[FRIAM] differential diagnosis of psychopathic vs spiritual experiences

[steve smith]

On 8/7/24 9:43 AM, glen wrote:
> Why? Why would you burn that energy to perform such a task?

    <snark> because as with all technology for all of time,

        "because we can"

    </snark>

    I agree/realize that in our rush to embrace "the next cool thing" it
    is easy to get carried away... like with the (relative) excesses of
    Car Races and Barnstorming at the dawn of personal transportation.

    I feel my own self-dissatisfaction with the seduction I feel for
    chatting with GPT as a "bar friend" as much as I do... a *real* bar
    friend would only consume order 100W at most to bend his/her brain
    around my nonsensical suppositions and investigations... I doubt GPT
    is so efficient.  Also, if the brew we are quaffing is of local
    production, a lot of the energy we are processing from gut-biome to
    glucose/blood-alcohol into our brains (and stool-sat butt-flexors)
    came directly from the sunlight falling near by on fields of grain
    and hops.

Specifically to Stephen's particular application du jour, I share a 
certain fascination with the way GPT/LLMs can so adeptly expand the 
dimensionality of my maunderings for/with me.  I don't always believe it 
does it in what I would call responsible or even useful-to-me space, but 
it does allow/suggest some opening up of my parallaxical aperture (as 
does most any conversation with you, Glen... ) but you are more the 100W 
version with a specific unique perspective vs the order(s)of magnitude 
higher energy abuse version of GPT.

Compared to the Million or so miles I drove in cars, trucks, 
motorcycles, airplanes in my life "just because I could" in my life, I 
think my LLM indulgences are still somewhat small, but do threaten to 
overtake quietly... just as standing by a gas-pump to fill a 20gallon 
tank with $20 gallons of petrol (and a $1 quart of motor oil and some 
free air in my leaky tires) to then drive across the state, as a young 
adult felt like effing magic, so does casually asking GPT every inane 
question I can think of for $20/month (or free if I prefer)...    I 
should definitely wire in my GPT usage to a rowing machine and only 
allow myself to ask as many questions (or carry on as many discussions) 
as my own energy input into the grid (or noosphere) would allow if there 
were an actual connection.

I think I'll ask an LLM the best way to go about that, and get back to you!

