Got here via Naked Capitalism and Yves Smith when she linked this article: “Self-Haters Donate More,” which then linked “Haters Cheat Less.”
Then the name of the site “Overcoming Bias” definitely got my attention!
My Rationalist Origin Story: ROS:
I had been digging in the Bible’s backyard—it’s really the front yard, smile—as a 37 year-old,
and found over and over again where it was written that Moses only did as he was told when he had been told what to do and how to.
It’s in later chapters of Exodus.
So Moses could not do as he had been told until he had been told how to do it.
Hmmmmm
It got me thinking:
What did that remind me of?
3 days later it hit me like Eureka:
Love your neighbor as myself,
as per Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Matthew and Mark and Luke!
Hmmm,
since no one had ever sat me down and taught me to love myself,
why did I think, why had I assumed that I knew how to love myself?
Hmmmm
Then Aha:
If I didn’t know how to love myself,
that explained
why I did not love my neighbors and/or found it so hard to do,
and why I found it so hard to love my neighbors as much as I loved myself, or THOUGHT I loved myself,
and why I found it so easy to hate my neighbors!
Hmmmmm
But,---I DID love myself: I loved myself as man and as right and as wise and good and friend and family and as etc!
But hey,--I also DID NOT love myself as woman and as wrong and as fool and as bad and as enemy as stranger and as non-etc!
So?
I was both loving myself and hating myself at the same time!
So I was also loving the neighbor I hated, and hating the neighbor I loved!
So it was only an illusion that I ONLY loved me and ONLY hated my neighbors: I was doing both all the time!
So by hating myself, I had been also teaching others how to hate ME all along!
Which meant that they had to be hating themselves too,
and which then compounded my Hate for myself,
and re-justified me to hate myself and so to hate them as myself since we justify hating others by hating ourselves,
and I was hating myself a lot more than I was or had been loving myself, which explained perfectly why I had been and was hating my neighbors a lot more than loving them, in fact to the same degree and extent that I was hating myself and loving myself!
Oooops!
I went to my wife:
If you promise me one thing,I’ll take you out to dinner every week!
What do you want?
Nothing!
Just promise me that you will love yourself and concentrate of loving YOU!
She laughed: I already do!
Fine!
And the rest is history:
I eliminated my Bias of Hate for myself as any words over a period of the next year by inserting the Bias of Love for myself as all words!
And how I did that and what it means for all others is what I would love to share with this forum, so that each of you can do it for yourselves, and spread the word of how we can overcome bias.
It is very easy, but that very easiness makes it the hardest thing you would have ever tried to do!
“A great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudices.” William James
“If you hate a person,
you hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” Hermann Hesse
“The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing,
a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it,
for fear of the derisive smile with which
the wise cynics will greet my words.
The thing I mean – please forgive me for mentioning it –
is
Love, the Love or compassion of Christ.
If you have and so feel this Love,
you have the motive for existence,
the guide for action,
the reason for courage,
and the imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”
The Impact of Science on Society, Lord Bertrand A. Russell.
This is not a rationalist origin story, because it is not the story of how you became a rationalist. (It seems fairly clear that in fact you are not a rationalist. This is a description, not a criticism; most people are not rationalists, and manage just fine without being rationalists.)
It is also not about “how we can overcome bias”, but about how we can (allegedly) overcome one particular failing which is not a bias in the sense that OB is meant to be about.
As an account of how one can go about eliminating (perhaps unconscious) hatred for oneself and others, and replacing it with love, it has a severe deficiency: it doesn’t actually explain comprehensibly how one can. (Your central idea seems to be that you should love yourself “as” everything, including things you aren’t. That seems pretty incoherent to me. You might try to do it by, e.g., imagining yourself in the shoes of everyone you interact with, and that might be an effective way of having a more positive attitude towards them; is that the sort of thing you mean? And you say that by not loving yourself “as” an X, where X is something you aren’t, you’re thereby hating others. I think that’s obviously false.)
I think your interpolations into the words of William James and Bertrand Russell change their meanings (James’s more than Russell’s). Since you appear to be quoting them as authorities, it doesn’t seem to me a good sign that you have to change what they’re saying to do so.
In general, attempts at proselytism are not likely to find an enthusiastic reception here.
gjm:
This is not a rationalist origin story, because it is not the story of how you became a rationalist. (It seems fairly clear that in fact you are not a rationalist. This is a description, not a criticism; most people are not rationalists, and manage just fine without being rationalists.)
ama:
Big thanx for all your thoughts.
Hmmm
Am I not also rational and also a rationalist by agreeing with you, who are a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
And aren’t you, to some degree, also not a rationalist by agreeing with me, who you say is not a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
I consider myself to be both rational and irrational, especially since rationalists believe in irrational numbers.smile
gjm:
It is also not about “how we can overcome bias”, but about how we can (allegedly) overcome one particular failing which is not a bias in the sense that OB is meant to be about.
ama:
I wd appreciate you or anyone explaining in what sense that OB is meant here.
Also explaining what is that one particular failing.
Thanx in advance.
gjm:
As an account of how one can go about eliminating (perhaps unconscious) hatred for oneself and others, and replacing it with love, it has a severe deficiency: it doesn’t actually explain comprehensibly how one can.
ama:
That was just a teaser.
