Normal Human Heroes

March 30th, 2010

I’m referring of course to Deus Ex, the combination first-person shooter, role-playing game developed in 2000 by Ion Storm. Conveniently, it’s the length of a shooter game rather than an RPG. It’s been ranked the “greatest game ever” here and there, gained 40 “Game Of The Year” awards, and frequently makes “Top 20/50/100 List”s. The game exhibits high quality all around, and has been especially noted for its gameplay and the degree of player freedom in choosing how to overcome obstacles. In terms of raw fun, it’s actually my #2 pick, being beaten out by the vast role-playing game Morrowind.
The game is a lot of fun, but here I’m discussing it for motivational purposes (surprise, surprise), speaking to any game players out there.  Why might a video game motivate a person to help save the world? Deus Ex doesn’t present any factual arguments for the morality of it, nor does it highlight issues which would contribute to such arguments. Rather, Deus Ex provides an exciting and exceptionally realistic futuristic world, realistic enough that excitement elicited by the game is generally also appropriate for the real world. (Though of course, not “realistic” enough be used for actual prediction.) So to be more specific, I suggest that Deus Ex can be motivationally useful for those who don’t naturally find real life and our own story all that exciting.
By realism I mean two things: realistic and engaging characters, and unusually knowledgeable futurism. For a rough indicator of this, the primary dialogue writer for the game, Sheldon Pacotti, has two bachelor degrees: one in mathematics from MIT, and another in English Literature from Harvard. There was a overarching design goal to create an immersive simulation, and the dialogue is the opposite side of the spectrum from “oh yeah, and this is why you have to kill 100 enemies”. The game is well populated by ”normal people”, and their dialogue is often just as interesting and thought out as that of the primary characters. The plentiful notes, emails, and book pages in the game are similarly well-written, and the game’s story is continually present in your experience. While I don’t think it’s of primary importance to folks here, the story also includes an intelligent and stimulating probe into the nature and ideal of government.
The game’s primary characters are at the high end of human ability, but with few exceptions not superhuman. In those cases, superhumanity is derived from technological augmentation or the “superhuman” intelligence of those at the ultimate far end of the human spectrum. I find this valuable, as in reality it’s not just going to be people with “superpowers” who save the world, it will mostly be through the hard-working efforts of merely intelligent folks. Some of the activities most useful for existential risk reduction are well profiled, including technical implementation of various projects, study of larger world structure, group organization, and financing. (Unfortunately, public and scientific awareness efforts are not included.) The activities of the player’s character center on physical adventure, but your underlying ability and ultimate success rely critically and obviously on other people’s expertise at those tasks. Success depends on your own efforts as well, but the story is such that you would often be dead in the water without the other characters.
For tech, the game takes place in the 2050s, and centers widely around molecular nano-technology. It’s not treated entirely as phlogiston, and the game presents surprising detail on how MNT realizes the technologies. I don’t have the technical background to propose or evaluate real life designs for nano-structures, but having studied some neuroscience, biochemistry, a little nanotech and a lot of electrical engineering, most of the explanations in Deus Ex still seem plausible. In terms of AI, Deus Ex is at least partially at SL4, and includes the concept of Singletons, though necessarily not by name. The AIs are inhuman and are laudably (if not completely) lacking in  anthropomorphization.
There are some necessary qualifiers to all that. Throughout, aspects of the story are affected by gameplay considerations. Generally for that reason, some of the technology is too powerful, too weak, and/or rather implausible, though less so if you hadn’t read some of Robert Freitas’s recent work. The world research atmosphere is the most unrealistic aspect, regarding where the research is distributed, the scale of significant research projects, and the likely extent of technological asymmetries. That might actually be realistic for a project involving recursive intelligence improvement, but Deus Ex is a little light on that concept. The difficulties of Friendly AI are not properly accounted for, which is the obvious norm in futurism. To some extent there’s also the common flaw of oddly talkative antagonists, as realism and storytelling don’t always make good bed mates.
There are also some elements with mixed pro and con. The story involves numerous conspiracy theories, which I don’t expect to actually be true. This does make the story more interesting, and is entertainingly similar to the Bayesian Conspiracy, which we should all probably “attempt to gain entry to”. The story has a strong dystopian and cyber-punk flavor, which as a design choice is more stylistic than realistic.  If we don’t exert some control however, we may actually be nearing an apex in human living standards. I’m referring to increasing technology becoming more and more labor-saving and less and less labor-augmenting, a reverse in past trends which would drive down wages and living standards. My current best source is this. In general, there’s a very significant chance life is going to get worse, and if you can keep from getting depressed about it, I find it motivating to keep that in mind.
In summary, Deus Ex is an unusually sophisticated game, with exceptionally intelligent futurism and widely acclaimed gameplay. For myself, its motivational value lies in presenting an engaging and uncommonly plausible dramatization of our future, the general challenge and adventure that lies in store. If you enjoy video games in your free time and haven’t played Deus Ex yet, put this one on your list.

