Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Sections, loosely tagged:
0:00 intro, background context
3:40 can Ivan control Malcolm?
5:25 professional examples of interpersonal control
17:00 traps along the way
22:30 depression from stopping coercive motivation without already having joyful motivation
27:28 Roman use of "discipline" & "virtue"
32:40 how to measure motivational efficiency
34:15 coercion has goodhart built-in: washing the dishes 🧼🍽️
41:40 jobs you love, jobs you hate
52:30 internal conflict causes stuckness & oscillations
58:00 pre-coercive culture got outcompeted
1:02:50 aiming for a new thing that feels better
1:07:45 propaganda against your animal
1:12:00 theology: does reality punish/coerce you?
1:16:20 early history of science
1:19:50 limits of cultural propaganda
1:22:00 cultural knowledge greater than individual secret of our success
1:27:40 overcoordinated overshoulded
1:30:00 cultural transition phases
1:35:30 research agenda: the shift
1:37:45 law of conservation of coercion?
1:41:30 our equiv of "drosophilia" for testing
Background links:
- Ivan's: nothinghuman.substack.com/p/searching-for-the-root-of-the-tree
- mine: malcolmocean.com/2022/12/coercion-in-terms-of-scarcity-pct
- Ch18 of B:CP PCT book: docs.google.com/document/d/1iXQJ3Tc36RNgser2a1E27bW3G3qrWzJ3QhRCMAEMHDM/edit
Links/resources mentioned:
Trinley Goldenberg re non-coercive motivation: https://x.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1819122821273989454
Virginia Valian's "Learning to Work": tinyurl.com/vv-l2w
essay from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on Roman Virtues: https://acoup.blog/2024/03/29/fireside-friday-march-29-2024-on-roman-values/
coercion has goodhart built-in
compromise - halfway between goals, neither satisfied
Planetary scale vibe collapse: smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-24-planetary-scale-vibe-collapse.html
andrew cutler - cultural diffusion: vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
wolf's conception of the abrahamic god as that which stands in for real reality
reality doesn't punish you: palladiummag.com/2023/07/13/dont-learn-your-values-from-society
early history of science
loving cosmos - see this video on the supercooperation cluster: youtu.be/X6MYsKeTjKk
Secret of our Success: slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success
Richard Ngo "overcoordinated"
Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism: marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
**"I'm free to do whatever I want"**
for understanding origins of lying/coercion, check out here: vectorsofmind.com/p/eve-theory-of-consciousness-v3
lots of models talk about a big transition from pre-coercion to coercion to post-coercion; here's one: context.org/foundation-stones
here's a piece on the current transition https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Game_B
"cybernetics or computational model of coordination that is too vague in both of our minds for us to really get at the crux of our disagreement"
research agenda: can we characterize in a clear way, why it was that the coercive pattern won out over the ancestral vibe-based pattern?
Sections, loosely tagged:
0:00 intro, background context
3:40 can Ivan control Malcolm?
5:25 professional examples of interpersonal control
17:00 traps along the way
22:30 depression from stopping coercive motivation without already having joyful motivation
27:28 Roman use of "discipline" & "virtue"
32:40 how to measure motivational efficiency
34:15 coercion has goodhart built-in: washing the dishes 🧼🍽️
41:40 jobs you love, jobs you hate
52:30 internal conflict causes stuckness & oscillations
58:00 pre-coercive culture got outcompeted
1:02:50 aiming for a new thing that feels better
1:07:45 propaganda against your animal
1:12:00 theology: does reality punish/coerce you?
1:16:20 early history of science
1:19:50 limits of cultural propaganda
1:22:00 cultural knowledge greater than individual secret of our success
1:27:40 overcoordinated overshoulded
1:30:00 cultural transition phases
1:35:30 research agenda: the shift
1:37:45 law of conservation of coercion?
1:41:30 our equiv of "drosophilia" for testing
Background links:
- Ivan's: nothinghuman.substack.com/p/searching-for-the-root-of-the-tree
- mine: malcolmocean.com/2022/12/coercion-in-terms-of-scarcity-pct
- Ch18 of B:CP PCT book: docs.google.com/document/d/1iXQJ3Tc36RNgser2a1E27bW3G3qrWzJ3QhRCMAEMHDM/edit
Links/resources mentioned:
Trinley Goldenberg re non-coercive motivation: https://x.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1819122821273989454
Virginia Valian's "Learning to Work": tinyurl.com/vv-l2w
essay from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on Roman Virtues: https://acoup.blog/2024/03/29/fireside-friday-march-29-2024-on-roman-values/
coercion has goodhart built-in
compromise - halfway between goals, neither satisfied
Planetary scale vibe collapse: smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-24-planetary-scale-vibe-collapse.html
andrew cutler - cultural diffusion: vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
wolf's conception of the abrahamic god as that which stands in for real reality
reality doesn't punish you: palladiummag.com/2023/07/13/dont-learn-your-values-from-society
early history of science
loving cosmos - see this video on the supercooperation cluster: youtu.be/X6MYsKeTjKk
Secret of our Success: slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success
Richard Ngo "overcoordinated"
Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism: marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
**"I'm free to do whatever I want"**
for understanding origins of lying/coercion, check out here: vectorsofmind.com/p/eve-theory-of-consciousness-v3
lots of models talk about a big transition from pre-coercion to coercion to post-coercion; here's one: context.org/foundation-stones
here's a piece on the current transition https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Game_B
"cybernetics or computational model of coordination that is too vague in both of our minds for us to really get at the crux of our disagreement"
research agenda: can we characterize in a clear way, why it was that the coercive pattern won out over the ancestral vibe-based pattern?