The comprehensive bit was going to be my next post as per Blume!smile
gjm:
(Your central idea seems to be that you should love yourself “as” everything, including things you aren’t.
ama:
I am and you are everything already because all words and their opposites are stored in us as as, and those words are everything in the brain and represent everything outside of the brain, ‘everything’ also being a word.
There are even more words than things since we have a word for no thing. smile
So I love myself as gjm so that I auto love and respect gjm as myself.
I love myself as known and as unknown too, so that I don’t have to know you to love you but love you to know you and so am loving you before I know you or get to know you.
This way, no bad knowledge I happen to know about you after I get to know you, will affect nor be able to affect my Love and Respect for you since my L&R was not and is not based on who you are, good or bad, but on Love of itself: the Love and R being unconditional, having no conditions nor limitations.
Neat, eh?smile
It is why kids say
‘It takes one to know one’
just based on learning the alphabet,
and without any adult teaching them to say so, which teachers in fact discourage them from saying so.
gjm:
That seems pretty incoherent to me.
ama:
I understand why you feel that way: it will tend to discombobulate you initially.
I love myself as coherent and incoherent and so I take your opinion of me with Love and Respect, and thank you for your honesty.
However, there is coherence in incoherence, and vice versa.
kjm:
You might try to do it by, e.g., imagining yourself in the shoes of everyone you interact with, and that might be an effective way of having a more positive attitude towards them; is that the sort of thing you mean?
ama:
Sort of, but all inclusive:
it covers all words and their opposites and so includes all those who I have NOT interacted with nor yet imagined.
kjm:
And you say that by not loving yourself “as” an X, where X is something you aren’t, you’re thereby hating others. I think that’s obviously false.)
ama:
But I am x, since x is one of the letters stored in me as me.
Example:
If I hate or love myself as kjm or as any word that describes you, then I auto hate or love you as myself.
It’s automatic.
The brain works by words,
words work by their opposites,
and all words and their opposites
work most well by the word Love,
and
don’t work at all well with the word Hate.
kjm:
I think your interpolations into the words of William James and Bertrand Russell change their meanings (James’s more than Russell’s).
ama:
Sorry, my bad. I was trying to be helpful.
But what prejudices do you think WJ was referring to?
kjm:
Since you appear to be quoting them as authorities, it doesn’t seem to me a good sign that you have to change what they’re saying to do so.
ama:
Good point:
In Love and Respect of myself as right and wrong, as correct and incorrect, as correcting and as corrected,
I take this correction from you as correct and as corrector, and so it will make me even more correct.smile
kjm:
In general, attempts at proselytism are not likely to find an enthusiastic reception here.
Hmmmm
This has no proselytistic angle to it al all, even though I see how it might seem so.
Actually, I am also both theist and atheist since I love myself as both,
and so love and respect all atheists & all theists as they are.
There is actually no reason to not be an atheist,
and there are many atheists who are better theists as atheists than theists are at being theists. smile
The only purpose is to share on overcoming bias as in “Self-Haters Donate More” and “Haters Cheat Less.”
“Bias” here and on OB generally refers to systematic errors in our truth-seeking and decision-making processes. For instance, confirmation bias: we notice evidence in favour of our beliefs much more easily than evidence against.
those words are everything in the brain and represent everything outside of the brain [...] There are even more words than things since we have a word for no thing.
Lots of important things happen in the brain without words. (And, just in case that last sentence is meant to be anything more than a joke: there are obviously far more things than words, though it’s not so clear whether or not there are more things than are adequately describable in words.)
my L[ove]&R[espect] was not and is not based on who you are, good or bad [...] the Love and R[espect] being unconditional, having no conditions nor limitations. Neat, eh?
I would certainly prefer to be loved on such terms than to be hated on such terms, but in general I value someone’s love and/or respect more when it is based on who I am and what I am like. Consider a more specific kind of love: would you want to be married to someone who loves you exactly as much as s/he loves everyone else in the world, and whose love is entirely independent of who you are?
It is why kids say ’It takes one to know one just based on learning the alphabet, and without any adult teaching them to say so
I am skeptical; do you have any evidence that children spontaneously invent this idea themselves? I think the tradition of saying that is passed down from one child to another, and sometimes from parents to children (I don’t believe that adults are completely consistent in not liking it) and the reason is not that there’s any truth in it but that it’s a good-sounding retort. If you’re right then the idea should probably be found roughly equally in all cultures; if I’m right then it should probably be much less common in some cultures. I wonder which of these is so.
I understand why you feel that way
Perhaps you do, but I don’t think you have enough information to know that you do.
it covers all words and their opposites and so includes all those who I have NOT interacted with nor yet imagined.
It seems to me that there is a difference between having the (single, vague, abstract) thought “for all X, I love myself as X” and the (multiple, more specific and concrete) thoughts for all X: “I love myself as X”. And while I can imagine (though I remain to be convinced) that the latter might turn out to be helpful in the project of loving one’s neighbours, the former seems less relevant; but the latter seems to be what you’re actually talking about here.
The brain works by words, words work by their opposites
I do not believe you. Would you care to explain why I should?
