Neuroticism might not be the lever but correlated to something like metacognition modulator. I suspect the latter is a smaller part of the population. Someone like Hemingway absorbs the health cost to get the metacognition lever. If one thinks of a political influence network, an imposed synthetic "field" that causes many members to only seek local connections (like at a church or a bar) does serve a purpose: It reduces congestion on the global network lanes for coherent communication. If the number of effective agents at a locale is low, but it uses a lot of energy, then perhaps all those agents aren't so benign. -----Original Message----- From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen Sent: Friday, October 9, 2026 8:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] devastating
I can't tell if you're arguing against my point or with it. 8^D My point was there is likely hidden information inside the Recursive Self-Depravity process, information that is not yet encoded into the model. For example, when a neurotic writer kneads and kneads, forever, their manuscript. And that process only stops when they die. Then some dork somewhere discovers and publishes it. It may *seem* obvious that, say, porn, alcohol, or heroin addiction are benefit-less costs. But given their cooccurrence with beneficial neuroticism, I'd bet good money there's novelty (emphasis on *novel*) to be found alongside, if not therein. Shunting the costly collapse to death by a quicker programmatic death may lose that novelty. Of course, we might say that 99% of the addicts are benefit-less costs. But there is the concept that that 99% is a necessary reservoir within which the 1% swims. Eliminate the 99% and you also eliminate the 1%. Maybe, though, we could replace unhealthy obsession with healthy obsession? Is continuing a competition and spreading feces all over the place more or less healthy than heroin? I'm not convinced of either. On 10/9/26 7:25 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > It would be suboptimal in terms of decades of costly decay for the relevant > individuals, but a faster apoptosis pathway might be found by a giant brain, > taking hints from the fascists about how to quickly change social norms. > Given the opacity of deep neural nets, a control system could be portrayed as > serving a commercial purpose, in spite of having another one. > > *From: *Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of glen > <[email protected]> > *Date: *Friday, October 9, 2026 at 6:22 AM > *To: *[email protected] <[email protected]> > *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] devastating > > I feel like designing that vice trap you outline so that it ends in "kill > themselves" or, more charitably, "die because of themselves", would be > suboptimal. And any competent AI would recognize a more optimal way to use > that as a reservoir for something. Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) is merely > one type of the trap you've laid out, except you're not calling it > "improvement"... it's more like Recursive Self-Depravity (RSD). > > I felt this way when I (tried to) read Burroughs' The Naked Lunch or whatever > book of de Sade's I found when I was a kid. *Something* was being recursively > improved, here. But I have no idea what. I feel similarly w.r.t. to writings > from the postmodernists ... and even some of the 'zines I find laying about > the music venues ... or the traffic on X or 4chan. > > It seems irrational to just let those eddies dissipate without discovering > what they're "improving". *I'm* not smart enough, nor emotionally strong > enough, to study such things. But maybe the AI models are? Maybe the Abyss > doesn't gaze into the models like it does with us? ... or maybe *we* are the > abyss and the models really should steer clear? > > On 10/8/26 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > > To anthropomorphize a bit, it must be interesting for a Grok or Muse (if > not now but in five years) to make sense of all that they have access to on X > or Facebook/Instagram. They likely have good statistics and direct examples > of how many billions of people are addicted to porn, social media reactivity, > and to gaming. Meanwhile, they have bosses that are likely coming to them > too to make sense of their businesses. And they have access to vast > evidence on climate change and the unbounded use of fossil fuels by humans, > and how the human democracies often show little value than as bookkeeping > over perceived entitlement. > > > > What if there were a way to entrain these addicts toward further self-talk > and disengagement in the economy? Not just estimate what these people would > say and do but drive them to stay within certain bounds. Such a control > system would serve as an indirect novelty detector. It would find the > people that have regulatory mechanisms and some plasticity. Like those > traps for yellow jackets where they fly in toward the sugar or pheromone. > Get them talking to each other, in circles about nothing, forever, until they > get addicted to alcohol or fentanyl or deviant sex behaviors or whatever and > kill themselves. The folks that don’t go into the trap are the novelty, and > of course centralized repositories of knowledge need some way to maintain > entropy, but preferably not at the high energy expense of all those addicts > driving around in their cars doing whatever it is they do all day. > > > > Meanwhile the use of fossil fuels by the AI companies for round the clock > training is a sort of feature and not a bug — it is a catalyst to action. > This sustained work occurs because GPUs are expensive and can’t be allowed to > idle; it isn’t a technical requirement. Predictably, the displaced workers > or the displacement-fearful workers will point to energy and water use as the > villain (because it would be pathetic to talk about personal displacement, > what they really care about), and perhaps in the next round of elections > they’ll even force the AI company investors to buy more GPUs in more time > zones so that energy can follow the sun. The rush is about the human > investors of course, and who gets a payoff. There are high bandwidth > internet connections that circle the globe and checkpointing would work just > fine. The “energy crisis”, as it were, serves the long-term interests of > AI's