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ridiculously amazing stuff can come from being able to talk clearly about you want and what you care about this is true at all scales. from being able to talk about what you want for dinner, ways you do and don't like being treated, up to sharing life vision and deep values
reminder that illegibility is both a conditional strategy (for highly adversarial envs), and also is NOT the same thing as just refusing to be clear about what's good talk to the people you care about about what matters to you https://t.co/daIseZLYhd
there's fractal levels to this skill, right it can be hard to even BE AWARE of what you want, or feel safe alone in your room wanting the things that you want sharing in 1v1 relationships is another beast. as is sharing in group settings https://t.co/XahcZAEfDy
getting in touch with what you want can be terrifying because being in touch with what you actually care about has the capacity to MOVE you outside pre-established paths that you've already determined are safe and other people won't punish you (that much) for
the better i get at being able to not be scared of my desires, the more I feel like a high energy wave crashing over reality. stuff just makes sense to do. https://t.co/WYKmCARAwH
Motive Force In All Things is about moving deeper into fractal conviction and doing what i want with the full strength of my being, in a way that is more akin to Surfing the Giant Wave That is Me, rather than pushing the Giant Boulder That is Me up a hill
others: at the simplest level, if you never communicate what you care about, people can only ever help you in the narrow pre-defined ways you've already decided they can. You cut out all of their knowledge and intelligence from the equation
it's like the worlds worst version of the XY problem the more you can communicate the essence of what matters to you, the more other aligned minds can help https://t.co/wrJepahpD5 https://t.co/PGtuRlnZ5I
FINDING the others who are aligned is it's own challenge it's 100% possible to find overlapping care with others. i've got no clue what the limits are in how much two people's care can robustly intertwine, but i know i'm nowhere close
like, i feel compelled to hedge about how easy it can be get excited about the prospect of alignment and project more overlap than there is... but i'll be damned if i downplay how fucking ELECTRIC it is to find robust kernels of shared care in another person
god, there's so many near enemies to this amazing thing i'm gesturing at https://t.co/Px9wUYY6Vd
most of my life i've been in environments that subtly and overtly messaged "there's nothing REAL any of you are allowed to do, you don't get to decide who you're with, so just indiscriminately get along and don't cause trouble" https://t.co/UoGlRwPtbB
i remember the incredible lonely and heavy feeling i used to have of "no one else gives a shit about anything i care about. Though there are many good natured people around me who might lend a hand, they can't help STEER the world/my life in the ways that matter to me"
i still feel like this is largely up to me. and there's a kernel of responsibility that can never be offloaded and still, i've been slowly accumulating small islands of alignment with others. chunks where someone else GETS it and is thinking about how to bring it to life
i'm still working on developing all these relationships, but i love @ben_r_hoffman's description of the "ideal" end zone https://t.co/VkfIWPQmz3
this begs the question... how hard have I actually tried to help my dad understand me? how hard have i tried to help my little brother @LilLuccle understand me? how hard have i tried to help my last two romantic partners understand me?
like, to briefly revert to hedging, yes this is hard work and i'm sure there's fundamental limits on how much of you you can communicate to another... AND I'M DEFS NOWHERE NEAR THOSE LIMITS why? what makes this hard? what, now or in the past, stops me from sharing what i want?
what blocks it within me: i've written about this a good bit https://t.co/7VYNilxZDJ https://t.co/S6ibs71CAi
and here to https://t.co/7VYNilxZDJ
a lot of shit comes down to growing up immersed in low-key psyops to get you to dissociate, be scared of, be ashamed of, you care/desire/wants this just seems to be what living in society currently (always?) has involved. we're working on it
ex: a kid who wants something that a parent isn't able to materially provide because they aren't rich enough. if the parent has the memes installed that make this unbearably painful "what sort of fuck can't provide for their kids?" they can end up putting pressure on the kid
"it is bad/greedy/shameful/wrong/unfair/stupid of you to want that!" is a message that seems super common. notice how it makes the desire itself WRONG. it's not that you *getting* X is unfair, you even *wanting* X is unfair
so the pattern continues, now aimed at desires https://t.co/6k5XzW9TL9
k, what about the sharing with others parts? that's what i've been REALLY bumping up against the past year. i can mostly be okay with an tap into what i want when alone in my room, sharing that with people has another set of challenges
from an oblique angle: as @suspendedreason reason has pointed out to me, the idea of "strategic voting" is kinda dumb. why the fuck *wouldn't* people press the button on the machine that is more likely to get them what they want?