(Unless you mean something as limited as “one thing the brain does is to use words, and sometimes words remind us of their opposites”, which is true but doesn’t seem to me to offer any support for your claims.)
what prejudices do you think WJ was referring to?
Any and all preconceived ideas, of which most of us have far more than we care to admit. You can find (what I take to be) a less condensed description of the same idea in an OB post from 2007.
GJM:
“Bias” here and on OB generally refers to systematic errors in our truth-seeking and decision-making processes. For instance, confirmation bias: we notice evidence in favour of our beliefs much more easily than evidence against.
AMA:
Thanks, GJM, for talking to me an for the info on what bias means at the OB.
But don’t you want to know why there there is confirmation bias or any other bias?
GJM:
Lots of important things happen in the brain without words.
AMA:
True, but we can’t describe them without words.
GJM:
(And, just in case that last sentence is meant to be anything more than a joke: there are obviously far more things than words, though it’s not so clear whether or not there are more things than are adequately describable in words.)
AMA:
Hmmm
Is Math English?
Since all numbers are also words,
and since numbers are infinite,
and since there are non-number words and names,
aren’t there more words than numbers?
GJM:
I would certainly prefer to be loved on such terms than to be hated on such terms, but in general I value someone’s love and/or respect more when it is based on who I am and what I am like.
AMA:
And suppose you were! You cd only be loved and respected as such by another who did so for herself/himself, and you wd only accept such and be able to accept such if you already were loving yourself as such!
GJM:
Consider a more specific kind of love: would you want to be married to someone who loves you exactly as much as s/he loves everyone else in the world, and whose love is entirely independent of who you are?
AMA:
Absolutely!
Her choice of me for marriage would be honorable since she wd have chosen me in Love out of all the persons she loved, and NOT dishonorably by choosing me in Love out of all the people she hated!
To love only me while hating all the rest wd mean that she hated me or wd hate me if I were ever like all the ones she hated, and wd mean that I would be
in the unenviable position of being threatened by her Love for any her dad and brothers and mom and sisters or anyone else: if she loved an old boyfriend, I wd think that she did not love me since she loved ONLY me and hated all the rest: so any Love for any of the rest wd mean NO Love for me!
To love me as all the rest, then to choose me out of Love for all the rest wd be the most reassuring choice ever: she loved us all and chose me out of Love! sigh I wd then never be threatened by her Love for anyone else!
GJM:
I am skeptical; do you have any evidence that children spontaneously invent this idea themselves? I think the tradition of saying that is passed down from one child to another, and sometimes from parents to children (I don’t believe that adults are completely consistent in not liking it) and the reason is not that there’s any truth in it but that it’s a good-sounding retort. If you’re right then the idea should probably be found roughly equally in all cultures; if I’m right then it should probably be much less common in some cultures. I wonder which of these is so.
AMA:
I have spoken to tens of thousands of people from all over the world, and they all said so as kids!
And it makes perfect sense:
When you call me a name, me saying ‘it takes one to know one’ is more than a good-sounding retort: by ITOTKO, I am agreeing with you that what you say I am is who I am, and reminding you how you know that I am one!
That’s all I am doing when someone says I am chaotic or stupid or incoherent or nonsensical or any word!
And as an adult, I can only do so because I have determined to love myself as all words and their opposites.
GJM:
Perhaps you do, but I don’t think you have enough information to know that you do.
AMA:
Being in-Love with all words gives us the insight and intuition to know without having any specific info!smile
GJM:
It seems to me that there is a difference between having the (single, vague, abstract) thought “for all X, I love myself as X” and the (multiple, more specific and concrete) thoughts for all X: “I love myself as X”. And while I can imagine (though I remain to be convinced) that the latter might turn out to be helpful in the project of loving one’s neighbours, the former seems less relevant; but the latter seems to be what you’re actually talking about here.
AMA:
As you think more about it, you’ll see that each is a part of the other.
Loving myself AS all words means the same as loving myself as much as any word and as much as all words, and as if I were all words.
Specific example:
There is no difference or there is a difference with no distinction or there is a distinction with no difference between
loving myself as a fool,
and loving myself as much as a fool,
and loving myself as if I were a fool.
There is no difference between a male fool and a foolish male.
GJM:
I do not believe you. Would you care to explain why I should?
AMA:
Easy.
And you already know this, but you filed it away since you were a kid.
First of all,
there is nothing that is NOT a word.
2ndly:
the brain cannot think without words: music is a word!
Can you think of anything that is not a word?
If so, please let me know what it is. smile
All our words are stored in us and as us in our neurochemicals.
So literally, we are words.
3rdly:
Let’s use the opposites Give and Take:
To give is to take from yourself.
To take is to give to yourself.
So the opposite words, give and take, are inter-definable and mean each other, so that there has never been any giving without taking nor taking without giving in history.
Therefore, any one who is really for only givers/giving and is against takers/taking, should not give in the first place since he is making others into takes by his giving; and no others should allow to give since his giving makes them takers.
So in a world of only givers, there would be no ‘takers.’ Pun intended.
This inter-definability applies to all words and their opposites.
Example:
To succeed is to fail to fail.
To fail is to succeed at failing.
So?
So those who hate failure must also hate success, or choke when it comes to the ultimate success of the exams, or in sports such as NFL or NBA and Baseball Championships.
