#prediction trees

[mentalisttraceur]

Sometimes, people will say a bad thing is deserved to make themselves feel better, when what they're really feeling is "I wish I had the strength to prevent it."

[mentalisttraceur-long]

Prediction trees is still by far the biggest game-changer I have ever found for understanding, predicting, and healing people - both myself and others.

Prediction trees was the biggest broadening my empathy and compassion, because asking "what prediction trees would make this make sense?" is (in principle) a purely deterministic process which is guaranteed to eventually reach at least one sympathetic angle on why someone is a certain way or did something.

Ever struggle to see how a behavior or reaction could be rational? Prediction trees. If it's not obviously rational, and it's not obviously naturally selected rational game theory (either at the individual level or only for the benefit of a cooperating collective), prediction trees always makes this tractable and generates at least one possible answer ("if you had such and such life experience, this and this would be predictive of that, and if you have enough probability of that, it's rational to react that way").

Ever struggle to understand why you feel a certain way? Prediction trees, probably. Again, always yields at least one possible answer. The only problem is that sometimes the actual causes are "you have an untreated medical/physical issue", so merely generating a possible answer isn't enough. But prediction trees lets you prune and weigh possible answers - where before you might've needed to just directionlessly shrug, you now can just use actual logical inference to compare the likelihood of forming a given prediction tree, how you could get a given prediction tree from lossy optimization of a better prediction tree, the feasibility/complexity of a given tree, and so on.

Ever struggle to change how you feel or react to better match your values or what you think is rational? Prediction trees, sometimes (either unblocks the change, or reveals some way it's not as values-aligned or rational as you thought).

[mentalisttraceur-long]

Kinda reminds me of how what we're surprised by and why is a pretty neat mind interferometry tell.

Like, to me, it isn't surprising, but it would've been about five years ago, before I had the empirical logic and prediction trees epiphanies and update-rippled them through everything in my head.

There's also probably something about being comfortable with the low-level side of software and hardware development that helps - at least the part where your mind starts to fluently think with encoding/representation as entirely independent/orthogonal w.r.t. what operations you can do on the information/substance.

I think these are both necessary conditions, probably there are others too.

For example, I don't remember if I found it more surprising before I realized that my "verbal decoupling" experience was most-similar-to / best-explained-by my brain implementing a language predictor which my conscious thoughts drive (like one might a horse; left unattended it has a weak 'mind' of its own, but is also somewhat directionless and just sorta stops and chills a little while after the last spurring onward). But now it certainly feels more thoroughly less surprising to me with that then it would without it.

What I mean is... once you've thought with those concepts enough, I think it becomes obvious that

"every piece of text on the internet"

is overwhelmingly not random, and that in fact it would be a herculean task for any piece of text, any utterance, to not leak some evidence gesturing at how the real world is.

(Actually, fundamentally, it's not just herculean, it's impossible, because the set of texts and utterances that have been physically possible in our universe so far is a strict subset of all possible texts and utterances, and this creates an extremely subtle but present and inescapable empirical backstop which epistemological inference can in principle eventually find and brace against.)

All the "random" and wrong texts we produce are thoroughly shaped and shackled on all sides by deterministic (or at least stochastic with pretty good predictability at scale) forces and trends.

No one just emits wrong or "random" text by perfectly picking from the possibility space of things to say next at random. People say things because on some level they predict it will be funny, or helpful, or hurtful, or any number of things which are fundamentally influenced by predictions and empirical observation about how the world is and how other people are.

We just can never hold enough of those texts in our minds at once to "zoom out" enough - to see the grand patterns writ large in our collective noise. At best, our brain very incrementally does a lesser form of this, with all of its subconscious processing chipping away at the problem, caching some small number of partially-computed tentative pattern candidates in the form of not-yet-pruned neuron connections and so forth.

frankly it is surprising that a piece of text-prediction software trained on "every piece of text on the internet its engineers could get their hands on" ever says anything true at all

[raayllum]

But Ibis’ murder and Terry’s subsequent breakdown over taking a life does raise certain questions about Callum and Rayla going forward in two key ways, respectively. [...] This is also where Callum’s parallels to Terry gets particularly interesting as well. The Dragon Prince repeatedly frames murder in the face of self defense (specifically in defense of someone else) as something that removes agency. Thus, that begs the question of what Callum’s test will be, specifically: What will he do to protect his loved ones, perhaps Rayla in particular?

