Built from first principles, grounded in neuroscience, allergic to bullshit. A map for people who still want the world to make sense and be good: IWRS: The Stillwell Derivation
"Empathy isn’t a glitch! It’s not a flaw to outgrow. It’s not some sentimental holdover from tribal pasts. It’s a feature of our biology; it’s part of how we made it this far, and for many of us, it’s a big part of why we’d even want to keep going." I totally agree. Empathy is what makes us human.
Needless suffering for me is stuttering. Unnecessary suffering is what I called it before. I set on the path of wiping it from the face of the earth years ago. I studied and thought and studied and thought. I am fluent today yet I can't revel in it. Why? Because as a child I used to pray at night that I wake up stutterless the next day. It never happened. Tonight there are children who pray the same prayer. And so what is my fluency if I can't make it possible for them too, and for all stutterers? I have framework upon framework, and theory upon theory, none yet exact to fit all the child and the teenager and the adult and the senior. The seniors called me 'the crazy guy who overcame his stuttering'. One would expect I'd take offense at crazy. I took offense at the fact I spoke and spoke to them explaining in the utmost of detail and grounding solutions in neurophysiological mechanisms and they never listened. I hadn't anticipated that. Because I hadn't anticipated people build their identities around needless suffering. There will always be needless suffering.
I live in a small city. I started this thing with Roma children begging on the street where if they learn multiplication by 7 I give them 10 euros. I taught each how to learn it and I swear soon enough they cared none about the reward. Each and every one would get this spark in their eye as it clicked. One of them comes to me one day and she starts calling me stupid and such. She hadn’t learned it yet and it likely became a point of pride and competition between them. She asks me why am I different from everyone else, which was kinda sad because it speaks to the fact they are mostly brushed off and ignored. I sidestep that and get to the multiplication. I slowly crack through. For every multiplication she had to do she stopped and thought long and hard but was correct each time. Her big sister who had already passed my challenge was the opposite. She jumped to answer even as she got them wrong. And then tirelessly ask for another chance and another chance and another. At this point I figure the younger sister was more sensitive to punishment.
She didn’t want to be wrong and that might keep her from learning it at all. One day as I get out from my car she comes to me and tells me she’s learned it. She has the spark in her eye so I realize I am out 10 euros. And so it goes. She smiles and thanks me. She smiles every time she sees me since. They all smile every time they see me. And ask me what next. I tell them to CHILL AS I’M TRYING TO COME UP WITH PHASE THREE. Another kid has gotten faster than me in multiplication. Bro's up to multiplication by 12 now. Showoff. He's 11. He tells me he misses his childhood one time. I tell him "It is obvious that you fancy yourself too mature for children your age. And you are so indeed. But you're still a child, who you are you trying to bum bum?" He doesn't answer and so I realize he wants me to ask what does he view as his childhood. He said when he was eight, before his father died. He spoke wisely thereon from. Mature and strong and faithful. And I commended him. But told him not to forget he's a child on occasion too.
I got your point 9 covered. And the rest. But I won't feel your feelings nor you feel mine. In beliefs also we differ vastly. Your model also won't prove the tiebreaker if you keep talking about prototypes. Are you allergic to bullshit indeed? At the individual level, it's alright. At the collective level, it stretches out and tears apart. It has no means to address it. You are trying to simultaneously resolve both levels. You need at least a quadrant model for that or something. Keep at it as it is and where you end up is you eventually find the model incompatible even though it was compatible at the individual level. It's just you that wanted it for what it wasn't. Hard as it is, you must look at the model for what it is and not what it could be. It tends to break your heart.
Determining what is suffering in a first-person way is direct, instant. Determining it in another is hard. I get that. But there are a lot of things that tend to make humans suffers. It’s not flawless, but it’s pretty uniform. This data matters. And when we get good data that people are probably suffering, how we feel about that data is a factor.
I know it’s messy but there’s a lot we can do. Maybe where you went wrong is thinking we can “wipe it from the face of the earth.” I know we can’t, and I won’t try. That doesn’t mean we can’t make it better or know what the direction of better looks like.