So Love for all words and their opposites simply binds what’s already bound, or rebinds them.
GJM:
(Unless you mean something as limited as “one thing the brain does is to use words, and sometimes words remind us of their opposites”, which is true but doesn’t seem to me to offer any support for your claims.)
AMA:
Right, that is not what I mean.
GJM:
Any and all preconceived ideas, of which most of us have far more than we care to admit.
AMA:
That is exactly what I am saying!
Our Loves and our Hates were pre-disposed in us by teachers of all kinds so that those predispositions predispose us to certain preconceptions that explain why there is racial bias or sexual bias or confirmation bias.
So by loving all words, we have one right Bias of Love which lends itself to both opposites or all angles to anything, and so eliminates the bias of Hate that favors one or the other!
As above with giving and taking, it is only by applying the Bias of Love to both equally that we eliminate the unfair Bias of Hate which can only be for one or the other but never for both!
The reason Lady Justice is blindfolded is because she loves both opposites equally and so might as well be blind.
And because we justify hating others by hating ourselves, we don’t want to admit our biases of self-Hate: that wd mean that we had to love those hated others because we now had to love ourselves AS them!
GJM:
You can find (what I take to be) a less condensed description of the same idea in an OB post from 2007.
AMA:
Thank you.
And thanks again for your fairness or attempted fairness: you will definitely get convicted for being fair!smile
This is becoming extremely long. I shall try to be brief.
Of course I want to know why there are biases such as confirmation bias. (I am aware of some possible explanations, but so far as I know all anyone has is plausible conjectures.) I have seen no evidence that you have any accurate information about that.
There are more numbers than words. There are even more integers than words. There aren’t more integers than descriptions of integers using words. Whether there are more things than words depends on all sorts of difficult scientific questions and perhaps also on exactly what your definition of “thing” is.
I remain unconvinced by your panegyrics about universal love.
“I have spoken to tens of thousands of people from all over the world, and they all said so as kids!”: then I suggest that you have very strange priorities in what you discuss with them. (Actually, and I hope you aren’t offended, I strongly suspect that you are lying or mistaken about this.)
“Being in-Love with all words gives us the insight and intuition to know without having any specific info!”: ciphergoth was definitely right: you are either entirely unready for, or totally out of sympathy with the aims of, LW, and it is very unlikely that you will either get much benefit from being here or do much good to anyone else here.
“Specific example: [...]” You have misunderstood what I was saying, and that is not an example of anything to do with what I was saying.
“the brain cannot think without words: music is a word”: No. I think you are fond of making confident statements about things you do not understand.
We love or hate because we have been taught to.
Did you, as a child, ever hear statements beginning or ending with: …‘Whether you life it or not’...?
Can you remember if it was about you eating what foods you hated?
Integers, which are infinite, are also all words.
So compared to integers, words are equal in number to integers:
-infinity/minus infinity to 0/zero and 0 to positive infinity are all integers which are also all words: 8 is eight.
Therefore, since there are non-numeral words, the infinite set of words is greater than the infinite set of numbers/integers.
qed.
PS: Since by definition, infinities must be equal, there is way to equalize the larger infinity of words with the smaller infinity of integers. It’s so simple that it will tend to escape readers who have not yet overcome bias against fools and foolishness, since the simplicity looks foolish and simpleminded.
It wd be strange to anyone who still has not yet overcome bias for me to talk to people about overcoming their self-hatred by reminding them about what they said as kids.
“Love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.”Richard II, [V, 5]
And there have been tens of thousands, if not more! By the way, a mistake is a lie in words. The real lie would be me saying ‘I love you’ and implying I love you all the way while hating liars.
If I misunderstood you, would you please say what else you meant?
I could be poor in understanding OR you could be poor in communicating. smile
Please do not let my confidence about anything now intimidate you to the point that you don’t ask questions. You have asked questions. Please do not stop now. People who have not yet overcome the bias against being ignorant or fools can’t ask because they don’t want to admit that they don’t know. If you don’t understand, would you please ask more questions? I love myself as a fool and so love and respect you as one. The first thing a wise man knows is that he is a fool. And I am sure you are wise!smile It could be that I am a poor communicator or that you have poor understanding.smile
I think we’ve barely started to talk about how to attract new people; there are no top-level posts I can think of about whether we want to attract new people, or what sort if so, or how to go about it.
In any case, we definitely don’t want just any new people at this stage; we want people who buy into the fundamentals of what we’re trying to do here, and we want people who can express themselves clearly.
ama, if you’re reading this: Although I have chosen to engage with what you write rather than dismissing it, I entirely agree with ciphergoth that you appear to be either unready for LW or out of sympathy with its goals.
Of course, it’s possible that actually you’re way ahead of us, and that what looks like word salad to us (at least, to me and Vladimir Nesov, and I’m guessing to others too) really is the Expression of Deep Truth that I think you think it is. In which case, you would do well to make the effort to make what you say comprehensible and explicit.
(If you are not interested in clarity and comprehensibility, then it is unlikely that you will be of much help to us, no matter how excellent your thoughts may be.)
Hey all,
Just joined.
Got here via Naked Capitalism and Yves Smith when she linked this article: “Self-Haters Donate More,” which then linked “Haters Cheat Less.”
