Nis's Blog

Cartesian Convexity

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Cartesian Holes

A (typically evil/hostile) incursion into your cartesian boundary.

You know, I shouldn’t’ve picked an example (grizzly bear training) where the TDT behavior is object-level submissive. Because that’s a hole in the former aspiring rationalist community ‘s conception of TDT

Comment on Narrative Breadcrumbs vs Grizzly Bear - Ziz

See Broken Placeholder Terms and Evil Concept.

Another form of cartesian hole is a 'leak', e.g. "I can't see why teaching a computer lots of heuristics wouldn't compound infinitely!", causing you to stem the flow of energy upstream until you correct it. Reminds me of what mummies do on purpose.

Arguably, a lot of ideas shouldn’t be argued. Anyone who wants to know them, will. Anyone who needs an argument has chosen not to believe them. I think “don’t have kids if you care about other people” falls under this.

Choices Made Long Ago - Ziz

I typically leave glue philosophy unspoken in my writing, as a matter of maintaining cartesian convexity. This is the polar opposite of how "rationalists" write. My writing can be seen as a thread of invocations of thoughts: expressions welling up from Prime self-evident in terms of where to place them in your 'puzzle' ('self-locating'), rather than serialized cut-off chunks. You can tell I'm having difficulty maintaining convexity (or you're not keeping up with me) if my writing starts to look like a series of nearly disconnected statements.

Cartesian Symmetry

Cartesian boundaries should be symmetric:

  • Convexity
    • Once you know the terrible truth of the world, you can pick two of three: being alive, avoiding a certain class of self-repairing blindspots, and figuratively having any rock to stand on. Aliveness - Ziz
    • Avoiding the Genesis Troll Line, having a "rock" to stand on would be trying to stand on yourself.
  • Atomicity
  • Vector Symmetry
  • Contiguousness / Indivisibility
  • Concentric Symmetry
    • No matter how proximal vs distal, a cartesian boundary still corresponds to you. Conversely, a surface feature of you may be present at any cartesian boundary, no matter how proximal or distal, and so observation of its presence does not necessarily demonstrate proximity.
    • Reclaims "hierarchy".
  • Wrap-Around Symmetry
    • Extrapolate far enough in any direction, and find yourself again, because the process of extrapolation is itself made of you.
    • The Multiverse
    • When extrapolating as far as imagining coding an artificial intelligence: When I was first thinking about timeless decision theory as a late teenager, I remember thinking that you had to already be a TDT agent to create a TDT agent. Ziz teaches learning TDT harmoniously with your existing nature as someone who would - Genesis Troll Line

Visualization Aids

Turning a sphere inside out without creasing it (originally linked by Ziz in the (half self trolling half hanging a lampshade on incomplete intuitions) context of whether was "possible to turn a good soul inside out").

Gaussian Surface

You Chose to Be Symmetric Long Ago

'Paradoxes' are apparent cartesian asymmetries (and typically cartesian asymmetries are thought of as 'paradoxes'). e.g. "Why does anything exist at all?" or free will vs determinism. An apparent cartesian asymmetry is (by definition) something to resolve.

Resolution by Action

The central example is killing a "living evil person" if you ever see that.

Resolution by Enlightenment

When you seemingly intellectualy resolve your confusion and the difference is you are right so it's not a Purposeless "Unenlightenment" Troll Line.

But note that even my original conception of compatibalism regarding free will was very subtly misformulated.

Redistribution by Taking Credit

If it seems you were magically placed exactly where you are needed, with victory mysteriously hanging on a knife's edge, then rather than entirely attributing it to an unboundedly powerful enemy messing with you, you could believe that you chose that vantage point in response to a correspondingly dire situation. As you grasp/punch at boltzmann hell, what feedback you communicate to yourself about the effects of your efforts in terms of a perceived world should be intended to maximize the impact of your grasping/punching.

Concepts About Cartesian Convexity/Symmetry