voting is a perfect example of a system that mechanistically translates "expressions of wants" into outcomes, in a way that doesn't allow for all of the amazing stuff that can happen from honestly expressing your wants (synthesizing new win-win options)
given the deterministic way voting matches expressions to outcomes, there's really no reason to interact with the mech other than "what can i press that gets me what I want?" i think there's often... shared implicit interpretive frames that have similar lower key effects
there's a thing i call "demand language", where the background guiding assumption of all implicature is that all we're ever doing is negotiating demands we're making of each other there's a way small amounts of this is just colloquial, but it can also be more pathological
in demand language nothing is open ended or generative. even if it isn't coercive, it's always "here's what i want you to do". every expression of a desire is also "and I want you to meet this desire in XYZ way". there's always a prescribed action
which SUCKS! remember, the WHOLE UNIVERSE TORQUING MAGIC of sharing what you want is getting other live minds on the problem! https://t.co/BR7x84Eekc
demand language prevents sharing things like "for the record, here's what I don't like about the current situation. I also agree that we took the best course of action available and can't see a better move. But in case things change in the future, here's what still grates at me"
k, demand language was just one example of a way that i or others can be that borks clear convos about wants i think demand language and the point about Voting mechanisms can serve as a lens to see a general pattern here
any time there's has a sense of a shared interpretive frame or implicit social contract that mechanistically translates expressions of wants to actions, desire to not be *forced* into action will backpropagate through the rigid mechanism into blocking certain expressions of wants
another way: the degree to which there exist shared mechanisms to put pressure on people to act on your wants is the degree to which you will be pressured to not use them if people experience other's wants as coercive, they will coerce each other into not sharing wants
you both get the problem of people trying to "bluff" on their preferences to force a certain decision, and the problem of people not sharing what they want because they know it will be received as more of an obligation than they want it to
ben has a post where he talks about having "werewolf feelings". this is another relational rut you can be in that blocks clear communication about what matters https://t.co/YRlMqzyuy0 https://t.co/DPUJn2bTZN
thread where I expand on the 1st person experience of not being able to have meaningful alignment with others https://t.co/wUBrJvaEQX
@altashtree this is something I've on and off been trying to write about from my 1st person perspective 4 me it was v rooted deep senses of "I can't really do things with other people" Any vision I had of what cool stuff in the future could be had to fit the bucket of "personal excellence"
what blocks it within me: i've written about this a good bit https://t.co/7VYNilxZDJ https://t.co/S6ibs71CAi
and here to https://t.co/7VYNilxZDJ
a lot of shit comes down to growing up immersed in low-key psyops to get you to dissociate, be scared of, be ashamed of, you care/desire/wants this just seems to be what living in society currently (always?) has involved. we're working on it
ex: a kid who wants something that a parent isn't able to materially provide because they aren't rich enough. if the parent has the memes installed that make this unbearably painful "what sort of fuck can't provide for their kids?" they can end up putting pressure on the kid
"it is bad/greedy/shameful/wrong/unfair/stupid of you to want that!" is a message that seems super common. notice how it makes the desire itself WRONG. it's not that you *getting* X is unfair, you even *wanting* X is unfair
so the pattern continues, now aimed at desires https://t.co/6k5XzW9TL9
k, what about the sharing with others parts? that's what i've been REALLY bumping up against the past year. i can mostly be okay with an tap into what i want when alone in my room, sharing that with people has another set of challenges
from an oblique angle: as @suspendedreason reason has pointed out to me, the idea of "strategic voting" is kinda dumb. why the fuck *wouldn't* people press the button on the machine that is more likely to get them what they want?
voting is a perfect example of a system that mechanistically translates "expressions of wants" into outcomes, in a way that doesn't allow for all of the amazing stuff that can happen from honestly expressing your wants (synthesizing new win-win options)
given the deterministic way voting matches expressions to outcomes, there's really no reason to interact with the mech other than "what can i press that gets me what I want?" i think there's often... shared implicit interpretive frames that have similar lower key effects
there's a thing i call "demand language", where the background guiding assumption of all implicature is that all we're ever doing is negotiating demands we're making of each other there's a way small amounts of this is just colloquial, but it can also be more pathological
in demand language nothing is open ended or generative. even if it isn't coercive, it's always "here's what i want you to do". every expression of a desire is also "and I want you to meet this desire in XYZ way". there's always a prescribed action
which SUCKS! remember, the WHOLE UNIVERSE TORQUING MAGIC of sharing what you want is getting other live minds on the problem! https://t.co/BR7x84Eekc
demand language prevents sharing things like "for the record, here's what I don't like about the current situation. I also agree that we took the best course of action available and can't see a better move. But in case things change in the future, here's what still grates at me"
k, demand language was just one example of a way that i or others can be that borks clear convos about wants i think demand language and the point about Voting mechanisms can serve as a lens to see a general pattern here
any time there's has a sense of a shared interpretive frame or implicit social contract that mechanistically translates expressions of wants to actions, desire to not be *forced* into action will backpropagate through the rigid mechanism into blocking certain expressions of wants
another way: the degree to which there exist shared mechanisms to put pressure on people to act on your wants is the degree to which you will be pressured to not use them if people experience other's wants as coercive, they will coerce each other into not sharing wants
you both get the problem of people trying to "bluff" on their preferences to force a certain decision, and the problem of people not sharing what they want because they know it will be received as more of an obligation than they want it to
ben has a post where he talks about having "werewolf feelings". this is another relational rut you can be in that blocks clear communication about what matters https://t.co/YRlMqzyuy0 https://t.co/DPUJn2bTZN
thread where I expand on the 1st person experience of not being able to have meaningful alignment with others https://t.co/wUBrJvaEQX
@altashtree this is something I've on and off been trying to write about from my 1st person perspective 4 me it was v rooted deep senses of "I can't really do things with other people" Any vision I had of what cool stuff in the future could be had to fit the bucket of "personal excellence"