Then the name of the site “Overcoming Bias” definitely got my attention!
My Rationalist Origin Story: ROS:
I had been digging in the Bible’s backyard—it’s really the front yard, smile—as a 37 year-old, and found over and over again where it was written that Moses only did as he was told when he had been told what to do and how to. It’s in later chapters of Exodus. So Moses could not do as he had been told until he had been told how to do it.
Hmmmmm It got me thinking: What did that remind me of?
3 days later it hit me like Eureka:
Love your neighbor as myself,
as per Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Matthew and Mark and Luke!
Hmmm,
since no one had ever sat me down and taught me to love myself, why did I think, why had I assumed that I knew how to love myself?
Hmmmm
Then Aha:
If I didn’t know how to love myself,
that explained
why I did not love my neighbors and/or found it so hard to do,
and why I found it so hard to love my neighbors as much as I loved myself, or THOUGHT I loved myself,
and why I found it so easy to hate my neighbors!
Hmmmmm
But,---I DID love myself: I loved myself as man and as right and as wise and good and friend and family and as etc!
But hey,--I also DID NOT love myself as woman and as wrong and as fool and as bad and as enemy as stranger and as non-etc!
So?
I was both loving myself and hating myself at the same time!
So I was also loving the neighbor I hated, and hating the neighbor I loved!
So it was only an illusion that I ONLY loved me and ONLY hated my neighbors: I was doing both all the time!
So by hating myself, I had been also teaching others how to hate ME all along!
Which meant that they had to be hating themselves too,
and which then compounded my Hate for myself,
and re-justified me to hate myself and so to hate them as myself since we justify hating others by hating ourselves,
and I was hating myself a lot more than I was or had been loving myself, which explained perfectly why I had been and was hating my neighbors a lot more than loving them, in fact to the same degree and extent that I was hating myself and loving myself!
Oooops!
I went to my wife:
If you promise me one thing,I’ll take you out to dinner every week! What do you want? Nothing! Just promise me that you will love yourself and concentrate of loving YOU! She laughed: I already do! Fine!
And the rest is history:
I eliminated my Bias of Hate for myself as any words over a period of the next year by inserting the Bias of Love for myself as all words!
And how I did that and what it means for all others is what I would love to share with this forum, so that each of you can do it for yourselves, and spread the word of how we can overcome bias.
It is very easy, but that very easiness makes it the hardest thing you would have ever tried to do!
“A great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” William James
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” Hermann Hesse
“The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which the wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean – please forgive me for mentioning it – is Love, the Love or compassion of Christ.
If you have and so feel this Love, you have the motive for existence, the guide for action, the reason for courage, and the imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.” The Impact of Science on Society, Lord Bertrand A. Russell.
This is not a rationalist origin story, because it is not the story of how you became a rationalist. (It seems fairly clear that in fact you are not a rationalist. This is a description, not a criticism; most people are not rationalists, and manage just fine without being rationalists.)
It is also not about “how we can overcome bias”, but about how we can (allegedly) overcome one particular failing which is not a bias in the sense that OB is meant to be about.
As an account of how one can go about eliminating (perhaps unconscious) hatred for oneself and others, and replacing it with love, it has a severe deficiency: it doesn’t actually explain comprehensibly how one can. (Your central idea seems to be that you should love yourself “as” everything, including things you aren’t. That seems pretty incoherent to me. You might try to do it by, e.g., imagining yourself in the shoes of everyone you interact with, and that might be an effective way of having a more positive attitude towards them; is that the sort of thing you mean? And you say that by not loving yourself “as” an X, where X is something you aren’t, you’re thereby hating others. I think that’s obviously false.)
I think your interpolations into the words of William James and Bertrand Russell change their meanings (James’s more than Russell’s). Since you appear to be quoting them as authorities, it doesn’t seem to me a good sign that you have to change what they’re saying to do so.
In general, attempts at proselytism are not likely to find an enthusiastic reception here.
gjm: This is not a rationalist origin story, because it is not the story of how you became a rationalist. (It seems fairly clear that in fact you are not a rationalist. This is a description, not a criticism; most people are not rationalists, and manage just fine without being rationalists.) ama: Big thanx for all your thoughts.
Hmmm Am I not also rational and also a rationalist by agreeing with you, who are a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
And aren’t you, to some degree, also not a rationalist by agreeing with me, who you say is not a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
I consider myself to be both rational and irrational, especially since rationalists believe in irrational numbers.smile
gjm: It is also not about “how we can overcome bias”, but about how we can (allegedly) overcome one particular failing which is not a bias in the sense that OB is meant to be about. ama: I wd appreciate you or anyone explaining in what sense that OB is meant here. Also explaining what is that one particular failing. Thanx in advance.
