[advael]

I think you'll find I'm quite horseshit at optimizing for persuasion, as you can easily verify by checking any other post I've ever made and the response it generally elicits. I find myself less motivated by what people think of me every year I'm alive, and less interested in what GPT would say about my replies each of the many times someone replies just to ponder that instead of just satisfying their curiosity immediately via copy-paste. Also, in general it seems unlikely humans function as optimizers natively, because optimization tends to require drastically narrowing and quantifying your objectives. I would guess that if they're describable and consistent, most human utility functions look more like noisy prioritized sets of satisfaction criteria than the kind of objectives we can train a neural network against

[mistermann]

This on the other hand I like, very much!

Particularly:

> Also, in general it seems unlikely humans function as optimizers natively, because optimization tends to require drastically narrowing and quantifying your objectives. I would guess that if they're describable and consistent, most human utility functions look more like noisy prioritized sets of satisfaction criteria than the kind of objectives we can train a neural network against

Considering this, what do you think us humans are actually up to, here on HN and in general? It seems clear that we are up to something, but what might it be?

[advael]

On HN? Killing time, reading articles, and getting nerdsniped by the feedback loop of getting insipid replies that unfortunately so many of us are constantly stuck in

In general? Slowly dying mostly. Talking. Eating. Fucking. Staring at microbes under a microscope. Feeding cats. Planting trees. Doing cartwheels. Really depends on the human

[mistermann]

I would tend to agree!!

> Talking.

Have you ever noticed any talking that ~"projects seriousness &/or authority about important matters" around here?

[advael]

I think most people do that all the time. Projecting authority is one of the most important skills in a world dominated by human institutions, because it's an effective means of manipulating most humans. Sad but true

[mistermann]

Do you know any single person who can stop the process, at will? Maybe not always, but at least sometimes, on demand (either internally or externally invoked)?

[advael]

What, like not project authority? Admit that they are lost, confused, powerless, don't know something, aren't in control? Break the empire society kayfabe?

Yes, absolutely. I view this as one of the criteria by which I assess emotional maturity, and despite societal pressures to never do so, many manage to, even though most don't

I'm not a sociologist, but I think the degree to which people can't turn it off maps fairly well onto the "low-high trust society" continuum, with lower trust implying less willingness or even sometimes ability to stop trying to do this on average, though of course variation will exist within societies as well

I have this intuition because I think the question of whether to present vulnerability and openness versus authority and strength is essentially shaped like a prisoner's dilemma, with all that that implies