March 25th, 2010
A second great music video from Matt and Kim, kind of eclectic here. Somehow it makes me very happy about human beings and life in general. I couldn’t find a quicker loading version, but it’s worth starting and coming back to after it loads.

March 20th, 2010

After writing my last post, I decided to spend some of my free time  rewatching parts of Star Wars. Perhaps more on that later, but for now, a quick thought.
On the slim chance a reader wouldn’t know the scene, I’ll provide an introduction. In the third episode (the last movie released) Mace Windu goes to confront Chancellor Palpatine, along with a group of Jedi who are quickly killed off. After landing a solid kick on Palpatine, the Chancellor loses his lightsaber and is backed against a wall by Windu. At this point Anakin steps in, believing that the evil Sith Lord Palpatine is the only one who can save his wife from death in childbirth. Mace Windu knows of the friendship between Anakin and Palpatine and asked Anakin to stay behind, though Anakin did alert the Jedi Council to Palpatine’s danger.

There’s a lot of silliness in Star Wars, but I’m not going to go into that. While Mace Windu’s actions here may not be entirely consistent for someone of his reputation, his mistakes are common among most people – myself included – and interesting in their consequences. First he seems intent on arresting Palpatine, then seemingly changes his intent after blocking a great deal of Palpatine’s “force lightning” with his lightsaber. Perhaps this presented new information on his threat level, most likely it was more dramatic this way. Importantly however, in my experience this flip-flopping of intent is common in most people: a good reason to develop increased rationality and to think of goals before you think of solutions.
Even so, after deciding that Palpatine is too dangerous and politically powerful to let live, Windu dilly dallies. He takes the time to discuss this with Anakin, though apparently didn’t think his acceptance was necessary. He also winds up for a large strike, instead of just lowering a knee and bringing the saber down.
The consequences of this dawdling are what make this worth writing about: immediately, his arm is cut off by Anakin, he’s electrocuted and thrown out the window. Ouch. Much more significantly, Palpatine then executes his plan to kill all the Jedi everywhere, including the seemingly hundreds of young Jedi in training. He reformulates the Republic into an empire, eventually disbands the senate, builds a machine which destroys an entire planet, and brings about galaxy-wide repression and slavery which lasts roughly 20 years. Whoops.
By no means am I suggesting that people be killed without hesitation; in our world, I don’t believe any single person is remotely as dangerous as Palpatine. What I mean to provide is an exaggerated but illustrative prodding towards action. Action when you believe your model is good enough to act on under the time constraints, action when you know the course that will maximize expected utility via your metric, and action when you know you should be seeking more information. Admittedly, the chances are small that any single act of akrasia will mean the death of you and everyone you care about, but the chance is there. What’s more, the more practice you get in fighting akrasia may make it easier in the future; each choice to get yourself working is helpful for more than just doing that work itself.
Existential disasters possess the well known difficulty of not being able to learn from your mistakes in dealing with them. If we keep at it and manage to pull through, it may not be immediately obvious how close to danger we may have come. Had Windu made his strike with more promptness, the corruption in the senate would have provoked an outrage, but regular democracy would return. The clone war would have been allowed its resolution, the casualties would have been minimized to that conflict alone, and the Jedi would still have been around. I think that everyone who’s a non-contrarian would agree this is a much better outcome. All of this without anyone knowing the extent of damage Palpatine would have caused, the secret order 66 which causes the clone troopers to kill Jedi, etc. Similarly, success at existential disaster avoidance (by itself) probably wouldn’t look like much at all. The problem is, dilly dallying (by itself) also doesn’t look  like much at all. You may know that you shouldn’t “really” be browsing the net right now, but it’s not like the whole world is going to end if you don’t do what you know you should be doing. At least, not immediately.

