Because otherwise you are at risk of being obnoxiously rude, and you are likely to be wrong.
I think norms of conversation that prevent honest communication by labeling it as rude are not useful for discussions that are about learning about the world.
You should express different beliefs because your beliefs are rude kills an atmosphere of learning.
Of course managing the resulting emotions with empathy is something that’s much easier in person and it might very well prevent anything positive to happen in this online conversation.
I’m afraid you are still failing to be clear. (Whether the problem is that you aren’t expressing yourself clearly, or that you aren’t thinking clearly, I don’t know.)
The problem is that I’m refering to concepts that are likely not in your map.
I know that various people have taken months of in person teaching to get the concepts to which I’m refering, so it’s not suprising to me that the ideas don’t feel clear to you. If what I’m saying what feel clear to you, you would ignore what I’m saying. Successfully pointing somewhere that’s outside of your present map feels inherently unclear. For me it’s a success that you don’t feel like I’m meaning of those those things that are inside your map.
Whether I’d call any of the possibilities ‘perceiving the sound of silence’, I don’t know; would you care to say more about what you mean by that?”
At one of the meditations I lead in an LW context I made the point to focus on perception of silence as something besides simply absence of sound. Afterwards I checked with the person in the room where I was predicting that they least likely got something from the experience and they did experience a silence that was distinct from the absence of sound.
It’s no big shiny effect, but I would suspect that many committed naturalists think silence = absence of sound and any suggestion that it isn’t is emitting deep-sounding word salad. The person developed a new phenomological category for listening to silence that’s distinct from not hearing sounds.
Now, that’s an experience I gave the person in a 20 minute meditation and it wasn’t the only thing I did in that 20 minutes. In multiple days, especially with a teacher that has more skill than I have at the moment, more new experiences are possible.
You should express different beliefs because your beliefs are rude kids an atmosphere of learning.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear; I certainly wasn’t suggesting you should say things you don’t believe for fear of rudeness. I was suggesting you shouldn’t make baseless claims about other people for fear of rudeness. Actually, I think there are more important reasons than rudeness (making confident false statements can mislead others or even yourself), but your comments about making explicit predictions led me to suspect that you’d be unmoved by them.
The problem is that I’m referring to concepts that are likely not in your map.
Perhaps that’s the problem. Or perhaps the problem is that you aren’t even trying to be understood. “You guys are making worse predictions than you would if you thought like me.” Oh, that’s interesting; what predictions? “There’s no point saying; you don’t have the necessary concepts.” Oh, what concepts? “There’s no point saying; you wouldn’t understand.” Well, you might be right, but how can a conversation like this possibly be any use to anyone? If indeed you know ahead of time that no one who disagrees with you is capable of understanding what you say without lengthy in-person training, what is the point of saying it?
listening to silence
OK, so let’s take a look at what’s happened here. The question is, if I understand you right, whether committed LW-style naturalist reductionists make worse predictions than you do about whether there’s scope for listening in a quiet room to produce something subjectively different from mere not-hearing-sound.
We’ve got exactly two data points here. One: you. Unfortunately, you haven’t told us what your prediction ahead of time actually was, but you say that the person you thought least likely to have had that experience did in fact have it, which doesn’t sound like a big predictive success to me. (Though it could have been, if you thought they were 95% likely to have the experience and others in the room more like 99%.) Two: me. If you read what I wrote you will see that the first thing I said was “For sure there are multiple different possible experiences of not-sound”, and i commented specifically that attending to the not-sound in different ways makes a difference. That looks like a straightforwardly correct prediction to me. I said I wasn’t sure whether that was what you meant by “perceiving the sound of silence”; i.e., I kept my mind open about things I wasn’t in a position to know. That looks to me like what you’re claiming people should do and naturalists are bad at.
So, maybe I’m missing something, but so far this example doesn’t seem like a triumphant success for the “materialists make bad predictions” position.
I would suspect that many committed naturalists think [...]
First, maybe you should apply some of that empiricism you like to talk about and notice that when you actually put the question to a committed naturalist you didn’t get that response.
Second, it seems to me—in fact it seems obvious to me—that there’s no actual inconsistency between “silence is just the absence of sound” and “if you tell people to listen to silence they often find that a novel experience and say it’s more than the absence of sound”. Those are two almost completely unrelated propositions.
First, maybe you should apply some of that empiricism you like to talk about and notice that when you actually put the question to a committed naturalist you didn’t get that response.
I do applied empiricism in the sense that I made a prediction that it’s worthless to try to give you a specific example and indeed I find that it’s worthless.
Or perhaps the problem is that you aren’t even trying to be understood. “You guys are making worse predictions than you would if you thought like me.” Oh, that’s interesting; what predictions? “There’s no point saying; you don’t have the necessary concepts.” Oh, what concepts? “There’s no point saying; you wouldn’t understand.”
