A Sermon Concerning Local Maxima

And a cheap experiment to evaluate the claim therein

You have been told, “Be cautious, for the local maximum is not the global maximum.”

I claim, “There are no local maxima. There is, always and everywhere, some positive gradient to qualia’s valence manifold. You can collect evidence of this fact, if you wish. The experiment is simple. It requires only the use of your imagination.”

You have been told, “Consider tradeoffs in all things!”

I claim, “There are no tradeoffs. Not in the long run, not over what really matters to you. You can collect direct evidence of this fact, if you wish. The experiment is cheap: it costs only your pride.”

You have been told, “beware of greedy algorithms! Their inability to consider all possible future states of the world leaves them likely to get stuck in a local maximum. Long term planning is essential, lest you get stuck.”

I claim, “There is a greedy algorithm for living the life you want. You can consistently satisfy coherent extrapolated volition without constraining your anticipation. You can collect evidence of this fact, if you are willing. It requires only letting go of some ideas that you may not be willing to admit you believe.”

What is this experiment? It is quite simple: pretend that certain things are true, and act accordingly.

You need not actually believe these things - you need only determine how you would act if these things were true, and then try to act in those ways. Acting in these ways will cause you to accumulate evidence of the effectiveness of this greedy strategy. The accumulated evidence will make it easier for you to continue acting as if, until you really do believe.

Do the science. Perform the experiment with an open mind. Observe the results. 

See for yourself. It works.

What should you pretend?

Pretend that you know and understand very little of all there is to know.  Pretend that it is very easy to deceive yourself, especially about yourself.  Pretend that only curiosity, skepticism, diverse friendships and healthy debates will prevent you from putting on VR goggles made of false beliefs.

Pretend that there is real territory to which your experienced valence corresponds, and that - just like with the causal territory - your valence can be, and often is, incorrect.

Pretend that there is a reality outside your mind, and that this reality is good.

OK, but how?

Suffering is real. Pain, misery, and grief - these are real. To successfully perform the experiment, you need not pretend these do not exist. You must only pretend that:

• a) you do not fully understand the causal structure of reality

• b) voluntarily enduring suffering in the present leads to a dramatic increase in expected future valence¹.

OK, but seriously, how?

If you’d like a more detailed make-believe guide, this is the framework I have been using for the past ~decade.

It’s working for me.

Pretend that the true laws of physics are a pedagogical instrument, the optimal means by which Truth itself makes itself known to you. Pretend that any difficulty you encounter is actually the best possible lesson to accelerate your growth and development. Pretend that “each moment I experience is perfectly constructed for my growth” is the deep structure of causality.² 

You will find yourself learning and growing. As your evidence for the proposition grows, the effort required to execute the search for lessons diminishes. You will learn even painful lessons faster and more readily. You will grow in wisdom.

Pretend that worry and anxiety are deeply irrational - not only because they do not work, but because a good future is guaranteed by the laws of physics. Pretend that the trend of increasing human quality of life, increasing dignity, and increasing information flows, are all natural outcomes of exposing a wet ball of rock to a continuous heat bath until it develops Turing complete agents which are capable of first recognizing, and then computing love.³

You will find yourself making better decisions. Your life will grow richer. As your evidence for proposition grows, the effort necessary to generate hope diminishes.

Pretend that merely being yourself and doing a good job is sufficient to meet all of your needs and most of your true wants, those congruent with coherent extrapolated volition. Pretend that deep specialization makes you sufficiently scarce that you can obtain a reliably sufficient stream of energy merely by doing a great job of being yourself.

You will find yourself learning more about yourself, better managing your energy and attention, leading to better outcomes that only you can produce. As your evidence in the proposition grows, you will find yourself loving and accepting yourself more readily. You will grow in patience.

Pretend that no amount of social recognition will be enough to help you accept and love yourself, and that, conversely, once you accept and love yourself, no amount of social recognition will matter to you. You will find yourself caring less about what other people think, say, and do. As your evidence in this proposition grows, you will find it easier be kinder to and more accepting of others. You will grow in love.

Pretend that you will never, ever in your life, face the trolley problem, but that you will encounter suffering and the temptation to simply lay down on the tracks and wait. Pretend that the question of “how should the world look” is much less important than the question of “how can I be the man I want to be?”

You will find yourself holding back. Refraining from doing things you’d rather not do, leading to better outcomes in your life. You will grow in temperance.

Pretend that in any moment, you have a choice of attitude, of selecting the valence vector and relevance scope of your outermost narrative frame. You can be totally open to and accepting of what is happening around you, or you can narrow your focus, grasping and shoving at some tiny subset of the present moment.

You can find, experimentally, that one of these approaches works better than the other. As your evidence of this proposition grows, you will find it easier to keep the big picture in mind. You will experience increased lateral insight, as dopaminergic inhibition of insight diminishes due to your increasing capacity to turn off task networks, using an ancient technique called “relaxation.”

Pretend to Take Seriously the Wisdom of the Past

Pretend that all of these beliefs are articulations of the same singular underlying truth that wise men in civilized places have known for all of history. Pretend that, lacking terminology like “valence manifold,” “local optima”, and “temporally-bounded orthogonality thesis” they attempted to communicate this truth by means of narratives and prescriptions, rules and rituals. 

You will find yourself desiring to know more, about all cultures, all people, all times. As evidence for this proposition accumulates, you will feel an increasing sense of unity with all of humanity.

You don’t have to actually believe this stuff. Just imagine that it were true, and then do your best act as if it were true. Try to keep this up for a statistically significant sample size. And then ask: were these recent days better than the ones before? Isn’t this how you already want to act most of the time anyhow?

You have been told, “be wary of reasoning about values, for you cannot get an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’.” But I say to you: you ought to join the fork in your own mind, and understand the most important fact about values:

Facts come from values, not the other way around.

1. The difference between “investment” and “sacrifice” is only a matter of cultural construction. Both of these phenomena are real, natural, and occur in nonhuman species, particularly among K-selected species which thrive in hostile niches, like those with cold winters.

2. Karl Popper approves of this experiment. If you are truly committed to look for the lesson in any scenario, and you don’t find one, you’ve either falsified the thesis that the lesson exists, or you’ve falsified the thesis that you’ve put in enough energy into the search process to uncover whatever growth vector lies within your suffering. Choose the latter. I predict you’ll be glad that you did.

3. Love is the dominant strategy, if you define the game such that the only outcome that matters is that you feel good. What other game makes any sense?