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The Whispering Earring

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Re: The Whispering Earring

#31

Post by throwanem »

ryandv wrote: post #27
abeppu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely anger is sometimes justified. But people are also angry when e.g. someone cuts them off in traffic. The initial feeling of anger may not be appropriate. A cue to help you avoid reacting immediately from hostility isn't so much deciding whether anger is appropriate but giving you the space to make that judgement reflectively rather than impulsively. Even if anger is appropriate, the action you want to take…

> the fact that it's not strictly necessary to have supportive tools to develop these skills doesn't mean that supportive tooling wouldn't help a lot of people. I would posit that the only faculty developed in wielding such supportive tooling, is skill at using those tools; when the real goal is the cultivation of character, the construction of a "virtual engine" [0] that governs action. Consider analogously that bra…

"Will certainly never align," I would say. But what matter? Long enough and "one's own" becomes specious, of course.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#32

Post by adamgordonbell »

Wow, small world, I just made a podcast episode about the dangers of turning your brain off when using Agentic coding solution and referenced the whispering earring as my metaphor.

I feel like if you use the agentic tools to become more ambitious the you'll probably be fine. But if you just work at a feature factory where you crank out things as fast as you can AI coding is going to eat your brain.

Link: https://corecursive.com/red-queen-coding/#the-whispering-ear...

Re: The Whispering Earring

#33

Post by ryandv »

throwanem wrote: post #31
ryandv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that it's not strictly necessary to have supportive tools to develop these skills doesn't mean that supportive tooling wouldn't help a lot of people. I would posit that the only faculty developed in wielding such supportive tooling, is skill at using those tools; when the real goal is the cultivation of character, the construction of a "virtual engine" [0] that governs action. Consider analogously that bra…

"Will certainly never align," I would say. But what matter? Long enough and "one's own" becomes specious, of course.

"The king is dead; long live the king!" is the feudal manifestation of the archetype of the slain and resurrected god. In similar fashion one's own virtual governor requires constant renewal and revision.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#34

Post by throwanem »

ryandv wrote: post #33
throwanem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Will certainly never align," I would say. But what matter? Long enough and "one's own" becomes specious, of course.

"The king is dead; long live the king!" is the feudal manifestation of the archetype of the slain and resurrected god. In similar fashion one's own virtual governor requires constant renewal and revision.

Don't you think Leary's term would land better here? Or have you avoided it precisely for such connotation? I remember having some trouble with that for a while in my twenties.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#35

Post by ryandv »

throwanem wrote: post #34
ryandv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The king is dead; long live the king!" is the feudal manifestation of the archetype of the slain and resurrected god. In similar fashion one's own virtual governor requires constant renewal and revision.

Don't you think Leary's term would land better here? Or have you avoided it precisely for such connotation? I remember having some trouble with that for a while in my twenties.

I have not actually familiarized myself with Leary's work. The closest approach would have been via Robert Anton Wilson and the rest of the ramifications through the occult and western esoteric corpus.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#36

Post by ameliaquining »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #12
CoopaTroopa wrote: post #4

"The parable of the earring was not about the dangers of using technology that wasn't Truly Part Of You, which would indeed have been the kind of dystopianism I dislike. It was about the dangers of becoming too powerful yourself." https://web.archive.org/web/20121007235422/http://squid314.l...

As I said in a comment on that post, 13 years ago: "any parable that's about being too powerful is almost necessarily also about technology, because it's technology that allows the average person to get that power"

True, but concerns about LLMs with anything like current capabilities are of the "Truly Part of You" flavor, not the "becoming too powerful" flavor.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#37

Post by Barrin92 »

abeppu wrote: post #6

I want someone to try building a variant that just gives you timely cues about generally good mental health practices. Suggestions could be contextually based on a local-only app that listens to you and your environment, and delivered to a wireless earbud. When you're in a situation that might cause you stress, it reminds you to take some deep breaths. When you're in a situation where you might be tempted to react wi…

>can a similar device shift us to mental habits

I think the moral of the story is that instead of reaching for something to "shift you" start doing the shifting. You are a living mind, rather than asking for some device to affect you, assert your own will. Don't avoid stress and conflict, embrace it, that's life. This instinctive demand for some therapeutic, external helper is what's wrong in the story, people craving to be put into passivity.

This need not even be a technology, The moral version of this could be some priest lecturing you on good and evil, some paternalistic boss making your decisions for you, the crux here is submission, being acted upon rather than actively embracing your own nature.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#38

Post by klipt »

throwanem wrote: post #25
rwnspace wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has some great essays and research pieces and has fostered a generally nice community of people who grew out of LessWrong. There aren't many places online to talk about those things in a certain way without it devolving rapidly.

Strangely, a popular formulation of utilitarian ethics attracts utilitarian ethicists, some of whom were eugenicists and the like already by inclination, the rest merely having become so under the suasion of this fringe theory's false axioms. When your scheme of rules for how human societies should run does nothing to exclude or even discourage the worst atrocities of human history - when that scheme is fairly evalua…

Anything that causes huge suffering, like forcing eugenics on people, is obviously not utilitarian because suffering has negative utility.

Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#39

Post by throwanem »

ryandv wrote: post #35
throwanem wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think Leary's term would land better here? Or have you avoided it precisely for such connotation? I remember having some trouble with that for a while in my twenties.

I have not actually familiarized myself with Leary's work. The closest approach would have been via Robert Anton Wilson and the rest of the ramifications through the occult and western esoteric corpus.

Well, Wilson is a preferable source for everything anyway. Less credulous, and so far as I know all he ever sought to sell was books.

Re: The Whispering Earring

#40

Post by throwanem »

klipt wrote: post #38
throwanem wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strangely, a popular formulation of utilitarian ethics attracts utilitarian ethicists, some of whom were eugenicists and the like already by inclination, the rest merely having become so under the suasion of this fringe theory's false axioms. When your scheme of rules for how human societies should run does nothing to exclude or even discourage the worst atrocities of human history - when that scheme is fairly evalua…

Anything that causes huge suffering, like forcing eugenics on people, is obviously not utilitarian because suffering has negative utility. Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.

That's just, like, your utility function, maaaaaaan.

I joke, but that actually is the problem. I mean, look at you! Even trying to disclaim eugenics you can't manage not to espouse it, just in the "positive" or "voluntary" or "new eugenics" or "liberal eugenics" variety that bothers people less than all the others.

I mean, I get why a programmable system of ethics appeals to programmers, just as a mathematical one to mathematicians, and for like cause in both cases. But you are required to acknowledge reality has the permanent right of veto, not merely pay lip service to the concept of it possibly for the moment holding that privilege.

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