Normal Human Heroes

[This post is about an ideal. There may be good arguments against striving for this ideal. If one does strive for the ideal then this point should be kept in mind.]

I’m not sure how common this mistake is, but sometimes I get to feeling like heroes are above humanity. Like they’ve transcended, stepped above, and are reaching back to help others. But when I try to live up to this kind of ideal I almost inevitably come to feel burdened, flat, demotivated, and alienated.

This remains true even after coming across some extremely useful techniques for handling my emotions. I’m able to dissipate negative emotions by realizing that emotions are intrinsically orthogonal both to the state of the world and to the values I have over those states. I’m also able to sit with negative emotions by accepting them, neither fighting nor fleeing them. Armed with these techniques I can embrace all my emotions, I can remove suffering from my physical and emotional pain, and I can greatly amplify the pleasure I gain from many experiences.

Even so, I still run into problems when I view myself as something above humanity and human concern. What I call this higher class is unimportant, whether it’s “player characters”, “spiritually developed humans”, or anything else.

When I view myself as approximately without any concerns or need for consideration, then when my own desires arise I think to myself “Ah! I have the ability to be free of suffering in any situation! I will therefore universally apply this power to any of my concerns that don’t assist me in being a bad-ass hero.” This separates me from connecting emotionally with the concerns and values of my own life. There are two or three problems with this approach.

1. My life becomes flat when I cease to care about its ups and downs. Happiness is much more vivid when you pay attention to it and are glad of it. And there are better ways to be unruffled by small concerns.
2. It becomes much easier to view altruism as a burden when I don’t assign importance to the quality of my own life. I think I experience this effect less than most, but it’s certainly very significant.
3. When I don’t care about the good or bad things in my own life it then becomes much harder to care about the existence of those things in the lives of others. I’ve written about this previously.

When I view myself as something above the majority of humanity I then come to feel alienated from that humanity. Humanity starts to gain the feeling of the “civilians” in video games, little people who stand around needing and hoping to be saved. You get points for saving them, sometimes they’re even the sole objective, but they aren’t characters.

Perhaps even worse, by thinking of heroes as being in a class outside humanity proper I remove from the class of humanity exactly those people whom I most look up to and admire. I deprive humanity of its heroes by considering non-human all those people who do the coolest things,

So what’s the alternative?

Heroes, then, are not in a different class. Heroes are people, just the same as other people. They may be a little less burdened by suffering, they may have internalized more heroic memes, they may be more gifted by ability, they may have trained harder, and they may be currently more altruistic in practice than most people, but they are still just as human.

And no (ideal) hero saves others without saving herself. Even if it arises that a hero can do the most good by sacrificing herself, she does not do so because she has no moral value, having transcended the “petty concerns” of humanity. She has just as much moral value as the people she is saving, and her sacrifice is a terrible loss. Not because she is better than most human beings, but simply because she is a human being. She would sacrifice herself merely because she can save many by sacrificing one. It would be just as good and sad a deed to sacrifice someone else in order to save others, even if that reveals less virtue. But virtue acts as a status signal and a useful indicator for humans to aim for in the pursuit of doing good; it is quite distinct from the actual good done.

And if the hero does not suffer from something as others do? Then it may reduce suffering for the hero to put herself in the place of others. But it’s still just as good and wonderful a thing for her to enjoy friendships, and to have a romance, and to spend a pleasant afternoon, as it is for anyone else.

Heroes are people that don’t stop with themselves when they set out to save people. They work to save as many as they can. Maybe it’s because they’ve generalized that it’s a terrible thing when they suffer or die and it’s a wonderful thing to flourish among friends, and so likewise with others. Maybe they just care a great deal about others without involving any explicit moral thinking at all.

I have a collection of inspiring pictures I’ve saved from the net, and as I went through them again I made sure to view the heroes not as something above humanity, something transcended and beyond moral valence, but as “merely” exceptionally altruistic and capable human beings. Their suffering is just as worthy of concern as anyone else’s, even if they are better at avoiding it, and equal too are their joys. And in an ideal world, they know and realize this: they are part of the humanity which they aim to save.

Yet another Matt and Kim post, this time from their new album “Sidewalks”. Their wild, joyous sound often makes me think of all that we stand to win here.

“I think it helps some to remind myself that though we Singularitarians harp on about existential risks, the positive utility of winning is mind-boggling. We de-emphasize this to separate our perspective from the “Woo Singularity yeah!” crowd, but perhaps we go too far sometimes. Building the republic of heaven is a much happier thought than fighting to keep humanity from killing itself.”
-Will Newsome

I really enjoy this book. Those beautiful, surreal landscapes have really stuck with me.

Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any
you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you’ll head straight out of town.

It’s opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.

OH!
THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…
for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

No!
That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.

I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
‘cause you’ll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.

And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul.
On you will go
though your enemies prowl.
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl.
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike.
And I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

So…
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

Recently on Ben Goertzel’s blog, he mentioned that he’s had the experience of FAI-minded persons telling him that if he got too close to AGI he may have to be killed, and then discussing how this may occur.  Clearly, these were not advanced rationalists. I know this blog has a small audience and such ideas are probably very rare, but given the style of my material, I feel like making a statement. Given my background in gaming,  science-fiction, and fantasy, I find martial imagery and allegory inspiring. As someone concerned about existential risk, I find the idea of martial action irresponsibly foolish.

If the world gets to a point where it’s likely that unfriendly AI is about to be released, it’s incredibly unlikely that there will be only one group ready to do so. It is also likely there will be many more AGI teams than there are today. Trying to stop them through attrition would be ridiculous. Even in such a situation, more widespread action would be possible through the (non-lethal!) actions of governments convinced to step in, or research coalitions convinced to step back, by the efforts of organizations like SIAI, FHI, etc. This may be unlikely and the effect small, but it is far more likely and helpful than having any kind of meaningful effect through attempted assassination. If AGI researchers were killed, significant blame will inevitably land on groups like SIAI. To say that this will hurt their credibility is an understatement.

This is likewise true with mentioning the idea of assassination to AGI researchers. The only way such threats could ever be prohibitive would be if they were actually thought to be legitimate, and those expectations can only exist in a world in which groups like SIAI have had their intellectual and academic reputations destroyed. Not to say that destroying such groups’ reputations also makes those threats credible; death threats do far more to tear apart reputations than they do to cause fear.

There is too much at stake here to be stupid about this. It is not too hard for our evolved intuitions to suggest that we solve problems by eliminating “opponents”. But then, it’s not too hard for our evolved intuitions to screw us over generally. A second Unibomber would get to feel like a hero and a soldier, and everyone else would get to pay for it.

As I said in my first post on this blog, our enemies are human error and human hatred, not human beings.

This post refers to concepts from the LessWrong posts Something To Protect, and The “Intuitions” Behind “Utilitarianism”. If you haven’t read them, I suggest it (and in that order); they’re very good.

There’s more than one reason to work to reduce extinction risk, but probably one of the most powerful is having something to protect. It seems to be a fact of human psychology that we’re willing to work harder and sacrifice more to protect something external to ourselves, such as loved ones, a “great noble truth”, or a nation/ethnic group/religious group, etc. Not only does working for something-we-want-to-protect bring us to do more, but it seems to also make us more satisfied while we do it.

6 billion people is a lot of people, but few if any of us feel an intuitive emotional kick about 6 billion people. It’s doesn’t mean we’re villains, our brains just aren’t built to multiply like that. Back in the EEA, we had no use for getting very emotional about people we didn’t know, because we knew everyone in our group.

One kind of work-around to this gap in our mental hardware is to take your concern for those close to you and multiply. Chances are that most people are cared for just as much as you care for your loved ones, and care for others in turn. Even if you think that only 1 in 4, or 1 in 100, is worth feeling that much for, that’s still 60,000,000 people. And 60,000,000 multiplied by however much you care for those close to you, is a fucking huge amount. Not that we’re capable of honestly multiplying like that, or physically capable of feeling that much concern if we could do the multiplication, but it can still bring you to feel massive amounts, and lead you to put a more coherent weight on certain outcomes when making conscious decisions.

~~~~~~~~

I actually wrote this post before the one on positive motivation, but I definitely didn’t want this to be taken the wrong way. I am NOT saying that we have a fantastically huge obligation, a duty to save all human lives. I am NOT saying we’ll be bad people if we don’t do all we can to protect the ones we care about. Personally I’m not really concerned about whether or not I’m a “bad person”, and I’m starting to think this is helpful. The fact of the matter is that I just really want my loved ones to survive, I want to save and help as many as I can. That’s not all I want, I have some technically selfish goals as well, and I endorse them. But I also have a very strong desire to preserve human lives and human value in the universe. And if you’re concerned about existential risk, I’m guessing you do as well.

~~~~~~~~

There’s a danger with this kind of multiplication, one that I didn’t see coming. With that much concern, a person can really get overzealous in protecting the things they care about. A little over a year ago, I explicitly decided to stop hanging out with my friends, unless I ran into them by chance. I did this in order to get more work done. I knew that I would mind that and so would they, but I’d rather them be unhappy for now and alive later. I’m recovering from the pit I fell into, so I’m starting to be able to emotionally understand why I did that, but for a while that level of concern was practically unimaginable. Anyway, I rapidly found that I couldn’t keep working without recreational social contact, but that didn’t completely end the problem.

