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s_r_constantin's profile
Sarah Constantin
Sarah Constantin
Sarah Constantin
@s_r_constantin

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Sarah Constantin

@s_r_constantin

Math/ML/data-science person now working on solving aging...and helping with COVID19?! Founder, LRI and Daphnia Labs. Married to @oscredwin

Be
srconstantin.posthaven.com
Joined February 2019

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    1. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      But why would you ever fail to translate feedback? Most people, if they ask you to take out the garbage, don’t mean to say “do it literally instantaneously in a physically impossible fashion.” So why get defensive as *if* they meant that?

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    2. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      One hypothesis: we have bad memories of people who expected obedience faster than we literally could obey at the time, or of demands that were literally impossible to fulfill even *after* simulating them.

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    3. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      I usually use religious commandments as what feel like clear cut examples of instructions that are definitely impossible to obey and yet intended to be obeyed; but other people claim that’s not true, so I’m not sure.

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    4. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      I’m very confident that the Talmud (which i’m trying to learn cover to cover) describes behaviors as admirable which would be impossible or unwise to attempt (like sleeping 0 hours per night)

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    5. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      Anyhow, I’m inclined to believe that there are, or have been, *any* people who demand the impossible, and actually meant that, not something more reasonable.

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    6. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      But okay, if there *are* people who ask the impossible or unreasonable, why should that cause suffering? Why not just reject all impossible demands?

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    7. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      To explain this, I have to posit some inherent limitation in what thoughts are possible, and that makes my model more complicated & so less credible, for occam’s razor reasons. Hmm. I’m stuck.

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    8. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      “Some people demand the impossible” should lead to the update “demanding the impossible is a thing people sometimes do”, but I don’t see why it overcorrects to “all feedback should be interpreted as a demand to do the impossible.”

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    9. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      Hypothesis 1: there is an incredibly prevalent, all-pervading meme, that instantaneous obedience is possible, and even that the function of language is literally to *cause* (with no intervening thought) behavior in another person. This is literally what B.F. Skinner said.

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    10. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      Likewise there are things like Bernays’ Propaganda that claim that we can literally be manipulated directly by outside forces. There are popular Evangelical parenting books that say “delayed obedience is disobedience.”

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      Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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      Perhaps, lots and lots of people believe (erroneously) that instantaneous obedience is possible, and tell you this SO MUCH that it outweighs the evidence of your own experience that it’s impossible.

      11:15 AM - 4 Feb 2020
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        2. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          This causes you to be another person who believes instantaneous obedience is possible, so you perpetuate the meme yourself, and the cycle continues.

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        3. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          (Here I’m using the assumption that you assume “someone said X” is weak evidence for X.)

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        4. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          Hypothesis 2: as in 1, perhaps you’re getting an overwhelming number of signals starting from birth that teach you that instantaneous obedience is possible, but it’s *not* because lots of people hold that (false) belief.

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        5. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          Rather, you’re seeing signals all the time that are like the conductor’s baton: they’re meant to be obeyed instantaneously based on a cached, pre-trained “ghost motion” or “implementation intention.”

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        6. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          The people sending these signals are not mostly deluded; they correctly anticipate that their intended audience knows how to obey. Actual conductors aren’t *wrong* to use batons.

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        7. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          The problem is that you see tons of signals for which you are not the intended audience! So *from your perspective*, the world is full of people making incomprehensible demands of the world at large, which necessarily includes you.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        8. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          (This is made worse when you can eavesdrop on conversations you weren’t invited to; so, eg, social media, print media, and agoras/public physical spaces as well as travel and diverse cities.)

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        9. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          So, if you see enough signals not aimed at you, you may come to believe that instantaneous obedience *without training* is possible, when what’s actually going on is that instantaneous obedience is possible *with training*.

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        10. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          In this model, belief in instantaneous obedience doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly widespread in order to propagate itself; it can ride on the coattails of tons of “innocent” (=not based on falsehood) baton-signals.

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        11. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          (These aren’t all the possibilities, to be clear; just generating a few plausible ideas.)

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        12. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          it's also possible, as @selentelechia suggested, that people get trained on *clumsy* signals; e.g. if people get mad every time you don't instantaneously do something you don't know how to do, you might infer that this means "instantaneous obedience is obligatory"...

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        13. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          even though the people who got mad at you *didn't* believe that instantaneous obedience is obligatory. Maybe you need a *few* sources of authoritarian ideology to promote the hypothesis to your attention, but *mostly* you're being trained on people's unintentional signals.

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        14. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          Anyhow. Instantaneous obedience is *impossible.* Not "evil" or "tyrannical"; it literally doesn't exist. You *can't* do what you're told directly. You *have* to map it to how you would do it *first*, and then your reward function has to be drawn to it.

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        15. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          Other people can't "make you do things." What other people can do is *make you suffer*. They can promote hypotheses to your attention, and the right stimuli in the right order *can* tie you in a knot of trying to believe two contradictory things at once.

          1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes
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        16. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          There's a (false, IMO) belief you might call "descriptive authoritarianism" -- the theory that people *can* make other people do things, that instantaneous obedience or direct manipulation is possible.

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        17. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          There's also a (probably false?) belief you might call "descriptive individualism" -- the theory that other people, or external circumstances, can't have *any* effect on your mind that you can't undo, in one motion, "at will".

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        18. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          What external circumstances can do is *insert a thing in your awareness*. "I am hearing the phrase 'You should do X.'" You don't get to choose this, I think; it's thrust upon you. Which means that contradictions can be inserted into your "workspace" of awareness.

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        19. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          You can *resolve* contradictions; if you successfully explain away, make sense of, resolve, the temporary contradiction, you can stop suffering. But you may or may not actually do this. Other people can cause you suffering; you may or may not know how to remove it.

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        20. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          To tie back to the previous thread on trauma; certain flawed/suboptimal/irrational/etc patterns of thought and behavior are *not inevitable* -- it is false that they are a necessary part of the human condition -- but also, IMO, *not instantly resolvable upon request.*

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        21. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          You can't just ask someone "stop being fucked up, please", I think. They *literally can't.* Not as in, "it is impossible for anyone not to be fucked up", but "it is impossible for this person to snap out of it instantly just because you asked."

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        22. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          There has to be a *map* of what it would look like to "function well" -- not just at the macro level of "what does a virtuous person look like throughout their life" but "what would being in a good mood look like for me right now".

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        23. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          It's not that the fucked-up person literally doesn't ever have the capacity to reason, be calm, reflect, etc. But saying the words "be reasonable!" is *not the correct spell to invoke sanity*.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        24. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          I have very rough intuitions about what the invoking spell actually might be, but I have the sense that it's kind of like the "sensory trick" or like entrainment in Parkinson's? In a motor disorder you can "forget how" to do a motion, but can be "reminded how" with a prompt.

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        25. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          You can get back into a sane and well resourced state by getting "off the ground" or getting a "boost" by doing it in a context where it's easier, or by social imitation of someone doing it. It can be easier to sidle in "accidentally" than to try head-on. etc.

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        26. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          Is this "coddling"? Meh. Maybe. If you think "not coddling" (i.e. JUST demanding reasonableness directly) works, I'm curious to hear either anecdotes or data about this.

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        27. Sarah Constantin‏ @s_r_constantin Feb 4
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          If a person won't "be reasonable" when asked, they either actually, at the attention-reward-function level, don't want to be reasonable (which I tentatively believe isn't a real possibility, but who knows) or they don't have a currently available path/map to being reasonable.

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        28. End of conversation

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