—Why Clauderry and Rayllum's parallels in S4 set up Callum doing something terrible for Rayla in S5, written a month and a half before S5

[tora-the-cat]

An interesting little fun thing with team 7 is that you assume that Sakura's gonna, like, woobify and simplify Sasuke by putting him on a pedastal,cause her goal is centered around him and shes a 12 y/o fangirl so like of course her understanding of him is skewed cause she doesnt see him as a person, just an object of affection, right? She's can't get Sasuke, can't imprint on and/or traumabond with him like Naruto and Kakashi do. They don't see him with rose tinted glasses, because they've lived through their own Horrors and empathize with Sasuke's experience.

......right?

WRONG lmao!! They have too many ghosts!! Naruto's single-minded codependent ass won't get out of his own way long enough to see Sasuke for who he actually is, only able to empathize with the parts of his trauma Naruto relates to and not really capable of understanding him outside of the context of himself (because Sasuke is. His other half). And Kakashi is far too jaded to be fair to him!! He can't decide if Sasuke is gonna end up as a mini-him or a mini-Obito or maybe a mini-Itachi, but either way he ALSO is too traumatized to see Sasuke AS SASUKE.

meanehile SAKURA'S autistic ass may have dogshit empathy, but you know what she does have? A special interest in sasuke. Nothing better to do then give herself a degree in Uchihaisms. She can write character studies about him. she can read his soul. Whenever she says something about him she is right. Every fucking time! She is RIGHT!!!!

'sasuke would NOT compliment me this directly or explicitly express worry unprompted, especially if it gets in the way of his goals' correct.

'Sasuke shouldn't hide that curse on his neck its not healthy BUT if I tell anyone about it he'll never trust me again, which might be even more dangerous for him then the curse mark. Like he can probably handle the curse mark but no one else can stop him from ripping peoples arms off.' correct.

Speaking of! 'Sasuke would not hurt me even when he seems to be...possessed? whatever the only way to knock him out of it is to present myself as Alive and thus something to be protected rather then something to be avenged, because he gets really stuck in his own head about revenge' CORRECT

'hey so um. like. Sasuke's gonna leave Konoha. I'm not sure anything can stop him at this point and honestly I'm kinda starting to doubt anything should, so the only thing I could possibly do to help him at this point is ALSO defect.' CORRECT!!!!

[kaijumilf]

FOB8 SLEUTHING

i need everyone to know i’m losing my mind about the fob8 ARG thing they’ve got going on right now. and i need you all to know that the date January 1st is so extremely important.

so there is a field of dreams quote popping up,  a baseball movie. the only song i can think of with an explicit baseball reference is Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown.

so, if you happen to go to the youtube playlists on their channel to find the playlist for Folie, you’ll notice that one: all playlists have been updated within a week ago. but more importantly you’ll notice that two: all of the songs on the Folie playlist have had their description edited to say released on 01-01-2008

and no. there is no way this is correct. the album was recorded in the summer and as we all know, released on December 10th.

THEN, if you went on the website to sign up for the postcard thing, youll have noticed the Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldnt Get Sued reference with the lyrics “Do not open before Christmas”.

So imagine my shock at the moment i went to check the description on the From Under The Cork Tree playlist and, sure enough, its been changed in the description of all those songs as well to January 1st. Again. this is very incorrect.

I dont know what this means, i doubt anything will be released on that day. However, Something is going to happen i fucking bet on it. Theres probably more clues and references im missing and maybe someone already beat me to this but. i thought this was important to share just in case.

[mentalisttraceur]

I think the next step is seeing a good reason for thinking that any instance of some problem in your awareness is an actual problem. Not an impeccably good reason, but something more charitably correct-seeming than just handwaving it off as emotionally immature stupidity (though I'll agree sometimes that's a fair framing of it).

The name will naturally follow, I think, but in any case would be more apt (more self-describing; more accurate; not emphasizing the wrong thing). Because the heart of the problem is the person is missing any strong-enough path from being aware of a problem to letting go of either

fearing it (including indirectly/transitively: fearing it hurting others due to empathy, fearing something else at the end of a prediction tree involving it, etc),

craving the reward of fixing/attacking it (desire for revenge, the monkey-brain satisfaction of someone getting fair comeuppance, moralistic narcissism to nurture/defend/reinforce an injured self-esteem by leaning into being morally good), or

the interpretation of it as a real problem (there are necessarily more possible "this is wrong/bad/evil" perspectives than actually wrong/bad/evil things, and most wrong/bad things are more nuanced and complicated than entirely wrong/bad - but you have to learn to see it that way).

