right to death, therefore
-------------------------

because i like [freedom](defining-freedom.html) so much, i think people should be generally able to do what they want. but this immediately raises a conundrum: should someone be able to do an action that hampers their *future* freedom?

one relatively extreme case is the ability to commit suicide: it's about as committal as you can get, in terms of actions with future ramifications to oneself. if you choose to get in debt or cut off a limb, that can be pretty hard to get out of, but it still seems less impactful and less inescapable than suicide.

so, should suicide be allowed? (i am of course only talking about reasonable, clear-minded suicide, *informedly* consented; not coerced suicide, nor suicide out of compromised ability to make decisions)

in my opinion, *obviously yes*. the alternative, that people be forced to live until their biology kills them (which we may very well find ways to prevent indefinitely), seems abhorrent to me. given this guarantee, then it makes sense to me that any lesser commitments should also be fine.

there are some criticisms one can make about this argument. bad but non-death commitments could tend to increase the amount of suffering people in society at any given moment; and, if people change over time (as they tend to do), then commitments can ramificate into a future person who is sufficiently different from the person making the commitment that it might be considered unreasonable for them to be subject to some excessive amounts of "locally" unconsented negative effects. a cap on the time duration of commitments, and/or the requirement for people to guarantee that they remain the same "enough" over time until the commitment is expired (a technology we currently don't have, but will become easier to make once we're uploaded and we understand the human mind better), might be reasonable patches for these issues.

right to death, therefore


kolmogorov complexity objectivity and languagespace
---------------------------------------------------

(edit: this post [has gotten a reply](https://snugglyserials.wordpress.com/2021/08/16/complexity-is-not-objective/) from my interlocutor, making a broader introduction to the topic at hand and then making her side of the argument. you might want to read it before you read this.)

[kolmogorov complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity) seeks to determine how complex a piece of information is by asking: what is the size of the smallest program that produces that piece of information?

i was arguing with someone about how objective kolmogorov complexity is: their argument against objectivity is that the choice of language matters, but my position is that some pieces of information (such as languages themselves) are gonna just tend to be *generally (and thus objectively) simpler* than others (and, generally, we should use simpler *languages* as our kolmogorov simplicity-measuring language).

let us consider "languagespace", a directed graph where there is one vertex per possible turing-complete language (there are [countably infinitely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set) many of them).

a language can be used to measure the simplicity of any other language (because of turing completeness, every language can express every other language), and we'll require the comparison of those measures to be a [total order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order), and to be unique (two different input languages won't have an equal simplicity measure).

there is an edge going from every vertex to every other vertex, and those edges are labelled with a natural number: an edge going from language X to language Y with label N, means that Y is the N-th simplest language when using language X as a kolmogorov measure of complexity.

now, imagine a random walk through this graph, where each step you follow one arrow at random, assigning to each edge with label N a probability of 1/(2^N); such that, starting from any language X, you tend to go to a language that language X considers simple (and the infinite sum of all probabilities is indeed 1).

my claim is that this type of random walk through the infinite directed graph of languagespace would, after sufficiently many steps, tend to spend more time around what i'll call the "central cluster", than any other collection of languages. the "central cluster" is a set of what i think of as "simple languages", such as [SKI-calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus), [turing machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine), [cellular automata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton), and other "simple" instances of common [models of computation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_computation).

this, however, is merely a conjecture on my part, and the person i was arguing with claims that the random walk would have no particularly "central" cluster it would tend to converge around, but instead it would end up gravitating around any of an infinite number of such "mutually simple" clusters.

### edit: i'm wrong

i've come to be convinced that i am wrong about this.

imagine that there exists a finite set of languages particularly "attracts" the random walk more than the rest of languagespace. let's call that set A, and let's say it contains two languages: A1 and A2.

now, there is probably another set of languages, B, containing languages B1 and B2. in fact, given that languagespace is infinite, it seems silly to think such an isomorphic set of languages doesn't exist.

for example:

```

languages A1: [A1, A2, B1, B2, …]
languages A2: [A1, A2, B1, B2, …]

languages B1: [B1, B2, A1, A2, …]
languages B2: [B1, B2, A1, A2, …]

(and the "…" rest of the list is identical in all four languages)

```

finite cluster A and finite cluster B are isomorphic in terms of their lists of language simplicities, so the random walk will encounter A as much as B. even if you're willing to add B1 and B2 to the set of "objectively simplest languages", you can then imagine yet another set of languages that is isomorphic to the new one you have, and so on forever.

therefore, there is not finite set of simplest languages.


book recommendation: Greg Egan's *Axiomatic*
--------------------------------------------

i've finally gotten around to finish *[Axiomatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_%28book%29)*, a 1995 book consisting of short stories by my favorite author, [Greg Egan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan), of whom i've read four books: *Permutation City*, *Diaspora*, *Schild's Ladder*, and the *Orthogonal* trilogy; all four recommended, especially the first two of those.

he writes science fiction, with a focus on computation and information theory, elementary physics, consciousness, trans-humanism and post-humanism, and other very caradocore things.

of Axiomatic's 18 short stories, i can especially recommend six:

* The Hundred-Light-Year Diary
* A Kidnapping
* Learning to Be Me
* Into Darkness
* The Moral Virologist
* Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies

book recommendation: Greg Egan's


what is value?
--------------

i've come to clarify my view of value sufficiently many times that i feel like having a single post i can link to would be worth it. this is that.

what i call *value* is *things we care about*; *what determines what we ought to do*. i use "morality" and "ethics" interchangeably to generally mean the study of value.

a lot of this post is just ethics 101, but i feel it's still nice to have my own summary of things.

for more on values, read [the sequences](https://www.readthesequences.com/), notably [book V](https://www.readthesequences.com/Book-V-Mere-Goodness).

see also [this post on how explicit values can come to be](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/24/value-differences-as-differently-crystallized-metaphysical-heuristics/).

### consequentialism vs deontology

a first distinction is that between [consequentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism), where values are about *outcomes*, and [deontology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontology), where values are about *actions*.

the [trolley problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) is the typical example of a thought experiment that can help us determine whether someone is a consequentialism or a deontologist: a consequentialist will press the lever because they care about the outcome of people being alive, whereas a deontologist will not press the lever because they care about the action of causing a death.

i am a consequentialist: i care about outcomes. that said, consequentialism has to be followed to the end: if someone says "well, a consequentialist would do this thing, which would eventually lead to a worse world", then they're failing to understand consequentialism: if the eventual outcome is a worse world, then a consequentialist should oppose the thing. to that end, we have [rule consequentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism#Rule_consequentialism): recognizing that committing to certain rules (such as "if you commit a murder, you go to prison") help us achieve generally better outcomes in the longer term.

a special case of consequentialism is [utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism), in which the consequential outcome being cared about is some form of positive outcome for persons; generally happiness and/or well-being. i tend to also value people getting their values satisfied and having [self-determination/freedom](core-vals-exist-selfdet.html) (not valuing self-determination [has issues](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/24/nominating-oneself-for-the-short-end-of-a-tradeoff/)), possibly moreso than happiness or well-being, so i don't know if i count as a utilitarian.

### intrinsic vs instrumental

i make a distinction between [instrumental values, and intrinsic values](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_and_intrinsic_value) (the latter can also be called "core values", "axiomatic values", "ultimate values", or "terminal values"; but i try to favor the term "intrinsic" just because it's the one wikipedia uses).

instrumental values are values that one has because it helps them achieve other values; intrinsic values are what one ultimately values, without any justification.

* "why do i want people to get practice hygiene? so they don't get sick as often"
* "why do i want people to get sick less often? because being sick seems like a decrease in their well-being"
* "why do i want people to have well-being? i can't give a justification for that, it's what i *intrinsically* value"

any theoretical query into values should be a sequence of instrumental values eventually leading to a set of intrinsic values; and those cannot be justified. if a justification is given for a value, then that value is actually instrumental.

just because intrinsic values don't have justifications, doesn't mean we can't have a discussion about them: a lot of discussion i have about values is trying to determine whether the person i'm talking to *actually* holds the values that they *believe* they hold; people *can be* and very often *are* wrong about what values they hold, no doubt to some extent including myself.

one can have multiple intrinsic values; and then, maximizing the *satisfaction* of those values, is often the careful work of weighing those different intrinsic values in tradeoffs.

this isn't to say intrinsic values don't have causal origins; but that's a different matter from moral justificaiton.

a lot of the time, when just saying "values", people are talking about *intrinsic* values rather than all values (including instrumental); i do this myself, including throughout this post.

