2026-02-24
Self-fulfilling prophecies only work on brainless people
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- target audience - myself. but I ran a mind sim of someone I know who probably takes self-fulfilling prophecies seriously
Main
- I seem to have atleast some aversion to anyone who ever brings up the topic of self-fulfilling prophecies.
- Like, it is straightforwardly true that self-fulfilling prophecies are quite effective. Many salesmen and politician seem to use atleast a bit of this, and it works!
- I think my actual problem with this is that you're basically exploiting the tendency of humans to groupthink. And like, sure, business and politics often require you to instumentalise people in this way, but I often feel bad trying to use people in this way.
- Actually ambitious people know better than you what they actually want out of life. What they need is information, information about the world, information about what you think of their plans, information about their inner values, and so on. They sure as shit don't want you mind controlling them into whatever retarded direction you have planned for them.
- Part of me still wishes I could just optimise for everyone's long-term good, and not have to instrumentalise people in this way. I understand that because the ASI risk problem is so dire, someone may have to unfortunately use self-fulfilling prophecies anyway, as part of getting the masses to follow them.
P.S. I find this extra confusing because atleast some people online (not sure if I should names) seem to have a positive vibe attached to self-fulling prophecies, whereas I'm like "no, please dont do this to people". More nuance to be explored here.
- I think atleast part of the problem is that when people use self-fulfilling prophecies, it is either to deliberately screw over someone completely, or at best optimise for someone's short-term good but not their long-term good.
- If you were genuinely optimising for someone's long-term good, then maybe using self-fulfilling prophecies is fine? But also, if that's the case, why can't you just prove this to them, is it so hard? Why do you have to resort to exploiting the groupthink tendency of their brain?
Oh
- I think I realised the problem. You are basically exploiting cognitive security holes when you do this stuff, and just because you are exploiting these holes for their own good, doesn't mean you're not exploiting this. A utopian civilisation would have patched everyone's security instead.
- I want to tell people, stop being so goddamn naive and use your brain. Today I might mind control you in a direction I like, tomorrow someone else might mind control you in a direction they like. If you actually use your brain, you will neither fall for my propaganda nor anyone else's.
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