Pushing against reality
I.
"Wake up, it is time."
My ears were drifting away from the surface. But they could still register faint voices from the other side. I could feel my weight dissolving slowly in the quicksand of warmth. It had been three hours since I placed myself in the sleeping bag. Something powerful pulled me back to the surface. It was time for the summit push.
You have been asking what you could do in the great events that are now stirring, and have found that you could do nothing. But that is because your suffering has caused you to phrase the question in the wrong way... Instead of asking what you could do, you ought to have been asking what needs to be done.
— Steven Brust, The Paths of the Dead
"To see the sunrise on summit we must leave the camp by 2 am."
We left the camp by 3:30 am. Some parts within me had begun with the acceptance process. The sooner you accept the reality of failure the easier it would be, they told me. Other parts could picture only one thing — a summit with the sunrise.
I rushed ahead of the pack without thinking much, like a madman. Toes throbbing with pain, a possibly torn hip flexor and the barely functioning rest of me soon found a group of people from a different camp. This group was ahead of all the other groups. They had left their camp by 2 am.
How do you claim to know it is impossible? To believe that something is impossible is to mistake "No one sees how it is possible" for "It is impossible". As the years have gone by, I've been increasingly struck by just how stupid humans are, and how most of our intelligence is just the painfully slow accumulation of the cultural store of better concepts. Once you keep in mind how humans have been wrong forever about most things, the fact that everyone claims that something is impossible loses its misperceived predictive force.
It made no rational sense to put myself through this pain. I kept climbing up for three hours. At 6:20 am it dawned upon me that there is nothing more left to climb. It took a while for my body to realise this, so I ambled around in awe of the human capability, with a shattered concept of reality. The domain of possibilities had expanded faster than I could make any sense of it.
I was not supposed to see the sunrise on the summit, but I did.
Even though individual problems in AI have seemed to become less intimidating over time, the total mountain-to-be-climbed has increased in height—just like conventional wisdom says is supposed to happen—as problems got taken off the "impossible" list and put on the "to do" list.
I started to understand what was happening—and what "Persevere!" really meant. ... And I realized that the word "impossible" had two usages:
1) Mathematical proof of impossibility conditional on specified axioms;
2) "I can't see any way to do that."
Needless to say, all my own uses of the word "impossible" had been of the second type.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, On Doing the Impossible
~
II.
"Do or do not, there is no try" — what does it really mean? Why would Yoda say that? Why would I not try? That is all I can do. What is it that Neo heard in "Come on! Stop trying to hit me, and hit me!" that I cannot?
I can see one thing very clearly about the night of summit push now, as I piece together my life's inflection points. I was willing to be immodest — either I pass out in the way or I make it to the top of the mountain before sunrise. Trying would permit me to get away with "I did my job, I made an attempt, I did what I could do". But I was doing this for myself. Trying is not sufficient. The only way I can have any shot at winning is if I push hard against reality.
I realised that I don't have to be modest about how much I want something.
To me, trying feels like pushing hard against my own resistance. Doing feels like pushing hard against reality.
... When you're in doing mode instead of trying mode, the inner conflicts fall away and you can practice punching reality with your whole soul. Imagine how far you'll go if every move you make carries the entire weight of your being.
— alkjash, Hammertime Day 2: Yoda Timers
It would be foolish to publicly announce that you will break a concrete wall with a punch — knowing very well that you almost certainly cannot. Pushing against reality can feel like punching a concrete wall.
I attribute much of modesty as a response to the pain of failure. Modesty feels like a defence mechanism. Being modest about your intentions shelters you from the weight of expectations. There is no obligation to give it your all with "I might try this". And "I will do this" feels like an slur of audacity.
1. You will be punished for trying new things.
2. You will be punished for trying things that don't work.
3. You will be punished for trying to understand how good you are at something.
4. You will be punished for succeeding.
— David R. MacIver, The social obligation to be bad at things
In the hands of a self proclaimed rationalist, modesty can become a weapon of self destruction. Rationalisations can be created as and when needed. They can conceal the laziness, and disguise it as modesty. All tries can be justified with a bit of cleverness.
Modesty doesn't help. It may seem like it is protecting you, but it doesn't. Inaction may seem like the best survival strategy, but it is not. My experience tells me that modesty has aged into futility. We need more immodesty.
… So before I left, I told all my friends that when I come back, that book was going to be done! Yes, I would have it done - I’d have been ashamed to come back without it! I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged about something so I’d have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to say, “Oh yes, I’ll get the answer for you Tuesday,” not having any idea how to do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I said, like a cornered rat I’m surprised how often I did a good job. I think you need to learn to use yourself. I think you need to know how to convert a situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.
— Richard Hamming, You and Your Research
~
III.
Doing the impossible is not for everyone. But it is worth your honest effort. There are enough people playing it safe, content with their concept of possibility, with frozen boundaries of reality.
We recently reported on a game played at the closing dinner at last December’s Chess Classic. During this dinner at Simpsons in the Strand they stage a now traditional simul by the players of the Classic against the guests. Most tables have one or more strong chess players whose job is to guide rather than direct. One particularly high-powered table had Rachel Reeves, MP, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who was a UK U14 girls champion, Professor Vinayak Dravid, a leading nanotechnologist from the University of Chicago, the Indian High Commissioner Rajesh N Prasad, Jo Johnson MP, brother of Boris, and Frederic Friedel. Their advisor was Garry Kasparov … After the game some of the simul masters said Kasparov had perhaps been too generous with his advice during the game. But he vigorously denied this: “Before the critical sacrifice I said one word: ‘wow!’ Fred immediately jumped up and started to analyse with Rachel, and they worked out the sacrifice together, in less then a minute.” He then proceeded to recount the story about his 1996 game against Anand in Las Palmas, given above, and how at the time it had become clear to him that a single bit of information, passed on to a player at the right moment, could have a decisive influence on the course of a game. “If Fred was allowed to come in and signal ‘now!’ in the critical position I would have worked out 20.g4 and played it!” That’s right, it often needs just one bit of information – ‘now!’ – to change the result of a game.
— Frederic Friedel, A history of cheating in chess (4)
I would have given up if I had not found that group of climbers rushing ahead of everyone else. They were climbing a completely different mountain. That is all it took — a hint of a different possibility. The courage to be immodest was passed onto me by the people marching ahead. They showed me that something real exists beyond my concept of reality.
One of my favorite Kaggle facts: after a long leaderboard stagnation period for a competition, seeing one team make a sudden breakthrough will often cause multiple independent teams to quickly reproduce the same breakthrough -- with no knowledge of how the first team did it.
I often think of ways to reduce the cost of risk, of making failure cheaper, and making courage more accessible. It is only fair that I pass along what the climbers ahead left for me. It is a thing of pure joy to see others climb the mountains that they earlier thought they couldn't.
Embodying magic is the only way to foster the embers of an impossible effort.
Meeting magicians is the first step to becoming one – when you are attempting to learn implicit knowledge that by definition you don’t understand, it is important to have a bunch of examples in front of you to feed your brain’s pattern-recognition systems. This will start to change your worldview without the controlling 'you' explicitly approving or denying every new belief or framework.
— Jessica Watson Miller, Becoming a magician
I'm here to tell you that I accept your immodesty. Your honest, fullest attempt matters to me more than the outcome. I will not punish you for failing. I give you the permission to try do, for what it's worth.
Often all that’s needed, but never comes, is an ordinary effort.
— Zvi Mowshowitz, More Dakka
~
A big thanks to Gwern, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Zvi Mowshowitz. Their explorations and ideas inspired this essay.