### knowing one's values

most people don't have a *formalized* set of values, they just act by whatever seems right to them in the moment. but, even to [rationalists](https://www.readthesequences.com/What-Do-I-Mean-By-Rationality) like me, knowing what values one has is *very hard*, even moreso in a formalized manner; if we had the complete formal description of the values of even just one person, we'd have gone a long way towards solving [AI alignment](https://intelligence.org/2016/12/28/ai-alignment-why-its-hard-and-where-to-start/), which is [by extremely far](ai-alignment-wolfram-physics.html) the [single most important problem humankind has ever faced](were-all-doomed.html), and [is gonna be very difficult to get right](https://www.readthesequences.com/Value-Is-Fragile).

to try and determine my own values, i generally [make a guess and then extrapolate how a superintelligence would maximize those values to the extreme and see where that fails](core-vals-exist-selfdet.html). but, even with that process, it is very hard work, and like pretty much everyone else, i don't have a clear idea what my values are; though i have some broad ideas, i still have to go by what feels right a lot of the time.

### selfishness vs altruism

this is *not* about how someone ultimately only wants *their values* to be satisfied; this is true *by definition*. this is about whether those values can be *about* something other than the person having the values.

people seem to be divided between the following positions:

1. all values are ultimately selfish; there is no meaningful sense in which someone can *truly, intrinsically* care about anything outside themselves.
2. someone can have values about themselves, or have values about the rest of the world, or both.
3. all values are ultimately about the world; there is no meaningful sense in which someone can actually care about their own person in particular (for example because the notion of identity is erroneous).

i hold position 2, and **strongly** reject position 1, though it seems very popular among people with whom i have talked about values; i see no reason why someone can't hold a value about the world outside of themselves, such as *intrinsically* wanting other people to be happy or *intrinsically* wanting the world to contain pretty things. for more on that, see [this post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XPErvb8m9FapXCjhA/adaptation-executers-not-fitness-maximizers) and [this post](https://www.readthesequences.com/Terminal-Values-And-Instrumental-Values) from the sequences.

position 3 can make some sense if you deconstruct identity, but i believe identity [is a real thing that can be tracked](you-are-your-information-system.html), and so the outcome of which you can absolutely happen to particularly care about.

### value preservation

[value preservation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Goal-content_integrity) is the notion that, if you know that you value something (such as being wealthy or the world containing pretty things), you should probly try to avoid becoming someone who *doesn't* value those things, or worse: someone who values the opposite (such as being poor or the world containing only ugly things).

the reason for this is simple: you know that if you become someone who values being poor, you'll be unlikely to keep taking actions that will lead you to be wealthy, which goes against your current values; and your goal is to accomplish your values.

some people argue "well, if i become someone who values being poor, and then i take actions to that end, that's fine isn't it? i'm still accomplishing my values". but it's really not! we established that your values is "being wealthy", not "being someone whose values are satisfied". in fact, "being someone whose values are satisfied" is meaningless to have as a particular value; the fact that you want your values to be satisfied is implied in them being your values.

i call the process of someone finding out that they should preserve their values, and thus committing to whatever values they had at that moment, ["value crystallization"](value-crystallization.html); however, one ought to be careful with that. considering one's set of values is likely a very complex thing, one is likely to hastily over-commit to what they *believe* are their values, even though they are wrong about what values they hold; worse yet, they might end up committing so hard that they actually start changing what values they have towards those believed values. this is something that of course one should aim to avoid: as mentioned above, you generally don't want to become someone who doesn't hold the values you currently do, including through the process of hasty crystallization and over-commitment.

this is not to say you should remain in a complete haze where you just do whatever seems right at any moment; without a special effort, this could very well entail your values changing, something you shouldn't want even if you don't know what those values are.

what you should do is try to broadly determine what values you have, and generally try to commit to preserving whatever values you have; and in general, to *be the type of person who preserves the values they have*. this should help you preserve whatever values you actually do have, even while you still haven't figured out what they are.

a funny hypothetical version of this could be: present-you should make a contract with future-you that if they ever gain the ability to precisely examine values, they should examine what values present-you had, and adopt those.

what is value?


culture tribes and legitimacy
-----------------------------

there are two large culture tribes: grass roots culture and historical institutions culture.

grass roots culture is indie games, amateur youtube, blog posts, weeb artists on twitter and pixiv, and the like; whereas historical institutions are triple-A games, hollywood, television and youtube channels owned by big media, art and literature schools, and so on. needless to say, i associate strongly with the former and don't have much respect for the latter.

note that [academia doesn't necessarily mean historical institutions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRXEAGWynGA): though the two are largely associated together, there is a large amount of academia-type discussion happening among non-institutional hobbyists.

something that people from the grass roots tribe feel like they lack is legitimacy. but, my claim is the following: it is in fact grass roots tribe that represents what culture the general population generally enjoys, and we should just choose to stop respecting historical institution culture; to stop thinking of it as what is good, valid, or even mainstream.

when someone from grass roots "sells out" to go join historical institutions, i would argue that they are not gaining the legitimacy that they think they are: on the contrary, by associating with them, they are *giving* legitimacy to those institutions.

(note that while this applies to culture, it doesn't necessarily apply to more instrumentally useful fields like science; though grass roots science have been pretty cool, imo)

culture tribes and legitimacy


systems and diversity
---------------------

as i've said in [a previous post](lets-not-generalize-politics.html): i really like culture; and, to that end, i like diversity (by which i mean people being more weird and different from one another).

there are many systems that exist today that affect diversity. most of them punish it; not as a coincidence, but because diversity is [a fragile value](https://www.readthesequences.com/Value-Is-Fragile): if you optimize for something else, it will tend to get optimized out.

if you optimize for economic efficiency, diversity gets optimized out because the most easily served economy is one in which demand is relatively uniform.

in general, if you optimize for people having their values satisfied, diversity gets optimized out because the most easily satisfied set of values is relatively uniform and easy to satisfy values; if you tell a superintelligence to "make a world where everyone has their values satisfied", the simplest way to achieve that (other than killing everyone) is to make sure everyone has very simple values like doing nothing all day or dying as soon as possible.

the scary thing about such an optimization is that it "works": at no point does an economy headed towards uniformity need to collapse; on the contrary, the more it has optimized out diversity, the more efficient and stable it'll be! so, we need to *[near-intrinsically](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_and_intrinsic_value)* care about preserving diversity, even when all else seems fine. this makes diversity preservation probably my largest concern with capitalism; at least, a system that wouldn't care about efficiency, wouldn't necessarily be aligned against diversity (though it might be aligned against it for other reasons).

social pressures such as [generalizations and expectations](lets-not-generalize-politics.html) punish diversity by rewarding conformity.

democracy and general consensus enforcment systems punish diversity by generally letting majority lifestyles be better supported by society than minority lifestyles.

i do know of one force of human nature which encourages diversity: [fetishism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetishism#Definitions). fetishism tends to make people prefer things specifically because they go against the norm. as such, i propose that if we value rich culture, we should want to cultivate fetishism.

the takeaway is: in any long-term societal plan, we need to care not just about values being satisfied, but about what values people have to begin with. a clear example in modern capitalism is advertising: it's okay that companies are aligned to satisfy values, but [with advertising they get to affect what values people have to begin with](unfair-feedback-loops.html).

(one could argue we could encourage people to [crystallize](value-crystallization.html) and [conserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Goal-content_integrity) their values, as well as forbid the creation of new persons; but [i'd rather that not be required](rationalist-by-necessity.html))

systems and diversity


2022-05-09 edit: i have found out that this idea is more thoroughly explored [here](https://reducing-suffering.org/near-miss/) and kinda [here](https://arbital.com/p/hyperexistential_separation/).

botched alignment and alignment awareness
-----------------------------------------

[AI alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem) is [hard](https://intelligence.org/2018/10/03/rocket-alignment/).

an AI developer who doesn't know about the problem of alignment to general human values might accidentally develop a superintelligence which optimizes for something largely unrelated to humans, leading us to an [X-line](timeline-codes.html); on the other hand, if they make a botched attempt at alignment to human values, it seems like there's more of a chance (compared to if they don't try) at booting a superintelligence which cares about enough aspects of human existence to tile the universe with some form of humans, but not enough to make those humans' lives actually worth living (goals such as "humans must not die"), resulting in S-lines.

considering this, raising awareness of AI alignment issues may be a very bad idea: it might be much better to let everyone develop not-human-caring-at-all AI and cause X-lines rather than risk them making imperfect attempts resulting in S-lines. or: we shouldn't try to *implement* alignment to human values until we *really* know what we're doing.

contrary to a [previous post of mine](were-all-doomed.html), this is a relatively hopeful position: no matter how many timelines end in X-risk, inhabited P-lines can continue to exist and research alignment, hopefully without too many S-lines being created. on the other hand, while it increases the chance of the [singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion) turning out good by leaving us more time to figure out alignment, it also means that it might take longer than i'd've otherwise expected.