Leading to the question
Well, you might be right, but how can a conversation like this possibly be any use to anyone?
A little later...
But generally writing more about the purpose of this conversation would only open more issues that I can’t fully explain.
If what I’m saying what feel clear to you, you would ignore what I’m saying.
We’re all empiricists here, so let’s run an experiment. You’ve got this theory that gjm won’t understand if you try to explain. How ’bout you stop rehashing that, actually try to explain some of those technical terms you mentioned earlier, and see how your theory holds up?
I think norms of conversation that prevent honest communication by labeling it as rude are not useful for discussions that are about learning about the world. You should express different beliefs because your beliefs are rude kills an atmosphere of learning.
Of course managing the resulting emotions with empathy is something that’s much easier in person and it might very well prevent anything positive to happen in this online conversation.
The problem is that I’m refering to concepts that are likely not in your map. I know that various people have taken months of in person teaching to get the concepts to which I’m refering, so it’s not suprising to me that the ideas don’t feel clear to you. If what I’m saying what feel clear to you, you would ignore what I’m saying. Successfully pointing somewhere that’s outside of your present map feels inherently unclear. For me it’s a success that you don’t feel like I’m meaning of those those things that are inside your map.
At one of the meditations I lead in an LW context I made the point to focus on perception of silence as something besides simply absence of sound. Afterwards I checked with the person in the room where I was predicting that they least likely got something from the experience and they did experience a silence that was distinct from the absence of sound.
It’s no big shiny effect, but I would suspect that many committed naturalists think
silence = absence of soundand any suggestion that it isn’t isemitting deep-sounding word salad. The person developed a new phenomological category forlistening to silencethat’s distinct fromnot hearing sounds.Now, that’s an experience I gave the person in a 20 minute meditation and it wasn’t the only thing I did in that 20 minutes. In multiple days, especially with a teacher that has more skill than I have at the moment, more new experiences are possible.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear; I certainly wasn’t suggesting you should say things you don’t believe for fear of rudeness. I was suggesting you shouldn’t make baseless claims about other people for fear of rudeness. Actually, I think there are more important reasons than rudeness (making confident false statements can mislead others or even yourself), but your comments about making explicit predictions led me to suspect that you’d be unmoved by them.
Perhaps that’s the problem. Or perhaps the problem is that you aren’t even trying to be understood. “You guys are making worse predictions than you would if you thought like me.” Oh, that’s interesting; what predictions? “There’s no point saying; you don’t have the necessary concepts.” Oh, what concepts? “There’s no point saying; you wouldn’t understand.” Well, you might be right, but how can a conversation like this possibly be any use to anyone? If indeed you know ahead of time that no one who disagrees with you is capable of understanding what you say without lengthy in-person training, what is the point of saying it?
OK, so let’s take a look at what’s happened here. The question is, if I understand you right, whether committed LW-style naturalist reductionists make worse predictions than you do about whether there’s scope for listening in a quiet room to produce something subjectively different from mere not-hearing-sound.
We’ve got exactly two data points here. One: you. Unfortunately, you haven’t told us what your prediction ahead of time actually was, but you say that the person you thought least likely to have had that experience did in fact have it, which doesn’t sound like a big predictive success to me. (Though it could have been, if you thought they were 95% likely to have the experience and others in the room more like 99%.) Two: me. If you read what I wrote you will see that the first thing I said was “For sure there are multiple different possible experiences of not-sound”, and i commented specifically that attending to the not-sound in different ways makes a difference. That looks like a straightforwardly correct prediction to me. I said I wasn’t sure whether that was what you meant by “perceiving the sound of silence”; i.e., I kept my mind open about things I wasn’t in a position to know. That looks to me like what you’re claiming people should do and naturalists are bad at.
So, maybe I’m missing something, but so far this example doesn’t seem like a triumphant success for the “materialists make bad predictions” position.
First, maybe you should apply some of that empiricism you like to talk about and notice that when you actually put the question to a committed naturalist you didn’t get that response.
Second, it seems to me—in fact it seems obvious to me—that there’s no actual inconsistency between “silence is just the absence of sound” and “if you tell people to listen to silence they often find that a novel experience and say it’s more than the absence of sound”. Those are two almost completely unrelated propositions.
I do applied empiricism in the sense that I made a prediction that it’s worthless to try to give you a specific example and indeed I find that it’s worthless.
What sort of response would have been evidence of its not being worthless? What are you trying to achieve here?
As far as giving you the example, the goal of the example was giving you the example helps you to understand something that you haven’t before.
But generally writing more about the purpose of this conversation would only open more issues that I can’t fully explain.
Leading to the question
A little later...
It’s turtles all the way down
We’re all empiricists here, so let’s run an experiment. You’ve got this theory that gjm won’t understand if you try to explain. How ’bout you stop rehashing that, actually try to explain some of those technical terms you mentioned earlier, and see how your theory holds up?