Notes on Mental Security

Note: these are some rough, preliminary notes on mental security, defined as the art and discipline of keeping one's mental software free from hostile external influence. Or in other words, having a mind able to achieve its own goals, rather than goals of, say, Moloch or other people which happened to be around. This is supposed to serve as a reference point for discussion and further thought. It's definitely not an explanation or a tutorial.

• Why?

  • this is dangerous business, and not one that human minds are designed for
  • however, necessary to do anything which is far outside of the Overton window of agency
    • if you are doing such a thing, you might just as well ignore the risk, because if you fail at security your cause is doomed anyway
  • of course, security is pointless unless you are convinced that you actually have some integrity/values/thoughts that are worth protecting
  • and it should go without saying that working on security with insufficient self-knowledge is just shooting yourself in the foot really hard

• Detection / Self-Diagnosis

  • Male-Type Threats

    • which people or sources...
      • are you impressed by?
      • do you turn to when in doubt?
      • do you listen to/read very eagerly?
      • always have convincing arguments?
      • seem to always be right?
      • you can't imagine disagreeing with?
    • monitoring beliefs
      • coherent meta-epistemics
      • making beliefs pay rent
      • tracking social reality separately
      • disconnecting beliefs from identity
      • noticing burned beliefs
        • beliefs which are maxed out the scale of intuitive confidence, indicating that the whole scale is miscalibrated
      • wielding artifacts of power

  • Female-Type Threats

    • which people or social strategies...
      • do you tend to find attractive?
      • make you feel safe?
      • make it hard for you to think clearly?
      • are you jealous of?
      • you can't imagine living without?
      • cause you to ruminate a lot?
      • you can't imagine hurting?
    • monitoring emotions
      • what emotional reactions do you have that seem inconsistent with your values?
        • again, should be obvious but: are you by any chance wrong about your values?
      • do they predictably change in certain situations, or around certain people?
      • are you sometimes surprised by your own emotions or actions?
      • do you experience akrasia?
      • do you tend to avoid situations which would make you experience strong emotions?
      • packet capture
        • spend a few days in isolation, watch compromised mental processes try to restore communication

• Prevention

  • learning to see through threats in real-time
    • building models in increasingly difficult situations
    • watching from afar how other people are being pwned
    • replicating offensive tactics to learn about them
    • pentest by a trusted and skilled third party
    • strong meta-rationality to estimate threat levels
  • offense is (some) defense
    • however, this is leaky and fragile
    • might give a false sense of security until you are suddenly out of your league
    • it is common to subconsciously gravitate to this local optimum
    • there are ethical concerns
  • firewall
    • gather evidence about power levels of various treats
    • avoid exposure to known threats above your level
    • keep physical distance if possible

Warning: all the articles linked above potentially lead to lethal memetic infection loads. There isn't much I can do about it.