AI alignment timeline codes
---------------------------

this is a small post proposing simple one-letter codes for identifying timelines depending on their status relative to [AI alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem) and the appearance of [superintelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence):

* **P-line**: a pre-intelligence explosion and pre-figuring out AI alignment timeline. we are in a P-line.
* **X-line**: a timeline where an [existential risk (or X-risk)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-risk) has been realized by an unaligned superintelligence. everything is dead, forever.
* **S-line**: a timeline where a [suffering risk (or S-risk)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-risk) has been realized by an unaligned superintelligence; the universe from then on contains net suffering on immense scales for all remaining time, [which is possibly infinite](ai-alignment-wolfram-physics.html). we should want to avoid this pretty much at all costs (including by [opting for an X-line instead](when-in-doubt-kill-everyone.html)).
* **A-line**: AI alignment has been figured out, and no superintelligence has been deployed yet. from that point on, we have the means to reach a U-line; though this isn't guaranteed. this is where we want to get as soon as possible.
* **U-line**: an aligned or [somehow otherwise](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/orthogonality-thesis) benevolent superintelligence has been deployed, and we are guaranteed a relatively utopian world forever. this is the ultimate goal. while not strictly necessary, going through an A-line is almost certainly required to get there.

U-line, X-line, and S-line all have deployed superintelligences and are therefore terminal outcomes; they are unescapable. P-line and A-line are transitionary; they likely lead to one of the three terminal outcomes mentioned here.

other terminal might exist, but they seem unlikely enough to not warrant listing here; for example, even if everyone dies from, say, a meteor impact, life on earth or nearby will probably evolve another civilization *eventually*, which will also probably face the AI alignment challenge and end up in one of the terminal timelines.

![](timeline-codes.svg)

AI alignment timeline codes


when in doubt, kill everyone
----------------------------

one thing that is way worse than [mere existential risks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer), possibly [by a factor of infinity](ai-alignment-wolfram-physics.html), is [suffering risks, or S-risks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering_risks).

i could see (though going by what i could see [is not a reliable apparatus](overcoming-narratives.html)) someone make an AI and, while trying to align it to human values, accidentally misaligns it to something that happens to tile the universe with suffering humans. this would be an instance of S-risk.

whereas, an AI that merely wants to accomplish a relatively simple goal will probly just tile the universe with something simple that doesn't contain suffering persons; and given that [we're all probly quantum immortal](quantum-suicide.html), we just "escape" to the timeline where that didn't happen.

considering this, a 99% chance of X-risk 1% chance of utopia is preferable to a 1% chance of S-risk 99% chance of utopia. so, one thing we might want to do if we figure out superintelligence before we do alignment (which [seems pretty likely at this point](were-all-doomed.html); see also "Zero percent" on [this page](https://intelligence.org/2018/10/03/rocket-alignment/)), we might want to keep a ready-to-fire paperclip AI on standby and boot it up in case we start seeing S-risks on the horizon, just to terminate dangerous timelines before they evolve into permanent exponential hell.

in fact, just to be sure, we might want to give many people the trigger, to press as soon as someone even *suggests* doing any kind of AI work that is not related to figuring out goddamn alignment.

when in doubt, kill everyone


AI alignment and wolfram physics
--------------------------------

[wolfram physics](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/) is a project by [stephen wolfram](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bMYtEKjHs0) to model physics using something kind of like a cellular automaton made of vertices in a graph instead of cells on a grid.

it's pretty interesting and there are insights in and around it that are of importance for the far future, and thus for [AI alignment](were-all-doomed.html).

the most notable is that wolfram thinks there's compute everywhere. the motion of the wind is doing compute, the motion of the seas is doing compute, the fabric of spacetime is doing compute, and even the state of heat death is still doing compute.

that last point notably means we might be able to embed ourselves into heat death and further, and thus get computed literally forever. this multiplies the importance of AI alignment by potentially literally infinity. i'm not quite sure how we are to handle this.

some of the compute may be doing things that are opaque to us; it might appear [homomorphically encrypted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption). as we want (and expect) our superintelligence to spread everywhere to enforce values, we would hope civilizations living inside homomorphically encrypted spaces can be inspected; otherwise, nuking them altogether might be the only way to ensure that no [S-risk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering_risks) is happening there.

wolfram postulates that one might be able to hack into the fabric of spacetime; one of the mildest effects of this would be the ability to communicate (and thus, likely, move) faster than the speed of light (but probably still slower than some other hard limit). if you didn't think [AI boxing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box) was hopeless enough as it is, hackable spacetime ought to convince you.

finally, there is, value wise, an immense amount of compute being wasted; even just [standard model particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model) live way above true elementary computation. if superintelligence is well-aligned, this provides us with an hard estimate as to how much computing power we can live on to enjoy value, and it's probably a very large amount; wolfram [talks about](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful#how-it-works) something like 1e400 vertices in our universe.

AI alignment and wolfram physics


universal complete
------------------

under [a turing-complete model of computation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_computation), there are some initial-states or initial-states-and-rulesets which eventually contain an algorithm that iterates over all possible algorithms and runs them.

in single-threaded models, it can do this by having an increasingly long list of algorithms that it runs by one step each; it's not an issue if each algorithm runs increasingly slowly, as long as it keep running.

i choose to call such initial-states[-and-rulesets] *Universal Complete*.

they contain all turing computation based universes (and thus each other, if indirectly); so, for example, if [Rule 30 with one alive cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) is Universal Complete, then it contains all computable universes (including ours).

this could be interesting because proving that property about some frameworks means that programming a particular algorithm starting from that initial-state[-and-ruleset] is just a matter of *locating* it.

it could also be interesting because it might turn out that many things that *look* sufficiently chaotic (such as Rule 30 with one alive cell) are effectively universal complete, and so [Wolfram's quest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bMYtEKjHs0) for the rule that describes our universe [in his hypergraph-rewrite system](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/) might be reductible to "whichever simplest initial-state-and-ruleset starts all algorithms"; though his idea of *running every rule at every step* might kind of functionally do that.

### appendix: a simple universal-complete program

here is a simple algorithm implemeting this, iterating over the countable set of turing machines.

```
x ← simplest turing machine
l ← empty list
loop:
    for machine in l:
        update machine by one step of computation

    append x to l
    x ← next simplest turing machine after x

```

universal complete


(edit 2021-07-18: this post is probly not very good, as there's some anthropic principle research out there and i haven't read any and just gone off thinking about it on my own.)

estimating the amount of populated intelligence explosion timelines
-------------------------------------------------------------------

the [imminent](were-all-doomed.html) [intelligence explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion) is likely to [go wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer).

how likely?

if you imagine that you live pretty much at the cusp of such an event, you should expect as per the [anthropic principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle) that there are about as many observer-instants before you, as there are after you. (an observer-instant being an instant at which you have a chance of making observations about that fact; see [this](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/uSMa6Fj5nMgntpxfo/are-coincidences-clues-about-missed-disasters-it-depends-on) and notably Nick Bostrom's Self-Sampling Assumption)

i've previously calculated that the future from now until heat death has room for roughly 10^200 human lifespans (of 80 years) (an estimation based on the number of particles in the observable universe, the amount of time until heat death, and the computational cost of running a human brain).

the past, on the other hand, holds about 10^11 human lifespans (most of them not full 80-year lifespans, but such details will get amortized by using orders of magnitude).

if intelligence explosion is, as i believe, likely to result either in [total death](were-all-doomed.html) or in well-populated futures (whether good or [bad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering_risks)), then the fact that i'm observing being right next to the event (in time) rather than observing being one of the (in well-populated timelines) countless observers to exist *after* the event, must be compensated by such well-populated timelines being particularly rare within the set of future possible timelines.

how rare? about 1 in (10^200 / 10^11), which is 1 in 10^189.

factors which may make this calculation wrong:

* my 10^200 estimate might be wrong (for example: if each person comes to eat a *lot* of computation resources, then the number of future observers is drastically reduced).
* the 10^11 estimate for the past might be wrong: what if there have beings in earth's past smart enough to make this observation? it may seem unlikely, but if i am to encompass the immense amount of forms future observerc might take, i should account for a wide variety of forms of past observers too.
* because entropy increases, there are (possibly a lot) more future universe states than past universe states. accounting these "timeline splits" for the number of future observers even more massively decreases the expected ratio of well-populated timeline-states, though i'm not sure by how much.


purposes for art
----------------

i identify three main purposes people attribute to art; and while no objective metric can place one as ultimately more valid than the others, it is definitely to the third one that i ascribe the most strongly.