- Steve

>
> On 8/6/24 18:05, Stephen Guerin wrote:
>> Glen writes:
>>  >We had identities like "head" (kid who does lots of drugs), "jock" 
>> (kids who spent lots of time in organized athletics), "brain" (kids 
>> who spent time doing chess, math, ...), etc. There was also a name 
>> for the [metal|wood|…] shop kids. But I've forgotten it.
>>
>> Ala the ElfSelector and Consciousness Table, I asked GPT to generate 
>> 30 highschool social groups  from the 80, 3 orthogonal vectors with 
>> semantic meaning to separate them and 3 questions to ask you to put 
>> you in the space.
>> https://guerin.acequia.io/identityTensor.html 
>> <https://guerin.acequia.io/identityTensor.html>
>>
>> literally 40 seconds from prompt to deployed page :-)
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 8:30 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     I'm in an ongoing argument with some of my salon goers about 
>> identity. People seem to straddle its multiple meanings for 
>> rhetorical (or confirmation biasing) purposes, fluidly switching one 
>> context/meaning for another so often and so fluidly as to prevent me 
>> from understanding whatever it is they're saying (or trying to avoid 
>> saying).
>>
>>     Introspection is rife with such problems, including a six year 
>> old coming to some self-identification/registration as a member of 
>> some crisp class/category. The most recent Bad Faith rhetoric about 
>> identity had to do with "neurodivergent". There seems to be a trend 
>> amongst "the kids these days" to identify as autistic or ADHD. I 
>> mean, I was clearly "different" when I was a kid. We had identities 
>> like "head" (kid who does lots of drugs), "jock" (kids who spent lots 
>> of time in organized athletics), "brain" (kids who spent time doing 
>> chess, math, ...), etc. There was also a name for the [metal|wood|…] 
>> shop kids. But I've forgotten it.
>>
>>     Some of us were diagnosed with various labels including some 
>> words we're not supposed to say anymore. Many of my friends had such 
>> conditions. But none of us *identified* as those diagnoses. The 
>> diagnoses seemed almost orthogonal to the identities/tribes. (I 
>> happened to be a member of the heads, jocks, brains, and "band nerd" 
>> tribes; that multi-tribe crossover was part of what made me feel 
>> "different".) And each group had its share of the same diagnoses.
>>
>>     It seems to me that our tech-associated, individualistic, 
>> isolation has driven "the kids" to over-emphasize their diagnoses, to 
>> adopt them as identities/tribes, identifying from the inside->out; 
>> whereas we (can't speak for anyone else, really) mostly identified 
>> from the outside->in. We were sorted by society. The kids these days 
>> seem more self-sorted. On the one hand, that could feel like 
>> increased liberty and free association. But on the other hand, it's 
>> like everyone is a home-schooled weirdo these days and nobody knows 
>> how to, for example, bite their tongue or avoid picking their nose in 
>> public.
>>
>>     Not everybody needs to be a Hunter S Thompson, "neurodivergent", 
>> or whatever. Some of us should be allowed to identify as "normal". 
>> Introspection is a sickness.
>>
>>     On 8/5/24 17:01, steve smith wrote:
>>      > I jumped straight to the Artistic meaning of /frottage/ as 
>> coined originally by Max Ernst and while not as an act of 
>> psychopathy, it does have strong implications for the 
>> psychological/subconscious implications in this context?
>>      >
>>      > In any case, I find it a compelling opening line of the /call 
>> me Ishmael/ caliber.
>>      >
>>      > On 8/5/24 10:04 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>>      >> This is very interesting, and timely. I am completing an 
>> autobiography/essay/monograph for which this will be quite relevant. 
>> The opening lines of the work:
>>      >>
>>      >> /"An act of frottage triggered the self-recognition that I 
>> was a psychopath. I did not, of course, know either term or their 
>> meanings./
>>      >> /
>>      >> /
>>      >> /I was six." /
>>      >>
>>      >> davew
>>      >>
>>      >> On Thu, Aug 1, 2024, at 11:03 AM, glen wrote:
>>      >> > Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and 
>> Intervention Criteria
>>      >> > for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives From Buddhist
>>      >> > Meditation Teachers and Practitioners
>>      >> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/ 
>> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/>
>>      >> >
>>      >> > Based on our conversation attempting to identify behavioral 
>> markers for
>>      >> > consciousness, I thought this paper might give some insight 
>> into Dave's
>>      >> > straddling of mystical and materialistic descriptions of 
>> experiences he
>>      >> > marks as conscious. In the paper, they lay out 11 levers 
>> for making the
>>      >> > distinction:
>>      >> >
>>      >> > • Circumstances of Onset
>>      >> > • Control
>>      >> > • Critical Attitude
>>      >> > • Cultural Compatibility
>>      >> > • Distress
>>      >> > • Duration
>>      >> > • Functional Impairment
>>      >> > • Health History or Condition
>>      >> > • Impact
>>      >> > • Phenomenological Qualities
>>      >> > • Teachers’ Skills or Resources
>>      >> >
>>      >> >  From my perspective that consciousness is a kind of fusion 
>> function,
>>      >> > Control, Critical Attitude, Distress, and Functional 
>> Impairment are
>>      >> > primary and the rest are secondary. The ability to (change 
>> one's) focus
>>      >> > of attention is a hallmark of consciousness, and those 4 
>> levers
>>      >> > direclty target one's ability to focus. Duration may well 
>> be secondary
>>      >> > and the rest tertiary, I guess. Because there's something 
>> like a
>>      >> > half-life of controllability. If, say, you're a conspiracy 
>> theorist,
>>      >> > and you *entertain*, say, flat earth for long enough, maybe 
>> you'll lack
>>      >> > the ability to re-focus and don a critical attitude. 
>> Similarly, if you
>>      >> > embed into, say, procedural programming long enough, maybe 
>> you'll lose
>>      >> > the ability to re-focus and think functionally ... a kind 
>> of Functional
>>      >> > Impairment (sorry for the polysemy of "functional", there).
>>      >> >
>
>
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