gjm: As an account of how one can go about eliminating (perhaps unconscious) hatred for oneself and others, and replacing it with love, it has a severe deficiency: it doesn’t actually explain comprehensibly how one can. ama: That was just a teaser. The comprehensive bit was going to be my next post as per Blume!smile
gjm: (Your central idea seems to be that you should love yourself “as” everything, including things you aren’t. ama: I am and you are everything already because all words and their opposites are stored in us as as, and those words are everything in the brain and represent everything outside of the brain, ‘everything’ also being a word. There are even more words than things since we have a word for no thing. smile
So I love myself as gjm so that I auto love and respect gjm as myself. I love myself as known and as unknown too, so that I don’t have to know you to love you but love you to know you and so am loving you before I know you or get to know you. This way, no bad knowledge I happen to know about you after I get to know you, will affect nor be able to affect my Love and Respect for you since my L&R was not and is not based on who you are, good or bad, but on Love of itself: the Love and R being unconditional, having no conditions nor limitations. Neat, eh?smile It is why kids say ‘It takes one to know one’ just based on learning the alphabet, and without any adult teaching them to say so, which teachers in fact discourage them from saying so.
gjm: That seems pretty incoherent to me. ama: I understand why you feel that way: it will tend to discombobulate you initially.
I love myself as coherent and incoherent and so I take your opinion of me with Love and Respect, and thank you for your honesty. However, there is coherence in incoherence, and vice versa.
kjm: You might try to do it by, e.g., imagining yourself in the shoes of everyone you interact with, and that might be an effective way of having a more positive attitude towards them; is that the sort of thing you mean? ama: Sort of, but all inclusive: it covers all words and their opposites and so includes all those who I have NOT interacted with nor yet imagined.
kjm: And you say that by not loving yourself “as” an X, where X is something you aren’t, you’re thereby hating others. I think that’s obviously false.) ama: But I am x, since x is one of the letters stored in me as me. Example: If I hate or love myself as kjm or as any word that describes you, then I auto hate or love you as myself. It’s automatic. The brain works by words, words work by their opposites, and all words and their opposites work most well by the word Love, and don’t work at all well with the word Hate.
kjm: I think your interpolations into the words of William James and Bertrand Russell change their meanings (James’s more than Russell’s). ama: Sorry, my bad. I was trying to be helpful. But what prejudices do you think WJ was referring to?
kjm: Since you appear to be quoting them as authorities, it doesn’t seem to me a good sign that you have to change what they’re saying to do so. ama: Good point: In Love and Respect of myself as right and wrong, as correct and incorrect, as correcting and as corrected, I take this correction from you as correct and as corrector, and so it will make me even more correct.smile
kjm: In general, attempts at proselytism are not likely to find an enthusiastic reception here. Hmmmm This has no proselytistic angle to it al all, even though I see how it might seem so.
Actually, I am also both theist and atheist since I love myself as both, and so love and respect all atheists & all theists as they are. There is actually no reason to not be an atheist, and there are many atheists who are better theists as atheists than theists are at being theists. smile
The only purpose is to share on overcoming bias as in “Self-Haters Donate More” and “Haters Cheat Less.”
“Bias” here and on OB generally refers to systematic errors in our truth-seeking and decision-making processes. For instance, confirmation bias: we notice evidence in favour of our beliefs much more easily than evidence against.
Lots of important things happen in the brain without words. (And, just in case that last sentence is meant to be anything more than a joke: there are obviously far more things than words, though it’s not so clear whether or not there are more things than are adequately describable in words.)
I would certainly prefer to be loved on such terms than to be hated on such terms, but in general I value someone’s love and/or respect more when it is based on who I am and what I am like. Consider a more specific kind of love: would you want to be married to someone who loves you exactly as much as s/he loves everyone else in the world, and whose love is entirely independent of who you are?
I am skeptical; do you have any evidence that children spontaneously invent this idea themselves? I think the tradition of saying that is passed down from one child to another, and sometimes from parents to children (I don’t believe that adults are completely consistent in not liking it) and the reason is not that there’s any truth in it but that it’s a good-sounding retort. If you’re right then the idea should probably be found roughly equally in all cultures; if I’m right then it should probably be much less common in some cultures. I wonder which of these is so.
Perhaps you do, but I don’t think you have enough information to know that you do.
It seems to me that there is a difference between having the (single, vague, abstract) thought “for all X, I love myself as X” and the (multiple, more specific and concrete) thoughts for all X: “I love myself as X”. And while I can imagine (though I remain to be convinced) that the latter might turn out to be helpful in the project of loving one’s neighbours, the former seems less relevant; but the latter seems to be what you’re actually talking about here.
I do not believe you. Would you care to explain why I should?
(Unless you mean something as limited as “one thing the brain does is to use words, and sometimes words remind us of their opposites”, which is true but doesn’t seem to me to offer any support for your claims.)
Any and all preconceived ideas, of which most of us have far more than we care to admit. You can find (what I take to be) a less condensed description of the same idea in an OB post from 2007.
GJM: “Bias” here and on OB generally refers to systematic errors in our truth-seeking and decision-making processes. For instance, confirmation bias: we notice evidence in favour of our beliefs much more easily than evidence against. AMA: Thanks, GJM, for talking to me an for the info on what bias means at the OB. But don’t you want to know why there there is confirmation bias or any other bias?
GJM: Lots of important things happen in the brain without words. AMA: True, but we can’t describe them without words.
GJM: (And, just in case that last sentence is meant to be anything more than a joke: there are obviously far more things than words, though it’s not so clear whether or not there are more things than are adequately describable in words.) AMA: Hmmm Is Math English? Since all numbers are also words, and since numbers are infinite, and since there are non-number words and names, aren’t there more words than numbers?