March 14th, 2010
I was a much bigger Star Wars fan before the continuity collapsed under its own weight, but I still get chills from the scene of Luke Skywalker looking out over the desert at the twin sunset. I gathered a few Star Wars soundtracks over the years, partly hoping for this song; little surprise I finally get it from YouTube.
I love to look backwards in time and think of how a younger me would react, if I told him all the things he was going to do, and how much he’s going to change. (Of course I wouldn’t actually try that, knowing that I apparently failed to do it.) I like the same thing on a larger scale: going back in time and having our society explain things to the society of several hundred years ago. Like Tony Robbins has said, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year but underestimate what we can do in a decade. Steady change compounded over time can have a huge effect, as all readers are assuredly aware. I had a lot of generally unreasonable shorter term expectations and plans that didn’t pan out, but the total change since a few years ago would make my head spin. Looking back I seem childish, petty, and much less capable. Hopefully I can say the same thing a few years from now.
Dropping into fiction for a moment, what does Luke expect as he stands there in that sunset, gazing out at those suns? On some nowhere little planet, working on some remote moisture farm, how much could he anticipate everything to follow? Who would he meet, what friends would he make, what would they teach him? What strange situations will he encounter, what distant worlds would he find himself on? What adventures would he be a part of? What kind of impact would he make? What tragedies would he face and what triumphs would he accomplish? How would he grow, who would he become, and what would he become capable of? This little world in which he’s lived all his years, how long will it persist, and years down the line, how normal will that sort of life still seem to him? But he can’t know any of that, and he’s got to go back inside and clean droids.
So how about us?

Might as well throw this in too:
LUKE: I can’t get involved! I’ve got work to do! It’s not that I like
the Empire. I hate it! But there’s nothing I can do about it right
now. It’s such a long way from here.
…
BEN: You must do what you feel is right, of course.

March 8th, 2010
Foreign Policy has an interesting photo essay up on their website, covering all 33 of the world’s ongoing conflicts.

This blog has a lot of focus on existential risk and FAI, but that’s a straightforward outcome of being concerned with stepping up and doing the greatest good. It would be naive to say that one person can change everything, but even just a few lives saved would be worth the effort. Happily, it looks like we can do a lot better than that, if you factor in probability to calculate the expected-lives-saved/improved. If you’re looking to actually help as many as possible and not (just) receive warm fuzzies, that’s the thing to do.
Unfortunately many efforts – such as exisential risk reduction –  result in a potentially huge payoff many years down the line, but little direct payoff until then. I find it helpful to try and spread out the expected reward: quite truthfully, each moment that’s honestly spent towards saving or improving lives moves the expected outcome to a slightly better place. Each such moment, even if it’s on a necessary amount of R&R, is a moment well spent, a moment of accomplishment and a benefit to others.

March 5th, 2010
This is pretty cool, you can find out more at Matt’s website.

For those who don’t follow LessWrong: the human mind suffers terribly from scope insensitivity. I.e. experiments in which people pay much more to save one child, than they do to save 8. The brain just doesn’t multiply well, and the world is a huge place.

March 2nd, 2010

It’s interesting to note that despite the dramatic appeal of high stakes, it’s very rare to run across a fiction with stakes as high as those we’re actually dealing with. Our actions, right here, right now, tonight and in the days after it, may determine the fate of a universe-spanning civilization, lasting until heat death or longer, populated by beings who’s joy and intelligence is beyond our comprehension. If we pull this off, we might even live to be part of it.
As long as the danger is there, I can’t think of anything I’d rather be spending my life on. It’s a hell of a lot of responsibility and hard work, but if you wanted adventure, you got it.