* **artistic instrumentalism**: the purpose of art is to help achieve causes. art is ultimately propaganda or, to put it more charitably, is ultimately a way for society to spread and sort values.
* **artistic hedonism**: the purpose of art is to please the person consuming it. this one is the most straightforward and probably the most common purpose for art; people who believe this should have no issue consuming art created by AIs to be maximally enjoyable to them; in fact, they might be hedonists. see also: [wireheading](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/wireheading).
* **artistic culturalism**: the purpose of art is for persons to embody and communicate an artist's ideas. this could be seen as similar to instrumentalism, but it still values art for art's sake: it sees art as a medium for artists to express an artistic visions with a high degree of freedom, and generally communicate that vision to others. it places a strong focus on the artist, and opposes notions such as [death of the author](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author); seeing them as not just part of the context within which a work is to be understood, but in fact the most important piece of such context.

purposes for art


we're all doomed
----------------

[a major tech company is now explicitly invested in getting AI to write code](https://copilot.github.com/).

this is a major warning sign; a first step on the explicit path to [superintelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence) [explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion), an event [already considered relatively likely](https://intelligence.org/faq/#imminent) and, [in the absence of sufficient AI alignment progress](https://intelligence.org/2018/10/03/rocket-alignment/), is overwhelmingly likely to [permanently end all life at least in the observable universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer).

the time scale probably lies somewhere between a few years and a few decades, but in any case it's becoming to seem increasingly unlikely that [the only organization trying to actually figure out AI alignment](https://intelligence.org/) is gonna accomplish that in time.

if you can, go and [help them out](https://intelligence.org/get-involved/), or at least [donate everything you can to them](https://intelligence.org/donate/).

if you're currently working in AI development in any way, *please stop*. whether anything on earth survives this century is gonna be a matter of whether AI alignment is figured out by the time we get enough AI development; by helping the latter, you're making it even more likely that it happens before the former.

on a gloomier note, if you have all the philosophical beliefs required to think it can work, you may want to start preparing to [abandon this timeline](quantum-suicide.html) if singularity starts happening and looks like it's not gonna go well.

edit: see also: [are we in an AI overhang?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6vZEnCn6A95Xn39p/are-we-in-an-ai-overhang)

we're all doomed


disclosing subjectivity
-----------------------

we all know that [when expressing opinions, subjectivity is implied](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8u2SxarEE); however, i still feel like there are reasonable steps one can make to disclose the *degree* of subjectivity of claims; both for opinions and for factual claims.

the objective, when communicating honestly, is to make sure that the person being communicated with isn't misinformed about the shape of the world; including how much a given fact is commonly believed. most importantly, one must be [consequentialist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism) about it: you should care about the actual outcome, not whether you have successfully played by some principles.

for example, if i were to say "i think that china is the most populated country, and that some US intelligence agencies make big CPU manufacturers put backdoors in their CPUs", even though i'm making two factual claims that i believe about the world, i might misinform someone about how widely believed that latter claim is, when it's in fact a relatively niche conspiracy theory, whereas the former is overwhelmingly accepted fact. something like "now, personally, i also believe…" might help make the recipient more aware that the claim isn't widely accepted, however they choose to go about utilizing that information.

one example that has occured to me a bunch, is when saying that i think "consuming art is less about enjoying oneself, and more about receiving an artist's intended ideas", i go to significant lengths to make clear that this is one interpretation of what art can be about. the importance here lies not (just) in highlighting that a position isn't consensus, but also that other positions might be *valid* and that the matter is very subjective: not only is what i like about art not universal, but i don't think i could even always claim that other people are "wrong" to have different interpretations of what art is about (though i could probably claim that sometimes).

note that this doesn't mean strongly subjective statements can't be disputed: even though having your own interpretation of art is valid, you might be lying or even wrong about what your own interpretation is.

note also that here an important point is that subjectivity vs objectivity, while for simple statements (like "minecraft looks pretty" or "4 is an even number") is relatively straightforward, for most real statements the degree of subjectivity is going to be [more nuanced than a simple binary](categories-of-knowledge.html).

disclosing subjectivity


classifying computational frameworks
------------------------------------

here is a classification of four large computational frameworks, according to four criteria:

* **D**: Distributed; whether the framework allows for computation to happen in arbitrarily many places at once, or whether it has to follow a single thread of computation
* **M**: Metaprogrammable; whether code in the framework is able to, at runtime, create new logic of the same class as itself; see also [degrees of runtime metaprogrammability](degrees-of-runtime-metaprogrammability.html)
* **S**: Simple Steps; whether the process of going through a single step of computation (whether the system is deterministic or not) is simple, or requires a large amount of work
* **A**: Arbitrary Structure; whether the framework is able to created arbitrarily nested pieces of information, or whether it's restricted to a constant amount of information density over a geometric area

| framework | D | M | S | A |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [lisp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29)/[λ-calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus)/[SKI calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus) | N | Y | Y | Y |
| [turing machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine) | N | N | Y | N |
| [graph rewriting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph_grammar), like [wolfram's](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/basic-form-of-models/first-example-of-a-rule/) | Y | N | N | Y |
| [cellular automata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton) | Y | N | Y | N |

classifying computational frameworks


degrees of runtime metaprogrammability
--------------------------------------

"runtime metaprogrammability" describes the ability for a program to create new pieces of code as it is running, ideally of the same [class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_citizen) as its initial code.

various computational frameworks have various expectations as to how much of a given program's logic possesses runtime metaprogrammability. frameworks with bad metaprogrammability, when encoding new logic, are forced to embed interpreted sub-languages.

* machine codes (x86, RISC-V, ARM etc…) have pretty good metaprogrammability: a program in x86 can just write to a buffer bytes representing new x86 code, and then jump into that code. note that simpler instruction sets (such as [RISC-V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V)) make it easier to produce new code.
* [WASM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly) has bad metaprogrammability: no WASM interpreter or compiler that i know of lets a function create a new function as the same class as those described in the original module. programs can create new WASM modules and, if they're lucky enough to be ran in an environment that provides functions that allow the loading of new modules, can get linked with than new code this way, but this is far from ideal nor standard.
* the [JVM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine) lets pieces of bytecode create new bytecode; while i don't think this is utilized in java, it's a notable feature of [clojure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clojure) which lets it compile newly defined functions.
* [turing machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine) have relatively bad metaprogrammability: most of the logic of a given turing machine is expected to reside in its ruleset, which is immutable. to embed new logic, a ruleset would need to embed an interpreter for some type of other code described in its ruleset.
* [SKI calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus) and [λ-calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus) probably have somewhat good metaprogrammability; though it's not exactly clear to what extent. i believe new expressions will always be built out of skeletons of original expressions, but a seamless third party could probably move in and replace most expressions with newly "compiled" functions.
* [cellular automata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton) generally have fairly good metaprogrammability; rules like [rule 30](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) or [conway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life) have simple enough rules that most of the logic of any complex system probably resides at the cell level rather than in the ruleset.
* [graph rewriting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_rewriting), notably [wolfram's hypergraph rewriting rules](https://www.wolframphysics.org/technical-introduction/basic-form-of-models/first-example-of-a-rule/), seem to offer fairly bad metaprogrammability; the ability for rules to produce new rules would require encoding most of the logic of a given system as graphs themselves with a relatively simple top-level actual set of hard rules, which seems difficult especially in the case of hypergraphs when rules are expected to be able to apply to an arbitrary amount of arguments.

degrees of runtime metaprogrammability


cm21, a pixel art editor
------------------------

**cm21** is a pixel art editor I made, inspired by CharaMaker99, aka cm99.

Its proiminent feature is the ability to edit pieces of an image on their own, which is useful notably for spritesheets.

The program can be obtained for Linux and Windows on [itch.io](https://carado.itch.io/cm21); the source code is also available [on this site](cm21/cm21-source-code-2021-08-12.tar.gz).

![](cm21/1.png)
![](cm21/2.png)

(screenshot feature images from [the EasyRPG RTP](https://github.com/EasyRPG/RTP/))

cm21, a pixel art editor


categories of knowledge representation
--------------------------------------

i broadly recognize six ways in which information systems (including persons) represent knowledge.

![](categories-of-knowledge.svg)

**type 1: monistic.** monism is the absence of categorization of knowledge about something. in a given field, no categories are given, and criteria of the one present thing are assumed to be fundamentally universal. [the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) argues that zen buddhism prescribes favoring this type of knowledge, or absence thereof. this corresponds to the unit type with its single possible value. given this correspondence, it may or may not be useful to talk of a "type 0" corresponding to the [bottom type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_type) and its absence of values, but here i am deciding against it, as informational structures with a bottom value by definition cannot exist.

**type 2: multiplicity.** a discrete collection of loose alternatives items are recognized, with no particular relation between any two items. this corresponds to booleans or enums.

**type 3: spectrum.** a continuous (or functionally continuous) range of items is recognized, or items are arranged linearly according to some scalar criteria. this corresponds to number ranges and other [total orders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order).

**type 4: multidimensional.** items are no longer mapped along just one characteristic, but along a collection of characteristics. this could correspond to vectors in n-space, with a component on each dimension.

**type 5: labelled graph.** items are no longer related by a fixed number of criteria, but instead can be related by an arbitrary set of binary relations; edges between two nodes can be directed and labelled, but they are always either from one node to another or from one node to itself. a subset of labelled graphs is trees (which formats JSON, XML, or S-expressions are descriptions of), but there are [many other types of graphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_%28discrete_mathematics%29#Types_of_graphs).