GJM: I would certainly prefer to be loved on such terms than to be hated on such terms, but in general I value someone’s love and/or respect more when it is based on who I am and what I am like. AMA: And suppose you were! You cd only be loved and respected as such by another who did so for herself/himself, and you wd only accept such and be able to accept such if you already were loving yourself as such!
GJM: Consider a more specific kind of love: would you want to be married to someone who loves you exactly as much as s/he loves everyone else in the world, and whose love is entirely independent of who you are? AMA: Absolutely! Her choice of me for marriage would be honorable since she wd have chosen me in Love out of all the persons she loved, and NOT dishonorably by choosing me in Love out of all the people she hated!
To love only me while hating all the rest wd mean that she hated me or wd hate me if I were ever like all the ones she hated, and wd mean that I would be in the unenviable position of being threatened by her Love for any her dad and brothers and mom and sisters or anyone else: if she loved an old boyfriend, I wd think that she did not love me since she loved ONLY me and hated all the rest: so any Love for any of the rest wd mean NO Love for me!
To love me as all the rest, then to choose me out of Love for all the rest wd be the most reassuring choice ever: she loved us all and chose me out of Love! sigh I wd then never be threatened by her Love for anyone else!
GJM: I am skeptical; do you have any evidence that children spontaneously invent this idea themselves? I think the tradition of saying that is passed down from one child to another, and sometimes from parents to children (I don’t believe that adults are completely consistent in not liking it) and the reason is not that there’s any truth in it but that it’s a good-sounding retort. If you’re right then the idea should probably be found roughly equally in all cultures; if I’m right then it should probably be much less common in some cultures. I wonder which of these is so. AMA: I have spoken to tens of thousands of people from all over the world, and they all said so as kids! And it makes perfect sense: When you call me a name, me saying ‘it takes one to know one’ is more than a good-sounding retort: by ITOTKO, I am agreeing with you that what you say I am is who I am, and reminding you how you know that I am one! That’s all I am doing when someone says I am chaotic or stupid or incoherent or nonsensical or any word! And as an adult, I can only do so because I have determined to love myself as all words and their opposites.
GJM: Perhaps you do, but I don’t think you have enough information to know that you do. AMA: Being in-Love with all words gives us the insight and intuition to know without having any specific info!smile
GJM: It seems to me that there is a difference between having the (single, vague, abstract) thought “for all X, I love myself as X” and the (multiple, more specific and concrete) thoughts for all X: “I love myself as X”. And while I can imagine (though I remain to be convinced) that the latter might turn out to be helpful in the project of loving one’s neighbours, the former seems less relevant; but the latter seems to be what you’re actually talking about here. AMA: As you think more about it, you’ll see that each is a part of the other. Loving myself AS all words means the same as loving myself as much as any word and as much as all words, and as if I were all words.
Specific example: There is no difference or there is a difference with no distinction or there is a distinction with no difference between loving myself as a fool, and loving myself as much as a fool, and loving myself as if I were a fool.
There is no difference between a male fool and a foolish male.
GJM: I do not believe you. Would you care to explain why I should? AMA: Easy. And you already know this, but you filed it away since you were a kid.
First of all, there is nothing that is NOT a word.
2ndly: the brain cannot think without words: music is a word! Can you think of anything that is not a word? If so, please let me know what it is. smile All our words are stored in us and as us in our neurochemicals. So literally, we are words.
3rdly: Let’s use the opposites Give and Take: To give is to take from yourself. To take is to give to yourself. So the opposite words, give and take, are inter-definable and mean each other, so that there has never been any giving without taking nor taking without giving in history. Therefore, any one who is really for only givers/giving and is against takers/taking, should not give in the first place since he is making others into takes by his giving; and no others should allow to give since his giving makes them takers. So in a world of only givers, there would be no ‘takers.’ Pun intended. This inter-definability applies to all words and their opposites.
Example: To succeed is to fail to fail. To fail is to succeed at failing. So? So those who hate failure must also hate success, or choke when it comes to the ultimate success of the exams, or in sports such as NFL or NBA and Baseball Championships.
So Love for all words and their opposites simply binds what’s already bound, or rebinds them.
GJM: (Unless you mean something as limited as “one thing the brain does is to use words, and sometimes words remind us of their opposites”, which is true but doesn’t seem to me to offer any support for your claims.) AMA: Right, that is not what I mean.
GJM: Any and all preconceived ideas, of which most of us have far more than we care to admit. AMA: That is exactly what I am saying! Our Loves and our Hates were pre-disposed in us by teachers of all kinds so that those predispositions predispose us to certain preconceptions that explain why there is racial bias or sexual bias or confirmation bias. So by loving all words, we have one right Bias of Love which lends itself to both opposites or all angles to anything, and so eliminates the bias of Hate that favors one or the other! As above with giving and taking, it is only by applying the Bias of Love to both equally that we eliminate the unfair Bias of Hate which can only be for one or the other but never for both!
The reason Lady Justice is blindfolded is because she loves both opposites equally and so might as well be blind.
And because we justify hating others by hating ourselves, we don’t want to admit our biases of self-Hate: that wd mean that we had to love those hated others because we now had to love ourselves AS them!