February 21st, 2010
A lot of people probably know DragonForce, among other things they’re featured with the hardest song on a Guitar Hero game. Wikipedia say’s they’re power metal, though a lot of people like them and don’t seem to like other power metal, myself included. The best way I can describe them is as ridiculously over-the-top, which is intentional and tongue-in-cheek on their part. Most of their songs are fairly similar, and tend to use a limited vocabulary focused on sword, warrior, storm, soul, stand, pain, ride, dragon, etc. Personally this just means it doesn’t really matter which song I listen to,  and I can expect the same enjoyable experience.
My experiences first hearing DragonForce followed successive stages. First I thought they were just ridiculous and out of touch, though I admired their guitar skill. Then I thought they were really funny. I still think they’re funny and ridiculous, but after going through those stages they became incredibely fantastic. I have a tentative hypothesis that enjoying them intensely becomes much more likely after first laughing at them. Perhaps simultaneously laughing about the music is signalling that one doesn’t take this that seriously, and allows one to enjoy more comfortably. I have an old fondness for fantasy and related imagery, so that might contribute as well.
I’m posting about them now as I remembered how extremely motivating they can be. I find them especially helpful when facing difficulties; comparing my own personal difficulties to their ridiculous lyrics both makes me smile and lends an invigorating, epic air to my struggles. Admittedly few people are actually working right now to prevent the extinction of humanity, and chipping in on that effort is fairly epic on it’s own. I refer more to laughing and becoming enthused when listening to them and thinking of my small, day-to-day challenges.
Give them a try and see what you think. Some very well known pieces are “Fury of the Storm” and “Through the Fire and the Flames”. In their main vein, “Black Winter Night” and “Operation Ground and Pound” are some I was just listening to, and something slightly different. My personal favorites though are the two quieter pieces I have, partially just because they stand out. I’ll include ”Dawn Over a New World” here, the other is “Starfire”.

February 11th, 2010
When I first conceived of this blog I thought of having recurrent post themes, one of them being “things I want to protect”. Not sure if that will materialize, but this is one of the posts that I imagined in that vein.
When I was a wee lad, I was crazy about a girl for years. Smart, beautiful, baggy clothes and always reading. That didn’t go anywhere, and in time I grew interested in other girls, though not as much. Those didn’t go anywhere either, and I decided to hold off on getting attached until something worked out. Being way too shy and nervous around girls back then, nothing worked out for a long time, and I got a little bitter. Eventually I did find my peace, realizing that I truly didn’t need romantic success – in general or with anyone in particular – to be happy and enjoy my life. Shortly thereafter I found myself in a relationship, which isn’t very surprising.
But I’d been going the hard-hearted route for a long time, and now that I had something good, it was hard to feel like I used to. The girl I was crazy about back in middle school was still a great person by my current standards, and while I didn’t feel that way anymore, I could remember what it was like. It was nice, just to have that feeling. I had this funny perception of my romantic self as some wrinkled old man. That can be taken several ways, so pick your favorite. Funny that at one point I actually had endeavored to lose the ability to feel like I used to; take this as a warning against rash (and sloppy) self-modification.
When I was studying abroad in Japan 2 years ago, I met a girl, another student from the US studying there. You know where it’s going so we’ll cut to the chase: with her it “clicked” again. Cute, funny, cheerful, awesome baggy style, and somehow when she smiled, she just shone. I wish I could better describe how cool she is, and the excitement I feel around her, but I’ll save my poetry for later and assume you know what I’m talking about, guy or girl, straight or gay. I asked her out, and though she declined it was still a great experience.  It really had sunk in deep that I could be very happy “being alone”, so I don’t suffer in situations of unrequited love. We continued to hang out and remain friends, and though I can and have cared about others, I still feel quite powerfully about her.
I’m not here to talk about how powerful love is, or say that love endures, or love makes the world go around, or love is the reason for living, or any of that silliness. But damnit it’s nice, and I care about protecting that in our future.