Now, while my ideologies were objectively strictly better than anything anyone has ever come up with more nuanced than what OP has in mind, I had all three of these problems - all three of these were making me attached and viscerally opposed to all instances of [my pet problem(s)] in my awareness.

But the thing is, once you understand that, it's time to ask - did you actually identify anything? Because you (probably) wouldn't use this criticism against, say, murder, torture, rape, and so on. You wouldn't be like "the anti-{murder,torture,rape} ideologies share the commonality of someone immaturely+stupidly treating everything in their awareness as something that directly affects them or that they can affect".

So even though my initial reaction was "oh yeah this seems to be isolating a useful-to-name cognetic opening", on further thought, the real big difference here is just whether or not you think someone has identified a Real Problem, and if they did then it's reasonable to get mad about it and want to fix it even if it's outside of their "immediate environment", but if they didn't you're labeling them as stupid and immature thing there instead.

So now with that said, I think I can see at least three useful ideas to isolate here:

just the problem of a person getting emotionally reactive to things that they can't do anything about;

just the problem of being emotionally reactive to things that can't affect you (this isn't an objective+absolute category - if you care enough about something other than yourself, every instance of a problem can affect you through empathy for others or anguish about the world losing/missing something good... but it's emotionally and socially healthier for people to have a certain level of "not my problem" / "can't be my problem", so it's worth having a term for it);

just the problem of taking a subjective/relative/unlikely problem as objective+absolute+certain (this might be closer to what was originally meant here - taking a problem that is only valid to treat as a problem in a personal immediate-environment sense, and over-generalizing it).

I should come up with a name for this because I think it's the unifying thread I see between communism, and fascism, and censorship / anti-shippers, and homophobia, and a bunch of other shit. some theory that seeks to unify all that really should have an elegant name, shouldn't it? but it doesn't

rambly

I've said that it's impossible to deplatform fascism or communism because their ideas are so fucking childishly simple they can be independently re-derived by anyone who is upset at the world. "I'm upset. This is the fault of someone, who hates me and did it on purpose. Oh, I hate that guy so much. He does all the bad things, and if I kill him, there will be no more bad things." and that's why nobody's able to give a coherent definition of fascism, because you can't peg "emotional immaturity and righteous ignorance" to any specific teaching, you can't keep the concept of being emotionally immature and blaming others secret.

but despite the basis of these ideologies being so simple they don't need language, communism and fascism didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. what i think happened is, there's a personality trait people have that can expand immensely, that wasn't able to expand until the railroad and telegraph shrunk the world.

and that thing I wish I had a good name for is "the belief or assumption that a person's immediate environment includes everything they're aware of."

I think it's a thing people noticed but haven't identified as the causative factor, they just use it as an insult. but people want to be in control of their environment. they want things they don't like to not be there. the ability to control and affect our immediate environment is the basic definition of agency. if it's your house, it's your rules. that's reasonable!

but with the antis, and the homophobes, and the commies, and the fascists, they clearly behave as though their "house" encompasses everything that they are aware of.

the easiest example is the early 2000s homophobia where the refrain was "do what you want in private but don't get in my face about it," used to justify fucking with people who were in nobody's face. back then we all said "that's an agentically laid lie to justify their real opinion!" and guess what with an uncoordinated group of people it's never an agentically concocted lie. they did act only to get the gays out of their faces, but their "faces" encompassed everything they know about. gay dudes are gross, gross things make them upset, the only way to not be upset is to know there's no gay dudes being gross everywhere! and this mindset is something that only happened with the telegraph because before that, the area of your awareness wasn't that big! (the exception is probably Muslims in the Holy Land)

communism and fascism are both the assumption that everything you're aware of is right in your face, it's simple, it can and should be given to you to just Do Right. you can't have this idea that you have figured out everything wrong with the world until the area of your perception is big enough that you can think you're seeing the world. once your zone of perception is wide enough you instantly believe that all of it is directly your business, everything that upsets you is happening right in your face and you have to use your personal agency to control your environment by making the upsetting things go away.

this is why antis act the way they do. it's not an agentically crafted lie to get power. their behavior is compulsive like all political behavior is compulsive. the idea that someone is Doing A Bigotry somewhere makes them very upset, and it's right in their faces, and they want to make the upsetting thing go away, and the only way to do that is to take control of anywhere the upsetting thing might happen and make it not happen. the only way they know how to do this invariably destroys everything they touch but they cannot stop themselves, they have to take control of every environment so they won't be upset by the thought of people doing bad things. the communists have to take control of all economic activity so they won't be upset by the thought of someone getting rich. the fascists have to take control of every life so they won't be upset by the thought of someone not bowing to their supremacy. this mindset cannot conclude something is none of your business, because if you're aware of it, it's your business.