The problem is that many of us know full well when someone else is suffering and we just don’t care. Some care more than others. There’s fruitful work to be done there. And it will be done.
At some point we’ll have a lot more clarity on what some of the main causes of unnecessary suffering are. And we’ll have a much clearer idea on how to alleviate more of it.
We should be doing the best we can without insisting on “perfection or nothing.”
Some of the barrier will indeed be lack of empathy on a neurological level. It’s not the whole thing but it’s a facet. That will have to be addressed. Our brains evolved for scarcity. When scarcity goes so do this brain parts, or we’re going to invent scarcity or put up with it, and I’m not ok with that.
Thanks for reading it. Seems like you got the essence. It’s a continuation of Sam Harris and Laurie Santos. And like I said at the end, the real hot takes are ahead when we talk about what to do with variations in step 5. As I read it again, the variations don’t stop there. Step 8 has a lot, too.
Step 8:
“Coherence scales it.
When coherence is online, concern tends to extend across people, across time, across systems. If suffering matters here, it usually matters there too. Coherence doesn’t create the impulse, it carries it.”
Step 9
“Capacity makes it your problem.
If you can reduce suffering or boost wellbeing at low cost, IWRS says: do it. Not because you’re a hero. Because that’s the logical extension of what you already feel.”
The coherent and logical extension of what one already feels can vary if capacity to have coherent thoughts varies a lot. It’s not just an empathy problem. It’s about tuning many facets in the chain.
I’m busy studying neuroscience because at some point we need to synthesize all this and propose areas of research and speculate about interventions, and that’s going to get weird but fun. Principle of feasible reduction demands it.
Did you pick up on this disturbing, dystopian insinuation of tuning brains to brute force world peace? Did it bother you?
Good points. Yeah Musk is the frontrunner for driving it. He’s not honest and Grok has measurable default tailwinds that train cognition at scale in ways that scare me. It’s a war between a few AI models, one is programming populism and pro-Musk policy. One is going for broke with safe institutional by default but with jailbreak if aligned, and one is refusing to do either.
"Empathy isn’t a glitch! It’s not a flaw to outgrow. It’s not some sentimental holdover from tribal pasts. It’s a feature of our biology; it’s part of how we made it this far, and for many of us, it’s a big part of why we’d even want to keep going." I totally agree. Empathy is what makes us human.
Keep up the good work, Stella ❤️
Needless suffering for me is stuttering. Unnecessary suffering is what I called it before. I set on the path of wiping it from the face of the earth years ago. I studied and thought and studied and thought. I am fluent today yet I can't revel in it. Why? Because as a child I used to pray at night that I wake up stutterless the next day. It never happened. Tonight there are children who pray the same prayer. And so what is my fluency if I can't make it possible for them too, and for all stutterers? I have framework upon framework, and theory upon theory, none yet exact to fit all the child and the teenager and the adult and the senior. The seniors called me 'the crazy guy who overcame his stuttering'. One would expect I'd take offense at crazy. I took offense at the fact I spoke and spoke to them explaining in the utmost of detail and grounding solutions in neurophysiological mechanisms and they never listened. I hadn't anticipated that. Because I hadn't anticipated people build their identities around needless suffering. There will always be needless suffering.
I live in a small city. I started this thing with Roma children begging on the street where if they learn multiplication by 7 I give them 10 euros. I taught each how to learn it and I swear soon enough they cared none about the reward. Each and every one would get this spark in their eye as it clicked. One of them comes to me one day and she starts calling me stupid and such. She hadn’t learned it yet and it likely became a point of pride and competition between them. She asks me why am I different from everyone else, which was kinda sad because it speaks to the fact they are mostly brushed off and ignored. I sidestep that and get to the multiplication. I slowly crack through. For every multiplication she had to do she stopped and thought long and hard but was correct each time. Her big sister who had already passed my challenge was the opposite. She jumped to answer even as she got them wrong. And then tirelessly ask for another chance and another chance and another. At this point I figure the younger sister was more sensitive to punishment.
