direction.