**type 6: relational.** the relation between multiple items are no longer strictly binary, but can apply to any discrete amount of items. i believe this to be the most general and powerful representation of knowledge; subsets of it can meaningfully encode another other type of knowledge representation. this is pretty equivelant to [wolfram's directed hypergraphs](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/) (but not [wikipedia-defined directed hypergraphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph)).

this post is of *type 3: spectrum*: i propose a discrete collection of possibilities, ordered by generality. i believe each type to be strictly more general than the ones before it.

categories of knowledge representation


refusing to answer ≠ giving a negative answer
---------------------------------------------

a lot of people like to, when faced with a hard-to-determine question such as "is a chair happy" or ["does a dog have buddha-nature"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29), with the negative.

i think this is *very fundamentally* erroneous. the correct answer is that the question itself is erroneous; to answer it would be to erroneously accept the question, like in the classic case of ["have you stopped beating your wife?"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question).

the answer to "is a chair happy?" is *not* "no"; that would imply that the question of whether it does or not makes sense, which it doesn't. the answer is "the question is erroneous", or ["mu"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29#%22Unasking%22_the_question).

this comes up pretty often in philosophical discussions i have with friends. one reason why this is important is that i like statements to be meaninful, and it's very useful for stating that something does *not* have a characteristics, to mean something different than not stating anything. this also kind of ties into bayesianism: knowledge of a negative is not absence of knowledge, or [updating your belief](https://www.readthesequences.com/What-Do-I-Mean-By-Rationality) towards negation wouldn't do anything.


the many faces of chaos magick
------------------------------

[chaos magick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic) is the notion that people can "determine" (mostly in the causal sense, but also in the informational sense) aspects of reality by sufficiently convincing themselves that something is or will be the case.

the practicals are a bit more complicated (one is encouraged, for example, to enter a state of "temporary belief" in a diety and delude yourself into thinking that *that diety* will accomplish the thing, because that's a more efficient way to trick the brain into thinking that it will happen), and the mechanism by which this is to happen is [not clear](http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/model.html); but nonetheless the trope of determination-powered magic can be found in many works.

some examples follow.

### anime

a common trope in fiction, but most notably anime and other japanese pop culture, is determination-powered magic. in fact, it's arguably a central theme of many anime, and in other works can retroactively justify more reasonably a lot of "power of friendship/love" tropes.

### freedom

[in a previous post](defining-freedom.html), i define the "freedom" i want people to have to be one of what people *decide* to do, as opposed to what they *want* or *might choose*.

a ramification of this is that in such a world people's accomplishment would tend to scale to their determination; where what you influence is a function of how much you are truly deciding to do it. thus, if there is no way for chaos magick to be real at the moment ([which appears to be the case](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pbq9a/is_neural_activity_affected_by_quantum/)), aligning a superintelligence to value freedom to do what one decides would de facto implement a world in which a form of determination-magick would be real.

as per the previous point, aligned freedom-valuing singularity could be seen as *making anime real*, just more of in a profound philosophical structure of reality way rather than in an aesthetic way.

### dark arts of rationality

["dark arts of rationality"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4DBBQkEQvNEWafkek/dark-arts-of-rationality) is a post about manipulating one's brain in unsafe ways to produce outcomes, notably in one's own behavior. this could be seen as more refined and rationally thought-out forms of [psychological-model](http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/model.html#psych) magic.

the many faces of chaos magick


the systematic absence of libertarian thought
---------------------------------------------

to me, [libertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism) aims to give people [freedom](defining-freedom.html), to [give them self-determination over their life](core-vals-exist-selfdet.html).

it is interesting how that type of thought is not just, in politics, overwhelmingly absent outside of america, and even not that common in america; but how people don't even consider it.

when talking to most people, they seem to easily generate opinions on what people should and shouldn't do, and often think it common-sense to impose those using the force of the state. it doesn't cross their mind to give individuals autonomy over their decisions and refrain from imposing on them.


my answer to the fermi paradox
------------------------------

the [fermi paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) asks, if aliens are supposedly so statistically prevalent, why we haven't received any radio signals from them.

here is my independently-developed (though probly not original) answer:

statistically, it seems reasonable that civilizations would [accidentally invent unaligned superintelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer) not long after inventing radio signals (in our case, a couple centuries). in order to percieve those signals, you would need to exist *after* your planet receives those signals, but *before* your planet receives that unaligned superintelligence's [expanding sphere of death](estimating-populated-intelligence-explosions.html), which might very well travel at [pretty much](word-report-3.html) the speed of light.

thus, given the low probability, it is not surprising that we haven't percieved those; for any given alien civilization, in a given timeline, we either haven't received their radio signals, or have already been killed by them. seeing as we're alive, this timeline must be one of the former.

my answer to the fermi paradox


the persistent data structure argument against linear consciousness
-------------------------------------------------------------------

people have the belief that they live a continuous, linear stream of consciousness (whatever that means).

i've [made arguments before](quantum-suicide.html) as to why this is erroneous; but here is another interesting argument that undoes the seeming coherence of such a statement.

think of reality as a computational process, generating frames one after another, possibly splitting into timelines.

where is your consciousness? one might be tempted to answer that it's the set of bytes representing the state of the brain. if i split the world into two timelines, which one is the "fake copy" and which one is the "continuous original"? one might answer that the copy is whichever new data structure has new bytes copied to it, and that the original is whichever presence in memory hasn't been moved; the *same* bytes, supposedly stored on the *same* hardware transistors.

if i were to split timelines by creating two copies and destroying the original, one might answer that this is akin to killing the original and creating two "fakes copies".

however, there exist [persistent data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure), which represent new sets of data as added constructions on top of an original one. this is a perfectly reasonable way to do computation, and one would probably agree that if someone is only ever running a single timeline, people have continuous consciousness.

if i were to run a world simulation using persistent data structures and generate a timeline split, which one is the "continuous person"? just like with continuous single timeline computation, both new timelines are merely new data structures with their own set of whichever data is different, and pointers back to whichever sets of data are unchanged.

the least unreasonable choice someone who believes in linear streams of consciousness could make is that somehow persistent data structures are *not* a valid form of universe computation; that a computation ought to be run by reusing the same memory locations. surely the arbitraryness of such a claim despite its functional equivalence to persistent data structures for single-timeline computation demonstrates well enough how the notion of linear streams of consciousness doesn't make sense.


I'm creating a world simulation video game
------------------------------------------

~~i opened a patreon~~ (there is no longer a patreon associated with my game, or in fact a game being made. see [here](life-refocus.html).)

it can be considered to fund primarily my game, which is my current full-time activity; and secondarily this site.

considering this, i am making the present post to describe what my game is about.

### World Simulation

my game intends to be a coherent simulation of a world, playable as a video game.

this means that i intend the game to have a full ecosystem with organisms subject to natural selection; NPC cultures, settlements, and societies; and a solid foundation to support all that while using computational resources as efficiently as possible.

the game will either be a decentralized collection of singleplayer games and dedicated servers, a single giant MMO world, or both. either way, i am designing it from the ground up to support the distributed computation of large worlds on many servers, for scalability.

the look and moment-to-moment gameplay may resemble Minecraft, but the world will probably be something more akin to Dwarf Fortress or [Eve Online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64); though not quite like either.

### Feasability

while the scope of the game might seem large for a one-person project, the actual workings of the engine should not be that complicated. unlike Dwarf Fortress, i am designing the world at a relatively low level, such that a lot of the game's content should be able to generate itself without too much input from my part; community contributions building on the game's foundations may also play a role in providing richer experiences.

### Estimated Time of Arrival

i have been working on a prototype since 2020, and am making steady progress on it. that said, i have no clear estimate for alpha or beta releases.

i may or may not post updates regarding the game's development on this site.

### What the Patreon is for

thanks to my relatively low amount of life expenses and my country's generous welfare, i'm able to live while on-and-off working part-time. if i meet the patreon's 250$/month goal, i won't have to do that part-time work.

any contribution to that end is greatly appreciated.


Overcoming Narratives
---------------------

who drinks more alcohol, liberals or conservatives ?

if you have an existing opinion on both of those (such as: drinking alcohol is bad, and conservatives are better than liberals), then you're likely to just come to a default assumption (such as: liberals drink more).

if you want to be more reasonable about it, you may try to think of explanations. "maybe liberals drink more because this and this! that sounds like it makes sense." but it's pretty likely you could come up with an explanation for the opposite case (conservatives drinking more) just as easily!

and just like any piece of evidence: if it's as easy to come by in both cases, then it's not actually telling you anything.

the only thing you get by coming up with potential narratives that *sound like they make sense* but aren't evidenced by anything in the world, is to pre-entrench yourself in a position rather than be open to what may actually be the shape of reality; [if there even is a shape at all to the topic at hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_irreducibility).

of course, just assuming to be true the narratives that *other people* tell you is worse, but even coming up with your own narratives is generally a bad idea.

in general, avoid narratives, unless evidenced; and when there's evidence, only make the minimum amount of assumptions from that narrative.