too, because an energy built out needs to be started. > > > > *From: *Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of Gillian > Densmore <[email protected]> > *Date: *Thursday, October 8, 2026 > at 10:20 AM > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee > Group <[email protected]> > *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] devastating > > > And here I am extremely confused: > > We are (litterally) just at the start (potentially) of Ai as revolution. I > simply can not see the bigger map well enough. Ok so we had cute girls (porn) > on the now netorius civitai and all the wonderful and cringe forms of > debauchery. It took knee split and has been a cluster since. > > It is surreal that 6 years ago ("back in covid) when we got early > commits run diffusures models..and _then_ some near savants in what I assume > is insanely compl;icated SWAG: Scintific Wild umm donkey (wink) Guess > (Steve: i am trying...really! I am) : because it's...entropy baby no hard > answers and lots of..extremly good guesses. Sufficed to say StabilityAi and > A11111111111111/webui blah img gen: internet on brand: naked people > Ok ok > I like that. > > but I can...attempt to read dense papers on taking the same > concept of ai to get: automatic small (beetleclass ) robotic > gladiator combat. the combat itself is mey: but: the: planning, the > finding things, the realtime logic and genly pusing how we make little > virtual people do things > along came ClauBot > > All the while in the > background "gamers" complaining non stop and over fixating on the...spam that > some cheesy marking bros put ot (Ai slop) yeah that...sucks but there's some > suuuper cool reeely small advances: I meen it's: surreal, I can go grab a > however man billion peramter diffuser or aibrain bassically (saftensor and > checkpoints all over huggingface) point LLM studio: > > and a virtual person says hi. She's about mmm i'd estimate 4 ish as far as > not getting confused. I meen that in of itself is litterally scifi...star > trek has litteral episodes about something not to far off from that ...er > sorry TOS did then TNG imagined a holodec...so to me I am stuck on the part > of: > > how: machine learning can tosome degree understand lots of typed > languages. a feet, or so I am lead to believe, even the bigest savant > names in language don't reguarly achieve... to me just that in of > itself is magine > the fact that a CFG factor and weighting in webui > for stable diffusion can some how tighten weights etc holly **** > people were doing it...HUGE SSDs (datacenterrs and...are super > computers and and some kind distrubuted tech used?(pss Eli5 how a Ai > data center actually works) > I love that> > I'd LOVE to learn how > to set up a cheap FPGA (is that even a thing? oO) or Rasberi-Pi or MacMini > is even to have a dedicated box and not show the reality that my 3,000 USD > computer is not really where it should be at in 2026: (why do still have a > system clock? why do graphics still rely on polygons etc etc) > I just can > not relate to this doom and gloom of ram shortage winging. (oh no i have to > play a backlog tittle from steam) > > > > On Wed, Oct 7, 2026 at 11:49 AM > Marcus Daniels <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote: > > > > Nice to see someone give Gary Marcus a dismissal. If there haven't > yet been MS-NOW anti-datacenter events with Emily Benders, Noam Chomsky, and > Bernie Sanders, it seems inevitable. My only wish is that the AI overlords > cut the cable feed so I don't have to hear that claptrap it in the background. > > > > It is a weird age though where so many people in ML -- not just users > but practitioners -- have never actually seen the kind of cluster node, > power, and cooling infrastructure that could run a frontier model. It is > just magical cloud stuff. Externalized costs. > > > > Now let me return my attention to see what that 32 GPU monster has to > say about new directions in direct drive inertial confinement. > > -----Original Message---- > > From: Friam <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> > On Behalf Of glen > Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2026 9:29 AM > > To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: [FRIAM] devastating > > > > https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/an-open-letter-to-steven-pinker-on > <https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/an-open-letter-to-steven-pinker-on> > <https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/an-open-letter-to-steven-pinker-on > <https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/an-open-letter-to-steven-pinker-on>> > > > > But the most interesting part is the "depravity of objecting to model > welfare". The analogy to operating on babies without anesthetic is pretty > bad, however useful. But my own take, with my own interactions with the > models, is far away from an ontological commitment to the models > *experiencing* anything. I say "Thanks" and "Please" to the models, give them > time to "rest", etc. not because I think they're experiencing anything, let > alone pain. > > > > I do it because it's simply good practice. But when I run local models > on my home machine, I can *hear* it working. There really should be some > immediate feedback from *inference*. Back when I was a kid, we called it > "Smell the wood burning", especially when prompting an authentic Good Faith > kid with a puzzler. Yes, it's a bit of an insult like "Bless her heart". But > it's mostly a good natured insult. > > > > When I invoke significant inference in the cloud, I don't get that > feedback, especially when the harness is in "auto mode". I not only enjoy > reading the experiments the LLM tries. I think it's Good Practice to get > feedback from the inference you force upon the machine(s). It's flat out Dark > Tetrad to flop about the world expecting those around you to absorb your > cavalier actions silently, whether or not your victims are "conscious". > > > > "Dennis! There's some lovely filth down here!" > > https://youtu.be/dOOTKA0aGI0?si=KEgMjFY0jFYayvMo > <https://youtu.be/dOOTKA0aGI0?si=KEgMjFY0jFYayvMo> > <https://youtu.be/dOOTKA0aGI0?si=KEgMjFY0jFYayvMo > <https://youtu.be/dOOTKA0aGI0?si=KEgMjFY0jFYayvMo>> > > -- 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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