Andrés Gómez Emilsson | Cognitive Sovereignty: How Do You Incentivize Genuinely New Thoughts? @/Andr%C3%A9sG%C3%B3mezEmilsson | Uploaded August 2021 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
Genuinely new thoughts are actually very rare. Why is that? And how can we incentivize the good side of smart people to focus their energies on having genuinely new thoughts for the benefit of all? In order to create the conditions for that we need to strike the right balance between many complementary forces.
I offer a new ideal we call "Cognitive Sovereignty". This ideal consists of three principles working together in synergy: (1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling, (2) Idea Ownership, and (3) Information Responsibility.
(1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling is the cultivation of a child-like wonder and positive attitude towards the ideas of one another. A "Yes And" approach to idea sharing.
As QRI advisors Anders Amelin and Margareta “Maggie” Wassinge write on the topic: "On the topic of liberty of mind, we may reflect that inhibitory mechanisms are typically strong within groups of people. As is the case within minds of individuals. In minds it's this tip of the iceberg which gets rendered as qualia and is the end result of unexperienced hierarchies of powerfully constraining filters. It's really practical for life forms to function this way and for teams made up of life forms to function similarly, but for making grand improvements to the very foundations of life itself, you need maximum creativity instead of the default self-organizing consensus emergence.
"There is creativity-limiting pressure to conform to 'correctness' everywhere. Paradigmatic correctness in science, corporate correctness in business, social correctness, political correctness, and so on. As antidotes to chaos these can serve a purpose but for exceptional intellectual work to blossom they are quite counterproductive. There is something to be said for Elon Musk's assertion that 'excellence is the only passing grade'.
"The difference to the future wellbeing of sentient entities between the QRI becoming something pretty much overall OK-ish, and the QRI becoming something of great excellence, is probably bigger than between the corresponding outcomes for Tesla Motors.
"The creativity of the team is down to this exact thing: The qualia computing of the gut feeling getting to enjoy a haven of liberty all too rare elsewhere."
On (2) we can say that to "be the adult in the room" is also equally important. As Michael Johnson puts it, "it's important to keep track of the metadata of ideas." One cannot incentivize smart people to share ideas if they don't feel like others will recognize who came up with them. While not everyone pays close attention to who says what in conversation, we think that a reasonable level of attention on this is necessary to align incentives. Obviously too much emphasis on Idea Ownership can be stifling and generate excessive overhead. So having open conversations about (failed) attribution while assuming the best from others is also a key practice to make Idea Ownership good for everyone.
And finally, (3) is the principle of "Information Responsibility". This is the "wise old person" energy and attitude that deeply cares about the effects that information has on the world. Simple heuristics like "information wants to be free" and the ideal of a fully "open science" are pleasant to think about, but in practice they may lead to disasters on a grand scale. From gain of function research in virology to analysis of water pipes in cities, cutting-edge research can at times encounter novel ways of causing great harm. It's imperative that one resists the urge to share them with the world for the sake of signaling how smart one is (which is the default path for the vast majority of people and institutions!). One needs to cultivate the wisdom to consider the long-term vision and only share ideas one knows are safe for the world. Here, of course, we need a balance: too much emphasis on information security can be a tactic to thwart other's work and may be undully onerous and stifling. Striking the right balance is the goal.
The full synergy between these three principles of Cognitive Sovereignty, I think, is what allows people to think new thoughts.
I also cover two new key ideas: (a) Canceling Paradise and (b) Multi-level Selection and how it interacts with Organizational Freedom.
~Qualia of the Day: Long Walks on the Beach~
----------------------------
Relevant links:
Cognitive Liberty - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty
Need for Cognition - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition
Why Care About Meme Hazards (Justin Shovelain and Andrés Gómez Emilsson) - qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/30/why-care-about-meme-hazards-and-thoughts-on-how-to-handle-them
Free Energy Minimization at the Schelling Point of the Pacific Ocean - youtu.be/-xom6YwifDg
Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun - qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/30/ephemerisle-health-homeostasis-worldview-annealing-and-the-long-tails-of-serious-fun
Genuinely new thoughts are actually very rare. Why is that? And how can we incentivize the good side of smart people to focus their energies on having genuinely new thoughts for the benefit of all? In order to create the conditions for that we need to strike the right balance between many complementary forces.