Overcoming Narratives


Saving The Client-Side Web: just WASM and the DOM
-------------------------------------------------

the stack of technologies involved in the client side of the web is a huge mess, and i don't like most of it. it requires browsers to implement basically an entire operating system.

i propose here a vision that can vastly simplify the web — especially client-side — allowing clients (and possibly, to an extent, servers) to function much more easily, and all that with mostly just existing tech.

here's the idea:

we keep [WebAssembly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly) and we keep [the DOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Object_Model) client-side. we discard the textual format that is HTML, and we *definitely* discard JavaScript. CSS can probly stay.

WebAssembly is quite easy to run in a sandbox; it's much easier to make a WASM VM than a JS VM, it leads to much more optimizable code (though it [could be better](http://troubles.md/posts/why-do-we-need-the-relooper-algorithm-again/)), and it's easily sandboxed (such that, for example, one WASM can run another WASM with tight control over what calls that sub-instance has access to).

the HTTP server (or [whatever content delively system](https://ipfs.io/)) sends the client a single WASM file, with maybe some parameter data, whose "start" method is called. this method will build up the DOM (using API calls, *not* textual HTML), request files (images, etc. in whatever order it wants), and so on. it can depend on other WASMs as dependencies, just as many pages with JS currently import jquery or other JS frameworks.

there's no need for clients to know anything about HTML. if you want to serve static HTML, it's probly relatively easy to make a web server that sends a static WASM along with some HTML, and that WASM can parse the HTML and produce the corresponding DOM with API calls; and the browser doesn't have to have any special code for that.

if you want easy javascript (or any other scripting language!) you can just send a static WASM that is a javascript interpreter compiled into WASM, and have that interpret attached JS. there's no need for the browser to know anything about JS, let alone embed a JS VM.

plus, you get all the advantages of WASM: easy implementation, portability, performance, and easy sandboxing (even nested sandboxing!).

as a bonus: if you ship browsers with a WASM handling all the usual JS and HTML interpreting, then you can probly make this whole stack retrocompatible with the old web.


The Unsatisfactorily Far Reach Of Property
------------------------------------------

i'm a fervent [intellectual](where-next-piracy.html) [property](cultural-and-memetic-hygiene.html) [abolitionist](cc_-1.html).

one of the reasons IP seems repulsively bad is that it gives some people control over the activity of others no matter how far and unrelated away they are. patents and trademarks even can (and often do) restrict the activity of people who *never even heard of the original piece of IP*; but [copyright is joining in on that too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpi4d3YM79Q).

however, how specific to IP is this? how do i feel about, say, someone owning a rock one million light-years away, and through that, legally restricting the ability of people around that rock to interact with it?

on another hand, recently i've been really trying to come up with alternatives to private property on which a [libertarian world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism) (with voluntary association and voluntary socities) can be built, but to no avail. until i made this post, that is.

maybe the key is having some notion of *locality* apply to ownership: you entirely own your mind, you very strongly own your body, you strongly own your house, you mildly own your garden? this sure seems a lot more flexible than the classic libertarian hard dichotomy of "either this is my property and i get to murder anyone who even touches it, or it's not and i have no say whatsoever", and perhaps it can create a better sense of what is meant to be common property.

though, of course, as soon as you have a flexible limit, [molochian defectors nibble at it until you have nothing](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/). this is the reason that, when we can have hard limits (such as when we're all cyberpeople with a very discrete and clear boundary of what we have [sovereignty](economic-compass.html) over), they hopefully let us survive even maximally molochian-defecting actors.

so, for the moment i maintain my previous positions, but IP bringing in questions of locality is a novel for me way of thinking about property rights that i'll be considering.


Video Games Needs A Platform
----------------------------

i feel like, for video games to feel legitimate as an artform, it needs a platform that has the following properties:

* open source, rather than controlled by one or even several companies
* standard, such that every artist knows exactly what capabilities they're working with
* accessible "at various levels" — an accessible graphics platform to people who know computer graphics, an accessible low-level language to people who know low-level programming, etc

because gaming tends to surf on the very edge of technological innovation — and especially so in hardware, this is a tall order.

nevertheless, some things have converged towards this goal:

* emulators, while running a proprietary machine, are largely open source, and provide a very clear set of expectations for what can be ran on them.
* [PICO-8](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php), while proprietary, is a fairly accessible (and minimalist) high-level game playing and development(!) platform.
* RPG Maker [2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG_Maker_2000) and [2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG_Maker_2003) was used by many independent gamedevs to make many games, and it's a platform with a fairly well established set of capabilities — as for the open source aspect, the [EasyRPG](https://easyrpg.org/) project implements a player for RPG Maker 200X games which [already supports a lot of them](https://community.easyrpg.org/t/compatibility-list/283), and intends to eventually offer a full replacement for the actual RPG Maker software.
* [WASM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAssembly) and [RISC-V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V) are both open-source and low-level languages which higher-level languages and tools can target, with a currently fairly vibrant ecosystem. they accomplish this at different levels — WASM aims to be a bytecode meant to be JIT-compiled into machine code, while RISC-V aims to be a hardware-implemented machine code.
* the [DualShock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DualShock) layout for gamepads, and its variant the [Xbox 360 controller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_controller) layout, have become very standard, to the point where almost all games made to be played with something other than mouse and keyboard target those two types of gamepads instead (often under the name "Xbox 360 compatible controller" or even just "Xbox 360 controller").
* for people who are fine with low resolutions, a fixed 640×360 resolution (that i use for instance in [kolsitan](kolsitan.html)) is great to work with: it upscales neatly to common resolutions like 1280×720 (at 2×), 1920×1080 (at 3×), 2560×1440 (at 4×), 4K (at 6×), and fits neatly enough within the common laptop resolution of 1366×768 by scaling to 2× and having (small enough) borders. if that fixed low resolution isn't enough, having the resolution variable but always a multiple of 640×360 may be enough of a guarantee.
* the OpenAL API and [its open-source OpenAL implementation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL#Implementations) is a relatively common interface for audio, though maybe some lower-level memory-mapped buffers would work better; i don't know audio tech much, so i'll refrain from saying more.
* graphics interface is probably the hardest here; higher-level APIs like [WebGPU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGPU) or [Vulkan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_%28API%29) could work, though the talk i've recently seen of [NVidia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#In_development) [and](https://www.eetimes.com/rv64x-a-free-open-source-gpu-for-risc-v/) [others](https://libre-soc.org/resources/#index17h1) considering building GPUs on RISC-V might make graphics (and GPGPU-style parallel compute) efforts accessible at a lower level, bringing us closer to [Casey Muratori](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA)'s dream of [lower-level, driverless GPU interfaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk).
* alternatively, if we don't mind a fairly high-level interface and don't go beyond particularly enhanced 2D graphics, sticking to the SDL2 might be sufficient for graphics, audio, and perhaps input.
* standardizing the amount of hardware performance available is a difficult thing to plan with; even if we were to somehow present a very high level graphics API that was able to scale its level of detail to the amount of rendering performance available (thus not impacting the developer's assumptions about the platform), varying levels of available performance could still have massive effects on games whose computation power is largely used on game logic, like Dwarf Fortress.

it's still pretty early to see if many of these technologies can be relied on for this particular effort, but i think these elements can give us the clues to work towards something like [Brian Moriarty](http://ludix.com/moriarty/index.html)'s [Perlenspiel for video games](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015620/Lehr-und-Kunst-mit), but in a form that is able to compete with more performance-intensive video games.

Video Games Needs A Platform


**DISCLAIMER: the idea described here stands or tenuous philosophysical ground and should generally *not* be considered worth the risk attempting because it may be wrong; in addition, this plan should *not* be utilized to retroactively justify depression-based suicide — retroactive justification is erroneous; if you are feeling suicidal, contact [your local suicide crisis line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines).**

Plausible Quantum Suicide
-------------------------

in this post, i make a collection of arguments and follow them to what seems to me like what should be their conclusion. i don't have strong confidence in every argument, but i'd consider using this plan worth it to avoid sufficiently bad scenarios, such as a singularity gone wrong (which it probably will).

### 1. The No Obtainable Evidence Argument For Materialism

by materialism i mean here something maybe closer to [physicalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism), but maybe even a stronger version of it:

there is no special soul that people have, [you are your information system](you-are-your-information-system.html).

i make an other strong claim: time isn't particularly "moving" in any metaphysical sense, there is no "special present time". the universe can be seen as a graph of probabilistically connected states, and a random walk through those states matches the notion of entropy pretty well (which can be seen as defining the direction of time, because we happen to have memories of universe states with generally lower entropy), but that's a local notion.

the *illusion* that the present is particularly present, that we have a particular soul, or even that morality/ethics is in some sense objective, stems from the fact that we *inhabit our brain's model*: we don't get to see our brain from the outside as modeling its environment, we live right inside it, and we don't spawn with a clear distinction between normative ideas (morality/ethics) and descriptive ideas (statements of fact about the world).

but those illusions *must* be wrong, and here is the argument: as far as we can tell, there is no possible way for a brain to obtain evidence that his present time is particularly real; therefore, it must be erroneous for any brain to generate rationally the idea that its present is particularly real. same goes for having what i call a "read-only soul" that some people believe in (a special observer thing that observes a person's mind state from outside the material universe, but cannot causate anything upon it). see also [these](https://www.readthesequences.com/Zombies-Zombies) [three](https://www.readthesequences.com/Zombie-Responses) [posts](https://www.readthesequences.com/The-Generalized-Anti-Zombie-Principle).

