Thanks for this helpful perspective! Reading your list of traits of confusion I was astounded to realize that this perfectly describes the pit I’ve been in for years myself with my own ideas. Perhaps deconfusion is what I need. (Specifically, I do a lot of those “self motte and baileys” and I’ve regularly complained wearily to people about my “too many threads”—it felt like you were talking directly about me! Recent work I’ve done to clarify some of this actually resembles what you call finding handles.)
Explaining what, exactly, said ideas are is of course difficult, because I am confused about them. :P But to quickly summarize, as a young teen I was a New Ager / occultist and got “gnosis” about various spiritual things which I later reinterpreted in such a way as to make them compatible with a physicalist view of reality, and ever since I’ve been attempting to clarify this “rational spirituality” enough that I could write a book about it and share it with others—but this is difficult, because it’s mostly tacit knowledge I don’t know how to explicate, with lots of confusion and constant updating as I learn more and become a better rationalist.
Concerning your deconfusion issue, I would say that maybe some things you could try are:
Be very clear about your application. Why do you want to deconfuse these ideas? That might give you some constraint on what the result must look like.
Maybe try the simplest form of handles? I’m quite fond of extensive definitions myself, as they’re easier to create but still quite insightful.
One thing I didn’t touch on in this post is how handle-building is often an iterative process, where you build a crude one that serves you to pinpoint some of the confusion, and then you build a better or different one, over and over again.
Thanks for this helpful perspective! Reading your list of traits of confusion I was astounded to realize that this perfectly describes the pit I’ve been in for years myself with my own ideas. Perhaps deconfusion is what I need. (Specifically, I do a lot of those “self motte and baileys” and I’ve regularly complained wearily to people about my “too many threads”—it felt like you were talking directly about me! Recent work I’ve done to clarify some of this actually resembles what you call finding handles.)
Explaining what, exactly, said ideas are is of course difficult, because I am confused about them. :P But to quickly summarize, as a young teen I was a New Ager / occultist and got “gnosis” about various spiritual things which I later reinterpreted in such a way as to make them compatible with a physicalist view of reality, and ever since I’ve been attempting to clarify this “rational spirituality” enough that I could write a book about it and share it with others—but this is difficult, because it’s mostly tacit knowledge I don’t know how to explicate, with lots of confusion and constant updating as I learn more and become a better rationalist.
Glad you found this helpful!
Concerning your deconfusion issue, I would say that maybe some things you could try are:
Be very clear about your application. Why do you want to deconfuse these ideas? That might give you some constraint on what the result must look like.
Maybe try the simplest form of handles? I’m quite fond of extensive definitions myself, as they’re easier to create but still quite insightful.
One thing I didn’t touch on in this post is how handle-building is often an iterative process, where you build a crude one that serves you to pinpoint some of the confusion, and then you build a better or different one, over and over again.
Hope this might help.