February 1st, 2010
Posting “Shadows On The Sun” by Brother Ali. Great song, and if you can get past the theism (still a moral if not epistemic improvement over most rap), it can be very appropriate for a hard working altruist.

(We’d like to capture your minds right now)
(What you say)
(Take you a little bit higher)
(What you say) (3X)
[ VERSE 1 ]
I like the snares loud enough to make your eyes blink from it
Only male with the Holy Grail, drink from it
I keep an eye on heaven and an ear to the street
And spread a thick layer of blood, sweat and tears on the beats
My brain rest upon the hip-hop lexicon
That I acquired in the decade of work that people slept upon
I don’t rap, I recite the prayers of the inner soul
Of the slave ships’ human cargo
Seemingly meaningless rappers flood the market
With shit that make me pace in my room until I rip the carpet
I’m fit to start up this next millennium
Swingin’ the grappling hook at cackling crooks to finish ‘em
The city dweller sendin’ telegrams from Neverland
The better man kind now, kindly join the caravan
We’re like a rock band that pack contraband
And won’t hesitate to stomp a man into the rocks and sand
Brother Ali, and if you haven’t heard about me
I’m flyin’ just beneath your radar so y’all can doubt me
Stay on the sonar with crowbars to open minds
There’s a ladder you’re supposed to climb
Approach a Rhymesayer with a Buggsy Siegel sized ego
You gon’ get yourself snatched out the sky, you know the steelo
By now, where, what, why and how
We start the revolution real time, right now

[ CHORUS ]
Yes, leave it to me to create hope where there was none
The human beings shall cast shadows on the sun
Leave it to me to create hope where there was none
My inner soul shall cast shadows on the sun
Leave it to me to create hope where there was none
The human beings shall cast shadows on the sun
Leave it to me to create hope where there was none
My inner soul shall, my inner light shall..
[ VERSE 2 ]
I rhyme for cats up in the harbored lights
Prayin’ they don’t starve tonight
And stay positive in the face of a harder life
My chorus light the torch for those on whom the sun set
Verses meant to speak for the voiceless
So let us never be dismayed or afraid
The ground we’re walking on is stained
With the blood of those before us who came
Soldiers in this freedom movement are too numerous to name
Cause the human soul yearns to be free, it’s all the same
I rhyme for runaways, prayin’ that they see another day
You gotta’ make it through the winter to feel some summer days
It’s for my natives, it’s history in the way their hair is braided
Elephants never forget, that’s how they say it
Tell my man Hasim in prison keep grinnin’ because he’s innocent
And tell him that the tests we get are heaven-sent
Listen, I rap for the ones that Johnny Cash wore, the black, for
Black and white women that were turned to crackhores
And I empty everything in the bank to give for it
I empty all the days of my life to live for it
And I empty all the blood in my veins to fight for it
So I empty all the ink in this pen to write for it

[ CHORUS ]
[ VERSE 3 ]
I glance in the sky and see the same cloud configuration
That Nat Turner saw the day they hanged him
Resisted in the face of adversity with a fist and it was raised
One finger extended, meaning Allah be praised
Spent days in Heaven’s embassy
On Qu’ran pages Allah explains this legacy
Angels doubted Adam, Jacob’s brothers clapped him
And ancient Pharaohs were too brutal to fathom
If all the earth’s oceans were ink and the trees were pens
You could never write the knowledge of God, it never ends
And I know it feels like the whip wounds will never mend
But it’s the way of God makin’ the oppressed prevalent men
We standin’ with humanity at destiny’s door
Chanting the war cry, it goes, “Never no more”
So if y’all tryin’a talk about the horrors you see
Feel free to tell your stories through me
[ CHORUS ]
There’s only one God and he’s not just above
There’s only one man and there’s only one love
Till everybody gets what I instill in my seed
For that y’all, we willing to bleed
There’s only one God and he’s not just above
There’s only one woman and there’s only one love
We doin’ this till all of Adam’s children are freed
And for that y’all, we willin’ to bleed