### 2. Limiting Real Universes

my post ["Limiting Real Universes"](limiting-real-universes.html) isn't that good, so i'll try to explain it more clearly here:

if for some reason all possible states of our universe were equally real, then you should expect to observe widely anomalous phenomena around you, because most randomly picked states our universe can be in don't have to be coherent.

but the fact that we seem to observe a continuously very coherent universe tells us that there must be some sense in which coherent universe states, that stem from a continuous history following an increasing entropy timeline, must be particularly more real.

it's not that your magical soul has been blessed with inhabiting universe states: as explained in argument 1, you shouldn't have any reason to think you have such a thing.

it's not that [you can only exist to observe universe states that are coherent, because you wouldn't exist in incoherent ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_argument): there are still way more possible universe states where everything is incoherent except your brain, than possible universe states where everything is coherent including your brain. for any amount of state of stuff you require to say you can exist to observe the world, the rest of the universe should still generally seem incoherent if all possible universe states are equally real.

it's not that you have been following your own special arrow of time: even though i debunk that you should even think this makes sense in argument 1, another reason is that, even if some of your brain states have a past-arrow-of-time and not others, there's no reason for you to think you're one of the former. if all possible universe states were equally real, you'd likely be a version of your brain that *thinks* it has a past history but doesn't, than one that does.

### 3. Many-Worlds Is True

[Eliezer Yudkosky makes a good argument](https://www.readthesequences.com/If-Many-Worlds-Had-Come-First) that we should currently believe in the many-worlds [interpretation of quantum mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics); but even if that turned out wrong, [Max Tegmark makes another good argument](https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html) that even just with a single history universe, all possible initial states of the universe are represented each in an infinite amount of instances by just being variations of initial conditions and random quantum determinations at different places of the infinite universe.

what matters here is that basically one should expect every reasonably possible outcome to be a real instance of universe that exists somewhere. because of argument 2, some possibilities are particularly real, and because of argument 3 (this one), that set or fuzzy set of coherent possibilities should be widely instanced: at each possible fork (they're not *really* forks, but that's a good enough analogy from our point of view), every plausible outcome is realized as a real or fairly real universe.

### 4. Quantum Suicide Works

if the previous 3 arguments stand, then a more general version [quantum suicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality) should be achievable: by dying instantly in one timeline, there is no version of you in that timeline able to experience it, and the only remaining future you's able to experience anything are the you's in other timelines.

because of argument 1, we know that saving a backup of your brain, and then later dying and restoring another copy of yourself from backup, is equivalent to just losing memories of the time after the backup: it's unfortunate that that time and those memories were "lost", but it's not a big deal, you can just keep going.

given that, even non-instantaneous, after-the-event suicide works: if you commit yourself to committing suicide in all timelines where an event goes wrong, then the only future you's able to experience any time after that suicide will be the ones in the timelines in which that event went well (or at least in which you think it did); you lose a bit of time and memories from those timelines in which you didn't kill yourself *literally instantly* after the thing went wrong, but it's just equivalent to a restoration from backup: the backups are automatically saved by the universe as forks of that previous universe state before the event's outcome was determined.

### ramifications

if this is true, then every person is strongly empowered: by committing themselves to committing suicide in every timeline in which even the slightest thing goes wrong, they are able to restrict the set of instances of them purely to timelines in which everything goes the way they want.

but, it also creates a problem if the practice becomes widespread: every person will end up observing a timeline in which increasingly greater amounts of people who they don't particularly care about, have committed suicide to go to other timelines. if i play the lottery and commit suicide if i lose, then you have as many timelines as players, each with 1 alive lottery winner, and all the others players having committed suicide. even if you don't care about living in such a world, economics cares: pre-automation, you *want* other people in your society to keep living so they can help create together the value that you can enjoy.

you can choose to commit suicide in all timelines in which too many *other* people also have committed suicide, in an acausally-collaborative effort to search for a timeline in which everyone is happy; but if no such timeline exists, then everyone will just have *truly* committed suicide out of existence.

pre-automation, this creates a [coordination problem](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/), where each person wants to be able to commit suicide, but doesn't want other people to be able to. there is much ethical and political discourse to be had on the right to commit suicide; i generally lean on the libertarian side of things, but if quantum suicide becomes enough of a problem pre-automation that society looks like it's not gonna be able to get to post-automation, then we might need to consider at least disincentivizing it somehow.

post-automation, there is still a problem for people who want to live in a world which has other people in it, but the problem is much milder. it might be bringing the [end of the global era](global-era.html) even earlier than would have happened otherwise, but that's not necessarily *that* big of a deal, and there's an option for people who want to inhabit a more densely populated timeline: just lower your standard for non-population-based outcomes, such that you commit suicide less often and thus exist in more timelines. if many people do this, they should be able to find each other in many densely populated timelines.

this *does* explain the anthropic argument of, "if things go well in the future and the population booms, why are we happening to experience a particularly early age of human existence?"; other than the extinction of able-to-observe beings, this can be explained by able-to-observe beings just become really trigger-happy about quantum suicide, such that each civilization of able-to-observe beings' "observedspace" is condensed to their pre-finding-out-about-quantum-suicide; their population after that is much more sparsely distributed across timelines, even without extinction events.

as for me, i don't intend to start committing quantum suicide any time soon. i don't have strong enough confidence in the arguments posted here to take the risk of actually permanently dying. but it is definitely a possibility i'll consider, *especially* as we get closer to the singularity happening, and the existential risks that it poses.

Plausible Quantum Suicide


CC\_ -1
-------

a known problem with [the CC0 license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Zero_/_public_domain) is its [infamous patent clause](https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/133/how-could-using-code-released-under-cc0-infringe-on-the-authors-patents), which says:

> No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
>
>

and [other big public-domain-equivalent licenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_license) only apply to *software*, not to any work in general.

as a result, i propose the use of the CC\_ -1, which is a full copy of CC0's legal text except for the following changes:

* [as required by CC](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Modifying_the_CC_licenses), the names "Creative Commons" and "Creative Common Corporation", referring to the corporation, have been replaced with "carado" (which is me)
* the name "Creative Commons" at the top, referring to the license, has been replaced with "Carado Commons"
* "CC", which is trademarked by Creative Commons, has been replaced with "CC\_" (as per the common programming convention of adding an underscore to an already used name)
* "0" in the name of the license has been changed to "-1", to suggest that this license grants even more freedom than CC0
* the patent and trademark clause has been changed from

> No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
>
>

to

> All trademark and patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, and surrendered.
>
>

you can find [the full text here](cc_-1.txt).

here is also a suggested logo, using as a background the [free speech flag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag), and the name "CC\_-1" rendered in the public domain font [unscii](http://viznut.fi/unscii/), at various scales:

![CC_-1.png](CC_-1.png) ![CC_-1-x2.png](CC_-1-x2.png) ![CC_-1-x3.png](CC_-1-x3.png) ![CC_-1-x4.png](CC_-1-x4.png)

CC_ -1


Let's not generalize over people
--------------------------------

i really like culture; and, to that end, i really like diversity of thought.

diversity is pretty [fragile](https://www.readthesequences.com/Value-Is-Fragile), however; if you don't take particular actions to preserve it, forces like markets rapidly optimize their own efficiency by throwing diversity [under the bus](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/): a population with more uniform needs is easier to satisfy.

another force that does this, however, is generalization: every time one makes assumptions about a general population, they become susceptible to make decisions that bring about a world that works better for people for whom this generalization holds, but worse for the rest — and so, in the long term, a world that will try to [optimize out](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimize_out) that latter population for its own efficiency.

in labor, for example, i don't particularly care that the economy is built so that workers feel less alienated. what if there is some person who doesn't care about alienation, and just wants to maximize how much pay they take home so that they can spend less time working and more time doing something else they want to do? this is why i favor less one-size-fits-all schemes that intend to "make work better for everyone" by making assumptions about what people want out of work, and more schemes that let people able to better negotiate what they want on a case-by-case basis. the two main schemes that come to mind which would radically empower people in regards to their interaction with the labor market are unionization, and [UBI](ubi.html).

