I think that people don’t want to use explicit reason. And if they want to, they fail. And if they start succeeding, they’re punished. And if they push on, they get scared. And if they gather their courage, they hurt themselves. And if they make it to the other side, their lives enriched and empowered by reason, they will forget the hard path they walked and will wonder incredulously why everyone else doesn’t try using reason for themselves.
Maybe your question is addressed by this part:
People just like their friends. It simply feels right. It’s what everyone does. The way out of the valley [of disintegration] is to not to reject this impulse [...] but to integrate your deep and sophisticated friend-liking mental machinery with your explicit rationality and everything else.
The way to progress in rationality is not to use explicit reason to brute-force every problem but to use it to integrate all of your mental faculties: intuition, social cognition, language sense, embodied cognition, trusted authorities, visual processing… The place to start is with the ways of thinking that served you well before you stumbled onto a rationalist blog or some other gateway into a method and community of explicit reasoners.
I was really puzzled reading that post, to me learning rationality always felt wonderful, my first round with it was like I had suddenly noticed I was living in a really small cage inside my head, and now I could suddenly open the door to get out and walk outside on my legs for the first time and then run. Now that I’m finally managing to continue I feel like the rest of the world just gets clearer and clearer to understand, even if I got these negative emotions as side effects.
I can only assume I was the ideal subject to learn it, when I stumbled into it I was managing to self sabotage myself at everything relevant I tried to do in an obstinate attempt to not risk gaining any possible disconfirmation about my intelligence.
I had wrote more about it, but then I realised I should just write a coming of age or postmortem about this.
Back to the subject:
And if they make it to the other side, their lives enriched and empowered by reason, they will forget the hard path they walked and will wonder incredulously why everyone else doesn’t try using reason for themselves.
I guess this kinda describes what happened to me, it wasn’t exactly a perilous path but I did put in a lot of work.
The way to progress in rationality is not to use explicit reason to brute-force every problem but to use it to integrate all of your mental faculties: intuition, social cognition, language sense, embodied cognition, trusted authorities, visual processing… The place to start is with the ways of thinking that served you well before you stumbled onto a rationalist blog or some other gateway into a method and community of explicit reasoners.
I’m really unsure about how I could try to integrate my intuitions into my explicit reason, at first sight they seem like incompatible processes since you can’t really understand why you are having a particular intuition (if the post uses intuitions to mean the kind of ideas of judgements you can’t explain at an explicit level).
Or the suggestion is to apply explicit reason to check if the initial suggestions my intuitions give me make sense?
So far I haven’t managed to intentionally use intuition to solve a single relevant problem, I think my mind mostly uses intuition when I don’t have the time to make all the calls by explicit reason or by pre-selecting for good ideas and pointing out possible mistakes I then examine.
All in all, I don’t think I trust my intuitions much because explicit reason improved my performances a lot and I feel very nervous about going with something I can’t make sense of.
If anyone has thoughts on this or suggestions I’d love to hear them. The other mental faculties mentioned seem easier to integrate with explicit reason.
People just like their friends. It simply feels right. It’s what everyone does. The way out of the valley [of disintegration] is to not to reject this impulse [...] but to integrate your deep and sophisticated friend-liking mental machinery with your explicit rationality and everything else.
I know, I wrote this question also because I didn’t wanted to risk feeling angry or disinterested toward my friends. Even if I know they are relatively “crazy” I don’t feel at all like I shouldn’t be friend with them anymore…
I guess it would be a good idea to remind myself to notice and appreciate what I like about them and the warm things they do, even if they aren’t at all related to being smart or rational.
you can’t really understand why you are having a particular intuition
Intuition is distilled deliberation. Deliberation is a sequence of intuitive steps, amplified intuition. A given intuition is formed by (and stands for) the dataset that trains it, the habits of deliberative thought on its specific topic.
I didn’t intend to imply that learning rationality can feel difficult or hard. It sure didn’t for me as my path started early and I had a lot of support. But I guess it can be challenging in some circumstances.
Related: The treacherous path to rationality
Maybe your question is addressed by this part:
I was really puzzled reading that post, to me learning rationality always felt wonderful, my first round with it was like I had suddenly noticed I was living in a really small cage inside my head, and now I could suddenly open the door to get out and walk outside on my legs for the first time and then run. Now that I’m finally managing to continue I feel like the rest of the world just gets clearer and clearer to understand, even if I got these negative emotions as side effects.
I can only assume I was the ideal subject to learn it, when I stumbled into it I was managing to self sabotage myself at everything relevant I tried to do in an obstinate attempt to not risk gaining any possible disconfirmation about my intelligence.
I had wrote more about it, but then I realised I should just write a coming of age or postmortem about this.
Back to the subject:
I guess this kinda describes what happened to me, it wasn’t exactly a perilous path but I did put in a lot of work.
I’m really unsure about how I could try to integrate my intuitions into my explicit reason, at first sight they seem like incompatible processes since you can’t really understand why you are having a particular intuition (if the post uses intuitions to mean the kind of ideas of judgements you can’t explain at an explicit level).
Or the suggestion is to apply explicit reason to check if the initial suggestions my intuitions give me make sense?
So far I haven’t managed to intentionally use intuition to solve a single relevant problem, I think my mind mostly uses intuition when I don’t have the time to make all the calls by explicit reason or by pre-selecting for good ideas and pointing out possible mistakes I then examine.
All in all, I don’t think I trust my intuitions much because explicit reason improved my performances a lot and I feel very nervous about going with something I can’t make sense of.
If anyone has thoughts on this or suggestions I’d love to hear them. The other mental faculties mentioned seem easier to integrate with explicit reason.
I know, I wrote this question also because I didn’t wanted to risk feeling angry or disinterested toward my friends. Even if I know they are relatively “crazy” I don’t feel at all like I shouldn’t be friend with them anymore…
I guess it would be a good idea to remind myself to notice and appreciate what I like about them and the warm things they do, even if they aren’t at all related to being smart or rational.
Intuition is distilled deliberation. Deliberation is a sequence of intuitive steps, amplified intuition. A given intuition is formed by (and stands for) the dataset that trains it, the habits of deliberative thought on its specific topic.
I didn’t intend to imply that learning rationality can feel difficult or hard. It sure didn’t for me as my path started early and I had a lot of support. But I guess it can be challenging in some circumstances.
I understand, what I meant was that I initially felt confused reading the post you linked, since that one did implied that a lot of people do.
But having thought about it, it seems likely that a lot of people would find themselves in those challenging circumstances.