[prof-ramses]

The Tree Banshee theory

This is a theory predicting the role of Spooky Month's most enigmatic monster, one many fans might not even know about yet, so sit back and enjoy!

Watching HS for a second time, Gregor's pose here stuck out to me, so I went back to check my hunch...

Yep, he's in the same pose as the figure on the left wing of the gate. But what about the tree like figure on the right wing?

Well, for that, we turn to the movie theatre, many fans know about the demon priest poster that foreshadowed HS back in TT, well we see a very interesting poster for a second in episode 6

"The Forest Sight", huh?

Now for the clencher, we turn to an image from the arg

The same eye patterns, and a ghoulish being I've come to call the Tree Banshee, you might remember it for it's scream in TT or for an illustration of it in the book from the TT arg.

I believe this entity also somehow benefits from sacrifices made to Eyes and that it will be a/the major monster of a future episode, which lines up well with my idea of Roy's episode being about him chasing Skid and Pump into the woods, where they get lost.

[darkfictionjude]

saw the mood boards of the MCs and I would be sooo curious to see how you envision each universe of your IFs !! Esp the town

That’s the term I was looking for! I called it vibes because I forgot the mood boards 💀 thanks for the idea it’s good 😘

Alright I’ll do the town now and the rest tmrw

(Cue me just putting screen shots of the first twilight movie)

[beansnpeets]

I want so badly to support rescues, but why do they all have to be so #ad*ptd*ntsh*p??? Like please let me fucking support you without having to hear that you don't think my purebred dog should exist and that all purebred animals are bad and breeders are all evil!!!! We can fucking coexist! It doesn't have to be like this!

[mentalisttraceur]

"If it wasn't true, you'd have a rebuttal / wouldn't be so upset."

Calm down Freud, it's not that simple.

If a person is upset at your statement, all that tells you is that you hurt them, or merely reminded them of hurt, or pattern-matched in their brain as predictive or threatening of hurt. And if they care about anyone or anything other than themselves, "hurt" can mean empathy for others, grief for the greater good, and so on - even if what you said was just about them.

Confronting someone with a cutting or inconvenient truth which has no easy rebuttal is only one way of causing purely self-centered hurt.

But truths aren't the only things hard to rebut - after all, falsehoods and errors only thrive if it's too hard to show people, on the spot, in the attention span they have, where the mistake is.

And there are countless ways for falsehoods or errors to lead to hurtful behaviors and consequences.

A lot of the time, if someone is upset by what you've said and doesn't have a rebuttal, the wrongness is very clear in their mind, but they can't turn it into words which will work in the situation.

[jacobsnicket]

as far as i remember the tyrone [tree name] naming convention was entirely created by sywtbad but i think its really funny that we've stuck with it for so long to the point that naming one of dipper's human disguises anything else feels Wrong. like we were all lazy and so accidentally ended up creating the most in-character option. there are so so many names in the world to the point that its nearly impossible to choose one at the drop of a hat. of course dipper would have a go-to name, just out of routine, even if he's forgotten the reason he picked that name in the first place

[arolesbianism]

Some very lazy concept doodles for my swap au Wendy

[icy-watch]

Ok, so.

Cole was saved by Krag. And with a name like Krag, you know they're going to be a soft, cuddly friend. So Cole just made a new friend.

And the others are going to be worried bc they heard Krag roaring. They're def going to go on a rescue mission to save Cole.

I'm fairly certain it's going to go horribly. BUT they might find the Traveler's Tea. Hopefully. It's not going to work, but they'll find it. I'm pretty sure Krag found it and is keeping it safe.

Maybe they're keeping safe on the tree? Like it's a lost and found box or something? Idk, I've known Krag for 30 seconds and I love them.

Alright, 1 more episode tonight!

[arataka-reigen]

Kind yokais from Natsume's childhood my beloveds. He didn't only meet the scary kind. He just wasn't old enough to understand their kindness, and it ended up hurting him even more.

[prof-ramses]

More proof of the Tree Banshee theory

So, we know that the cult influenced the appearance for the church, with the diamond shaped window on the front door, so there's good odds they were responsible for this

A stained glass window depicting what appears to be a crucifixion as a person being turned into a tree, which further fits my idea of the banshee acting as a warden of sacrificed souls.