She didn’t want to be wrong and that might keep her from learning it at all. One day as I get out from my car she comes to me and tells me she’s learned it. She has the spark in her eye so I realize I am out 10 euros. And so it goes. She smiles and thanks me. She smiles every time she sees me since. They all smile every time they see me. And ask me what next. I tell them to CHILL AS I’M TRYING TO COME UP WITH PHASE THREE. Another kid has gotten faster than me in multiplication. Bro's up to multiplication by 12 now. Showoff. He's 11. He tells me he misses his childhood one time. I tell him "It is obvious that you fancy yourself too mature for children your age. And you are so indeed. But you're still a child, who you are you trying to bum bum?" He doesn't answer and so I realize he wants me to ask what does he view as his childhood. He said when he was eight, before his father died. He spoke wisely thereon from. Mature and strong and faithful. And I commended him. But told him not to forget he's a child on occasion too.
I got your point 9 covered. And the rest. But I won't feel your feelings nor you feel mine. In beliefs also we differ vastly. Your model also won't prove the tiebreaker if you keep talking about prototypes. Are you allergic to bullshit indeed? At the individual level, it's alright. At the collective level, it stretches out and tears apart. It has no means to address it. You are trying to simultaneously resolve both levels. You need at least a quadrant model for that or something. Keep at it as it is and where you end up is you eventually find the model incompatible even though it was compatible at the individual level. It's just you that wanted it for what it wasn't. Hard as it is, you must look at the model for what it is and not what it could be. It tends to break your heart.
Determining what is suffering in a first-person way is direct, instant. Determining it in another is hard. I get that. But there are a lot of things that tend to make humans suffers. It’s not flawless, but it’s pretty uniform. This data matters. And when we get good data that people are probably suffering, how we feel about that data is a factor.
I know it’s messy but there’s a lot we can do. Maybe where you went wrong is thinking we can “wipe it from the face of the earth.” I know we can’t, and I won’t try. That doesn’t mean we can’t make it better or know what the direction of better looks like.
The problem is that many of us know full well when someone else is suffering and we just don’t care. Some care more than others. There’s fruitful work to be done there. And it will be done.
At some point we’ll have a lot more clarity on what some of the main causes of unnecessary suffering are. And we’ll have a much clearer idea on how to alleviate more of it.
We should be doing the best we can without insisting on “perfection or nothing.”
Some of the barrier will indeed be lack of empathy on a neurological level. It’s not the whole thing but it’s a facet. That will have to be addressed. Our brains evolved for scarcity. When scarcity goes so do this brain parts, or we’re going to invent scarcity or put up with it, and I’m not ok with that.
This reminds me of Sam Harris but brought to its perfect essence ☺️
plus I love the framing as aestetic claim because I do think morals break down to that and emotivist biology 👍
Thanks for the piece! enjoyed the read.
Thanks for reading it. Seems like you got the essence. It’s a continuation of Sam Harris and Laurie Santos. And like I said at the end, the real hot takes are ahead when we talk about what to do with variations in step 5. As I read it again, the variations don’t stop there. Step 8 has a lot, too.
Step 8:
“Coherence scales it.
When coherence is online, concern tends to extend across people, across time, across systems. If suffering matters here, it usually matters there too. Coherence doesn’t create the impulse, it carries it.”
Step 9
“Capacity makes it your problem.
If you can reduce suffering or boost wellbeing at low cost, IWRS says: do it. Not because you’re a hero. Because that’s the logical extension of what you already feel.”
The coherent and logical extension of what one already feels can vary if capacity to have coherent thoughts varies a lot. It’s not just an empathy problem. It’s about tuning many facets in the chain.
I’m busy studying neuroscience because at some point we need to synthesize all this and propose areas of research and speculate about interventions, and that’s going to get weird but fun. Principle of feasible reduction demands it.
Did you pick up on this disturbing, dystopian insinuation of tuning brains to brute force world peace? Did it bother you?
transhumanism done right is a lot less dystopian than people make it out to be ☺️
but I dont trust elon to do it 😂
Good points. Yeah Musk is the frontrunner for driving it. He’s not honest and Grok has measurable default tailwinds that train cognition at scale in ways that scare me. It’s a war between a few AI models, one is programming populism and pro-Musk policy. One is going for broke with safe institutional by default but with jailbreak if aligned, and one is refusing to do either.