3 problems
1. See behavior more meaningfully without modifying it (eg. mindful laundry folding)
2. Augment behavior to add meaning without altering function (eg. make a game out of grocery shopping)
3. Create behavior ab initio for meaningfulness (eg. invent a board game)
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All 3 work on Type B problems as defined here to enhance the reward rather than modify the solution
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Two types of problems.
A: Those that are hard because nobody knows how to actually solve them yet
B: Those that are hard because those who know how to solve them don’t care enough to do so, and those who care enough don’t know how to solve them
B takes starter luck to crack
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One of the reasons paperwork/any dealings with any sort of impersonal API are so dreadful is that there is no way to add meaning. The game is finite (form filling has less material depth to it, especially when digital) and any counterparty is figuratively or literally robotic.
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We probably overuse the infinite game/finite game model around here, but "adding meaning" is nearly synonymous with "find the infinite game dimension of a seemingly finite activity and develop it." Call this operation "infinitizing". It can be done in material or social ways.
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Material way is basically mindfulness++ any of a category of behavioral augmentations ranging from simple changed perception of behavior to active exploration of an infinitizing dimension (which typically feels like play because it is almost decoupled from finite function aspect)
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Social way is managing to find a counterparty in able and willing to engage in a sort of deepening mutuality. So far this means a willing and able human. AIs haven't yet reached capability of being infinitizing counterparty and may be definitionally incapable of it.
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Sketch of why they might be incapable: it's not a technical problem. Mutuality relationships require a counterparty able to experience pain, make promises, offer forgiveness. So the capability is largely in our own ability to see the counterparty as "essentially" human.
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This subtlety applies to a lot of human relationships. For example, ceremonial servants whose job is to stand around in livery exhibiting their employer's capacity for wasting human time. This is by definition a job robots couldn't do.
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As an aside, I find "meaning" frames of questions incredibly awkward to think of it. I think of it as the wrong handle on the core problem for me personally. I wronghandle a problem only when I cannot find the right handle that matches my own brain-grain.
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The closet to the right handle for these types of questions I've come is the elan vital concept cluster (elan vital itself, generativity, infinite game, flow). Though these terms get closer than "meaning", they're not perfect.
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I don't have a word for it yet, but the "thing" I like to study/solve for is "temporal collimation" the sense of various strands of felt flow being in a sort of parallel, laminar condition, maintaining a focused intensity without either dissipating or converging to singularity
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A behavior feeling "meaningful" is a symptom of this state of consciousness, but meaning-making is neither necessary, nor sufficient to induce or sustain it. It is highly correlated though.
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I think this is practically a physics-level condition in a complex, autopoietic system. It is maintaining a low-entropy dynamic equilibrium, being alive or something, despite being in dissipative surroundings. Dissipative system like a tornado.
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If you identify "the state of experiencing meaning" with "the state of being a stable dissipative system like a tornado" you can connect up gonzo experiential modes of meaning with contemplative ones.
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Another way to come at this: define problem as "life, the universe, and everything."
"Meaning" is a serious, contemplation-first frame for addressing it.
"Gonzo" is a crazy, experiential-first frame for addressing it.
My "home" frame, humor, messes with boundary between them
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Humor I think is under-appreciated and under-theorized in merely epistemic terms. I've been thinking about this essay for a few days which has some good food for thought beyond epistemic functions of humor (ht ).
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For eg. This by is epistemic view of humor "The essence of a joke, in Hurley, Dennett, and Adams’ view, is that the teller of the joke surreptitiously introduces a certain epistemic commitment, and then reveals it to have been mistaken."
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The first link makes the important point that you cannot get at the essence of humor by looking for the essence of jokes. Humor (and this is my gloss on the implication, not the argument in either article) is a posture of being, not doing.
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tldr of this thread... the problem of meaning is a problem of life-force in disguise, and has historically been addressed via one of 3 stances: serious, crazy, and humorous. Meaning-making, gonzo-experiential, and humor. Maps to sorokin's ideational, sensate, idealistic perhaps?
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