I offer a new ideal we call "Cognitive Sovereignty". This ideal consists of three principles working together in synergy: (1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling, (2) Idea Ownership, and (3) Information Responsibility.
(1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling is the cultivation of a child-like wonder and positive attitude towards the ideas of one another. A "Yes And" approach to idea sharing.
As QRI advisors Anders Amelin and Margareta “Maggie” Wassinge write on the topic: "On the topic of liberty of mind, we may reflect that inhibitory mechanisms are typically strong within groups of people. As is the case within minds of individuals. In minds it's this tip of the iceberg which gets rendered as qualia and is the end result of unexperienced hierarchies of powerfully constraining filters. It's really practical for life forms to function this way and for teams made up of life forms to function similarly, but for making grand improvements to the very foundations of life itself, you need maximum creativity instead of the default self-organizing consensus emergence.
"There is creativity-limiting pressure to conform to 'correctness' everywhere. Paradigmatic correctness in science, corporate correctness in business, social correctness, political correctness, and so on. As antidotes to chaos these can serve a purpose but for exceptional intellectual work to blossom they are quite counterproductive. There is something to be said for Elon Musk's assertion that 'excellence is the only passing grade'.
"The difference to the future wellbeing of sentient entities between the QRI becoming something pretty much overall OK-ish, and the QRI becoming something of great excellence, is probably bigger than between the corresponding outcomes for Tesla Motors.
"The creativity of the team is down to this exact thing: The qualia computing of the gut feeling getting to enjoy a haven of liberty all too rare elsewhere."
On (2) we can say that to "be the adult in the room" is also equally important. As Michael Johnson puts it, "it's important to keep track of the metadata of ideas." One cannot incentivize smart people to share ideas if they don't feel like others will recognize who came up with them. While not everyone pays close attention to who says what in conversation, we think that a reasonable level of attention on this is necessary to align incentives. Obviously too much emphasis on Idea Ownership can be stifling and generate excessive overhead. So having open conversations about (failed) attribution while assuming the best from others is also a key practice to make Idea Ownership good for everyone.
And finally, (3) is the principle of "Information Responsibility". This is the "wise old person" energy and attitude that deeply cares about the effects that information has on the world. Simple heuristics like "information wants to be free" and the ideal of a fully "open science" are pleasant to think about, but in practice they may lead to disasters on a grand scale. From gain of function research in virology to analysis of water pipes in cities, cutting-edge research can at times encounter novel ways of causing great harm. It's imperative that one resists the urge to share them with the world for the sake of signaling how smart one is (which is the default path for the vast majority of people and institutions!). One needs to cultivate the wisdom to consider the long-term vision and only share ideas one knows are safe for the world. Here, of course, we need a balance: too much emphasis on information security can be a tactic to thwart other's work and may be undully onerous and stifling. Striking the right balance is the goal.
The full synergy between these three principles of Cognitive Sovereignty, I think, is what allows people to think new thoughts.
I also cover two new key ideas: (a) Canceling Paradise and (b) Multi-level Selection and how it interacts with Organizational Freedom.
~Qualia of the Day: Long Walks on the Beach~
----------------------------
Relevant links:
Cognitive Liberty - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty
Need for Cognition - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition
Why Care About Meme Hazards (Justin Shovelain and Andrés Gómez Emilsson) - qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/30/why-care-about-meme-hazards-and-thoughts-on-how-to-handle-them
Free Energy Minimization at the Schelling Point of the Pacific Ocean - youtu.be/-xom6YwifDg
Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun - qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/30/ephemerisle-health-homeostasis-worldview-annealing-and-the-long-tails-of-serious-fun
