I’m torn on WaitButWhy?s new series The Story of Us. My initial reaction was mostly negative. Most of that came from not liking the frame of Higher Mind and Primitive Mind, as that sort of thinking has been reasonable for a lot of hiccups for me, making “doing what I want” and unnecessarily antagonistic process. And then along the way I see plenty of other ways I don’t like how he slices up the world.
The torn part: maybe this is sorta post “most people” need to start bridging the inferential gap towards what I consider good epistemology? I expect most people on LW to find his series too simplistic, but I wonder if his posts would do more good than the Sequences for the average joe. As I’m writing this I’m acutely aware of how little I know about how “most people” think.
It also makes me think about how at some point in recent years I thought, “More dumbed down simplifications of crazy advanced math concepts should exist, to get more people a little bit closer to all the cool stuff there is.” I guessed a mathematician might balk at this suggestion (“Don’t tarnish my precious precision!”) Am I reacting the same way?
I’d like to see someone in this community write an extension / refinement of it to further {need-good-color-name}pill people into the LW memes that the “higher mind” is not fundamentally better than the “animal mind”
Yep, agreed. I want all my friends and family to read the series… and then have a conversation with me about the ways in which it oversimplifies and misleads, in particular the higher mind vs. primitive mind bit.
On balance though I think it’s great that it exists and I predict it will be the gateway drug for a bunch of new rationalists in years to come.
I’m torn on WaitButWhy?s new series The Story of Us. My initial reaction was mostly negative. Most of that came from not liking the frame of Higher Mind and Primitive Mind, as that sort of thinking has been reasonable for a lot of hiccups for me, making “doing what I want” and unnecessarily antagonistic process. And then along the way I see plenty of other ways I don’t like how he slices up the world.
The torn part: maybe this is sorta post “most people” need to start bridging the inferential gap towards what I consider good epistemology? I expect most people on LW to find his series too simplistic, but I wonder if his posts would do more good than the Sequences for the average joe. As I’m writing this I’m acutely aware of how little I know about how “most people” think.
It also makes me think about how at some point in recent years I thought, “More dumbed down simplifications of crazy advanced math concepts should exist, to get more people a little bit closer to all the cool stuff there is.” I guessed a mathematician might balk at this suggestion (“Don’t tarnish my precious precision!”) Am I reacting the same way?
I dunno, what do you think?
Agree, seems like LW for normies circa ten plus years ago? Reaction for standard metacontrarian reasons, seeing past self in it.
I’d like to see someone in this community write an extension / refinement of it to further {need-good-color-name}pill people into the LW memes that the “higher mind” is not fundamentally better than the “animal mind”
Yep, agreed. I want all my friends and family to read the series… and then have a conversation with me about the ways in which it oversimplifies and misleads, in particular the higher mind vs. primitive mind bit.
On balance though I think it’s great that it exists and I predict it will be the gateway drug for a bunch of new rationalists in years to come.