GJM: You can find (what I take to be) a less condensed description of the same idea in an OB post from 2007. AMA: Thank you. And thanks again for your fairness or attempted fairness: you will definitely get convicted for being fair!smile
This is becoming extremely long. I shall try to be brief.
Of course I want to know why there are biases such as confirmation bias. (I am aware of some possible explanations, but so far as I know all anyone has is plausible conjectures.) I have seen no evidence that you have any accurate information about that.
There are more numbers than words. There are even more integers than words. There aren’t more integers than descriptions of integers using words. Whether there are more things than words depends on all sorts of difficult scientific questions and perhaps also on exactly what your definition of “thing” is.
I remain unconvinced by your panegyrics about universal love.
“I have spoken to tens of thousands of people from all over the world, and they all said so as kids!”: then I suggest that you have very strange priorities in what you discuss with them. (Actually, and I hope you aren’t offended, I strongly suspect that you are lying or mistaken about this.)
“Being in-Love with all words gives us the insight and intuition to know without having any specific info!”: ciphergoth was definitely right: you are either entirely unready for, or totally out of sympathy with the aims of, LW, and it is very unlikely that you will either get much benefit from being here or do much good to anyone else here.
“Specific example: [...]” You have misunderstood what I was saying, and that is not an example of anything to do with what I was saying.
“the brain cannot think without words: music is a word”: No. I think you are fond of making confident statements about things you do not understand.
I’ll be brief too.
We love or hate because we have been taught to. Did you, as a child, ever hear statements beginning or ending with: …‘Whether you life it or not’...? Can you remember if it was about you eating what foods you hated?
Integers, which are infinite, are also all words. So compared to integers, words are equal in number to integers: -infinity/minus infinity to 0/zero and 0 to positive infinity are all integers which are also all words: 8 is eight. Therefore, since there are non-numeral words, the infinite set of words is greater than the infinite set of numbers/integers. qed. PS: Since by definition, infinities must be equal, there is way to equalize the larger infinity of words with the smaller infinity of integers. It’s so simple that it will tend to escape readers who have not yet overcome bias against fools and foolishness, since the simplicity looks foolish and simpleminded.
It wd be strange to anyone who still has not yet overcome bias for me to talk to people about overcoming their self-hatred by reminding them about what they said as kids.
“Love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.”Richard II, [V, 5]
And there have been tens of thousands, if not more! By the way, a mistake is a lie in words. The real lie would be me saying ‘I love you’ and implying I love you all the way while hating liars.
If I misunderstood you, would you please say what else you meant? I could be poor in understanding OR you could be poor in communicating. smile
Please do not let my confidence about anything now intimidate you to the point that you don’t ask questions. You have asked questions. Please do not stop now. People who have not yet overcome the bias against being ignorant or fools can’t ask because they don’t want to admit that they don’t know. If you don’t understand, would you please ask more questions? I love myself as a fool and so love and respect you as one. The first thing a wise man knows is that he is a fool. And I am sure you are wise!smile It could be that I am a poor communicator or that you have poor understanding.smile
You do not understand the relevant area of mathematics.
You may rest assured that it will not. However, there are other factors that lead me not to ask you any further questions.
I don’t think this discussion is achieving anything worth while. Farewell.
You need to do more reading of the archives here and on Overcoming Bias before you try commenting here.
Honestly, I’m not sure that that would help.
Your presentation is impenetrably chaotic.
Vladimir Nesov: Your presentation is impenetrably chaotic.
ama: How wonderful that I have met with a paradoxical contradiction and contradictory paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.smile
With regards to Niels Bohr, as quoted in L I Ponomarev, The Quantum Dice.
Out of my impenetrable chaos, you did get the penetratingly orderly sense that my presentation was impenetrably chaotic?smile
And, isn’t there order in chaos, and vice versa?smile
So, you should now be able to do the opposite thingy!smile
Thanks too for your all the words in your thought.
And please ask questions, if there are any at all.
You’re not really ready for this site, I’m afraid. Why don’t you have a read of some of the posts that brought us here, such as the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation, or some of these posts on sister site Overcoming Bias and see if what we’re doing here is something you can get behind. Sorry!
We talk a lot about bringing new people in to the community, well, here they are.
Not to imply that you’re doing it wrong, but has any thought been put in to how to better handle these sorts of situations?
I think we’ve barely started to talk about how to attract new people; there are no top-level posts I can think of about whether we want to attract new people, or what sort if so, or how to go about it.
In any case, we definitely don’t want just any new people at this stage; we want people who buy into the fundamentals of what we’re trying to do here, and we want people who can express themselves clearly.
ama, if you’re reading this: Although I have chosen to engage with what you write rather than dismissing it, I entirely agree with ciphergoth that you appear to be either unready for LW or out of sympathy with its goals.
Of course, it’s possible that actually you’re way ahead of us, and that what looks like word salad to us (at least, to me and Vladimir Nesov, and I’m guessing to others too) really is the Expression of Deep Truth that I think you think it is. In which case, you would do well to make the effort to make what you say comprehensible and explicit.
(If you are not interested in clarity and comprehensibility, then it is unlikely that you will be of much help to us, no matter how excellent your thoughts may be.)