I now took time for fun social gatherings, but I grew distant from people. I saw my friends now and then, but I was still on the other side of a divide. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, trying to figure out how to describe it. So far my best description was that they weren’t in my group anymore; I was in a group of me. I still cared about them, but I had a job to do. I didn’t want them to rely on me and me not to be there, if they made plans with me in them. I could get by with less hanging out than they’d want if I were close to them. Also, and this might be the larger part, I no longer took the time for many things I used to do, and enjoyed doing with them. I used to play video games, playing and discussing them with my friends. I used to put together role-playing campaigns with them in it. I used to be much more content to just lay around cuddling with my girlfriend. I used to spend several hours watching shows or movies with others.

I got along on my own, with occasional socializing. I still cared about my friends, but that care slowly became more and more abstract. They weren’t close to me anymore, nobody was. I wasn’t actually lonely or sad, but I was fairly alone. I can’t help but recall some lines from a favorite game:

“… I wish someone could have been there for you.”
“I’m used to being on my own.”
“One can be TOO self-sufficient, I’m coming to believe.”

And that’s how it came to be that I couldn’t even imagine or remember the type of dedication that lead me to separate myself in the first place. That’s how it came to be that I didn’t have much to multiply anymore. Y = 6,400,000,000 * X, and Y was so large that in my zeal I cut down X, and Y sunk with it.

I’m recovering from my mistake now, and I don’t know if anyone is even in danger of trying what I tried, but take my advice: keep close the ones you care about. Don’t put that aside. We’re social creatures, and we draw so much of our power from each other. Your friendships are important: for your happiness, for their happiness, and for all the good things your accomplishments will bring.

This is just going to be a quick coverage of the concept; I don’t have much more explicit knowledge of it than this. Intuitively, the distinction between positive motivation and negative motivation is that of positive emotions versus negative motivations. Positive emotions being things that attract you, like excitement, anticipation, and joy. Negative motivation comes instead from fear, worry, guilt, etc. In a discussion with others two weeks ago, we came up with additional dichotomies between them. Besides the nature of the driving emotions, positive motivation tends to revolve around creating good results, and negative motivation seeks to avoid bad results.

Most central though, is the distinction between doing, and not doing. It’s a working hypothesis, but it seems that negative emotion is superior if there is a specific, concrete action you want to avoid taking. At least, it’s much better at that than avoiding abstract results, like “don’t disappoint others”. Positive emotion seems superior at taking an action, such as exercising. Judging from various reports of successful people and our own experiences, it also seems superior at long-term abstracts, such as getting more fit, impressing others, or completing a project.

Unfortunately, in most cases the language used to describe something can be interpreted through either motivational system, and one system or the other seems to dominate our perspective at different points in our lives. Take the goal of “getting more fit”. If you have this goal, are you doing it to not be overweight, to not look bad? Or are you doing it to feel great and look great? Are you trying to evade the current situation, or are you excited about the future state of affairs? Pointedly, are you trying to avoid the extinction of the human race, or working excitedly towards a brilliant future?

This post is mostly meant to explain the concept and its benefits. For anyone interested in techniques to move from a negative to a positive motivation, one thing that I’ve found helpful is being aware of my framing, and mentally reframe when desired. I can’t change my entire emotional undercurrent on command, but I can work a little change in the perspective I use, and that seems to have significant and cumulative effects. Generally increasing my positive emotions has also helped.

Closing this up, I’d like to point out that not only is positive motivation more productive, but it’s also a hell of a lot more fun.

This song is a favorite.

There are things that I wished I did differently. With the benefit of hindsight, I can look back and note a lot of ways that I could have done better. Some things seem like such superior choices. Sometimes, they would have been clearly impossible to make, as I didn’t know then what I know now. Other times, it’s not so clearly impossible.

So, sometimes I regret. “Ah, if only I’d done that sooner, if only I had started then.” But then, ’sooner’ is relative, of course. Sooner than today, yes.

And sooner than tomorrow? Sooner than a year from now, sooner than a few decades from now? How great would it be to have started years before?

Ah, but I did start sooner than that. I started years before that.

How much would I give then, to be able to start today, for all the progress I could have made?

I’ve found this small exercise helpful a number of times over the past year or so, in helping to move past regret and throwing myself into something, grateful that I’m starting earlier. Just as we can take frustration from the fact that we didn’t start sooner, we can also take satisfaction from the fact that we did.

Beautiful song, from the main menu of the game Civilization IV. (No real relation to the gameplay.)