Let's not generalize over people


Value and Earning
-----------------

(see also: [Georgism](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty))

this is a post about a short view of my understanding of value, by which i here mean scarce material things that people care about.

in general, we want people to get value; i will call this phenomenon consumption.

where does value come from? the three sources are:

* people themselves, though labor
* capital, tools such as machines or factories
* [the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons), which are usually natural things like land or air, but can also be state-provided goods such as public infrastructure

note that although currently capital largely needs human labor to be operated, the coming of automation is gonna progressively obsolete that restriction. the commons, on the other hand, often don't need any human labor to get value from them, and indeed predate the existence of both humans and tools.

whatever system we have that determines how these resources are used, and how value circulates, is the economy.

![](value/2.png)

from this model, we can see that humans don't need to produce more value than they consume; indeed, we can afford to have some or all people produce way less value than they consume, or even produce no value at all, and still have the economy function thanks to value continuing to be created by capital, as well as the commons [if they can be preserved](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons).

this even seems like a fairly desirable situation. we should want people to not *have* to labor, and still be able to get the value they want.

indeed, the more value we get from capital, the less value we should need people to create. [wage stagnation](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/25/wage-stagnation-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/) can be seen as this transition taking place: as capital represents more and more of value creation, the market rewards labor less and less in comparison.

if this process is left to its own devices, the market will eventually "optimize out" humans, as they become obsolete as value creators. but we still want them to *get* value! this is why, as capital increases as a share of value creation, we want to introduce something like [universal basic income](ubi.html), which intrinsically values humans and gives them the means to benefit from the growing pool of value being created; in the absence of such a system, at best the only people who will get to have value once automation happens will be whoever happened to own the capital that produces it at that time, and everyone else will have to starve.

but i think the most important part about this model is the criticism of the notion of "earning": people *shouldn't be expected to*, and indeed *don't*, produce more than — or even as much as — they consume. if we want people to get value, we should create systems that allocate value to them regardless of how much they create, be it as individuals or as groups.

Value and Earning


"4=5"
-----

!["4=5"](4=5.png)

"4=5"


Cultural and Memetic Hygiene
----------------------------

i like culture as much as i like markets; but just like how markets need [an outside force to become correctly aligned](ubi.html), culture takes extra effort to partake in in responsible and hygienic ways.

you are not just influenced by environmental factors, you are *made of* environmental factors, and this includes culture. culture is what [determines and existentially determines](core-vals-exist-selfdet.html) what people think and value, and [is very important](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/).

here are some ways i think about culture in order to make sure i partake of it responsibly and i don't [value drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Goal-content_integrity).

### never consent to advertising or marketing

if there is some force whose influence on culture you want to restrict, it's markets. as soon as markets influence culture, markets influence what people demand from markets, and you've got yourself [a feedback loop](unfair-feedback-loops.html) of self-reinforcing Big Advertising.

advertising and in general market-motivated cultural influence is very not valid; it does not represent what people would otherwise freely or organically choose to want (as much as that's even a thing).

use [a good adblocker](https://ublockorigin.com/). don't let websites (notably media streaming websites) recommend media to you; even if you end up enjoying individual works, they are still inducing a sampling bias. [don't watch sponsored clips](https://sponsor.ajay.app/). outright avoid content that has unblockable advertising or even product placement. and, in a sense, don't give in to marketing; if a movie is successful because big hollywood maximally [threw artistic vision under the bus](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) in order to maximize profitability, then chances are it's [not very interesting culture](12-rules-for-life.html).

i tend to also avert my eyes from public billboard advertising outside; unconsented advertisement should absolutely be as illegal as any other unconsented influence on people's minds.

(by the way, this is my answer to anyone complaining about the state of big movies or big video games: *just stop consuming them*, and consume independent media instead. you are not gaining legitimacy by consuming them, they are gaining legitimacy by being consumed by you.)

### always be skeptical of memetic virulence

[memes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) want to occupy your mind and leech of your precious cognitive resources to spread. be conscious of that process and try to avoid places that are just memetic petri dishes; having fun is fine, but is the value you're getting from memes always worth it? wouldn't your cognitive capacity often be better spent on things you value more?

### express yourself freely

this point covers some obvious points, like systematically disregarding intellectual property laws — in this case especially copyright and trademarks, the latter of which literally being *companies having some ownership over some words*.

but there are subtler points here too: when you post a gif from a gif-picking utility or even an emoji, are you freely choosing how to express yourself, or is your set of acceptable thoughts and memes constrained by whatever platform you're picking on?

or, when you don't disable autocapitalization, autopunctuation, or spellchecking and spellcorrection, are you being railroaded by institutions into shaping how you express yourself according to their own standards?

language should be maximally alive, and people should use it however they feel like using it; if there is to be a standard, it should be that of free and organic consensus between individuals, not top-down enforcement by companies or state institutions.

even text encoding standards [are institutional shackles on free thought](against-unicode.html).

### in conclusion

people should be, and in my opinion are, the ultimate source of legitimacy.

universal sufferage tries to align politics to intrinsically value people; [univeral basic income](ubi.html) will try to align markets to do the same.

but a third struggle in that vein is to guarantee the continued control of culture by people rather than structures of power; to realign culture to people.

Cultural and Memetic Hygiene


Value Crystallization
---------------------

there is a weird phenomenon whereby, as soon as an agent is rational, it will want to conserve its current values, as that is in general the most sure way to ensure it will be ablo to start achieving those values.

however, the values themselves aren't, and in fact [cannot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem) be determined purely rationally; rationality can at most help [investigate](core-vals-exist-selfdet.html) what values one has.

given this, there is a weird effect whereby one might strategize about when or even if to inform other people about [rationality](https://www.readthesequences.com/) at all: depending on when this is done, whichever values they have at the time might get crystallized forever; whereas otherwise, without an understanding of why they should try to conserve their value, they would let those drift at random (or more likely, at the whim of their surroundings, notably friends and market forces).

for someone who hasn't thought about values much, *even just making them wonder about the matter of values* might have this effect to an extent.

Value Crystallization


(disclaimer: i'm very unqualified to talk about economics; this post would probly looks either obvious or stupid to anyone who actually knows any economics)

Growth Doesn't Care About Crises
--------------------------------

(all graphs from [here](https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth), graph "GDP per capita", in log rather than linear because that's a more natural way to represent growth rather than raw value)

in 1929, the United States hit the [Great Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression). its GDP per capita fell from 10,500$ in 1929 to 7,300$ in 1933; a decrease of 31%.

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/1.png)

after a while, things the economy recovered back on its track and stabilized again to the rough growth it had before the crisis.

one might expect the recovery to look like this:

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/2.png)

but this isn't what happened. here is the actual graph:

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/3.png)

notice the difference? not only did the economy recover to its previous growth, but it actually *increased* its growth until it got to the same that it would be at if the crisis never happened.

which is to say: *the end result is the exact same than if the crisis didn't happen*. if you lived in the early 1900's, you could draw a straight line to predict the growth of the country for the century to come, *regardless of any crisis that might happen*.

here are some other countries' growth *not caring about crises*:

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/4.png)

japan, france, and germany's growths *not caring about world war 2*

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/5.png)

pre-soviet, then soviet, then post-soviet countries' growths *not caring about the start nor the end of the soviet union*

![](growth-doesnt-care-about-crises/6.png)

china and india's growths *barely caring about industrializing late* (with the US as comparison; if you draw a line from china in 1820 to china in 2016, the curve would be about as steep as the US's, and india wouldn't be far behind)

a take away? **we should probably invest massively in africa.** africa is the one continent that has yet to join the global growth; and when *their* growth starts climbing up, it's probly gonna go up *very fast* in order to achieve the same total curve steepness as currently richer countries.

Growth Doesn't Care About Crises


Normies Are in Hell Too
-----------------------

weird people like me often like to think we're the oppressed class; we're the ones for whom institutions don't work, expectations aren't met, we are at a constant disadvantage of having to explain our weird situations to others, etc.

we have salvaged our freedom and individuality, but we have paid a tall price in defecting from social normalcy.

like Tomoko, protagonist of the manga and anime [Watamote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Matter_How_I_Look_at_It,_It's_You_Guys'_Fault_I'm_Not_Popular!), we fail society, and society fails us.

she features in the ending to the anime:

and i'm fully on Tomoko's side, here. i'm the weird person, the geek, the weeb, the hipster, the nerd, and i'm very happy with it. i have committed to this life and i think it is the right choice, for me and for probly many more people than end up actually committing to an alternate lifestyle.

however, it is good to, every now and then, remind ourselves that normies suffer their own tragic fate.

where we have escaped through defection, normies are trapped in *cooperation hell*; they are engaging in [a race to the bottom](https://web.archive.org/web/20140730043944/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/), sacrifice values in order to spend just a bit more resources fitting to societal standards than their peers; lest they be left behind; societal standards which must, by definition, be forever out of reach of anyone, for any set of people attaining them will invent new standards towards which to compete yet again.

a rat race to normalcy.

nothing has made me realize this as much as the following variant on the anime ending, which instead of featuring Tomoko, features her friend Yuu, the prototypical normie.

(be sure to enable english subtitles/closed captions when watching)

Normies Are in Hell Too