Most mystics reject science and rationality (and I think I have a pretty good causal model of why that is) but there have been scientific rational mystics, e.g., physicist David Bohm. I know of no reason why a person who starts out committed to science and rationality should lose that commitment through mystical training and mystical experience if he has competent advice.
My main interest in mystical experience is that it is a hole in the human motivational system—one of the few ways for a person to become independent from what Eliezer calls the thousand shards of desire. Most of the people in this community (notably Eliezer) assign intrinsic value to the thousand shards of desire, but I am indifferent to them except for their instrumental value. (In my experience the main instrumental value of keeping a connection to them is that it makes one more effective at interpersonal communication.)
Transcending the thousand shards of desire while we are still flesh-and-blood humans strikes me as potentially saner and better than “implementing them in silicon” and relying on cycles within cycles to make everything come out all right.
And the public discourse on subjects like cryonics would IMHO be much crisper if more of the participants would overcome certain natural human biases about personal identity and the continuation of “the self”.
I am not a mystic or aspiring mystic (I became indifferent to the thousand shards of my own desire a different way) but have a personal relationship of long standing with a man who underwent the full mystical experience: ecstacy 1,000,000 times greater than any other thing he ever experienced, uncommonly good control over his emotional responses, interpersonal ability to attract trusting followers without even trying. And yes, I am sure that he is not lying to me: I had a business relationship with him for about 7 years before he even mentioned (causally, tangentially) his mystical experience, and he is among the most honest people I have ever met.
Marin County, California, where I live, has an unusually high concentration of mystics, and I have in-depth personal knowledge of more than one of them.
Mystical experience is risky. (I hope I am not the first person to tell you that, Stefan!) It can create or intensify certain undesirable personality traits, like dogmatism, passivity or a messiah complex, and even with the best advice available, there is no guarantee that one will not lose one’s commitment to rationality. But it has the potential to be extremely valuable, according to my way of valuing thing.
If you really do want to transcend the natural human goal system, Stefan, I encourage you to contact me.
Most of the people in this community (notably Eliezer) assign intrinsic value to the thousand shards of desire, but I am indifferent to them except for their instrumental value.
Not so. You don’t assign value to your drives because they were inbuilt in you by evolution, you don’t value your qualities just because they come as a package deal, just because you are human [*]. Instead, you look at what you value, as a person. And of the things you value, you find that most of them are evolution’s doing, but you don’t accept all of them, and you look at some of them in a different way from what evolution intended.
Nesov points out that Eliezer picks and chooses rather than identifying with every shard of his desire.
Fair enough, but the point remains that it is not too misleading to say that I identify with fewer of the shards of human desire than Eliezer does—which affects what we recommend to other people.
Bongo asks me what is it then that I desire nowadays?
And my answer is, pretty much the same things everyone else desires! There are certain things you have to have to remain healthy and to protect your intelligence and your creativity, and getting those things takes up most of my time. Also, even in the cases where my motivational structure is different from the typical, I often present a typical facade to the outside world because typical is comfortable and familiar to people whereas atypical is suspicious or just too much trouble for people to learn.
Bongo, the human mind is very complex, so the temptation is very great to oversimplify, which is what I did above. But to answer your question, there is a ruthless hard part of me that views my happiness and the shards of my desire as means to an end. Kind of like money is also a means to an end for me. And just as I have to spend some money every day, I have to experience some pleasure every day in order to keep on functioning.
A means to what end? I hear you asking. Well, you can read about that. The model I present on the linked page is a simplification of a complex psychological reality, and it makes me look more different from the average person than I really am. Out of respect for Eliezer’s wishes, do not discuss this “goal system zero” here. Instead, discuss it on my blog or by private email.
Now to bring the discussion back to mysticism. My main interest in mysticism is that it gives the individual flexibility that can be used to rearrange or “rationalize” the individual’s motivational structure. A few have used that flexibility to rearrange emotional valences so that everything is a means to one all-embracing end, resulting in a sense of morality similar to mine. But most use it in other ways. One of the most notorious way to use mysticism is to use it to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to win a person’s trust (because the person can sense that you are not relating to him in the same anxious or greedy way that most people relate to him) and then once you have his trust, to teach him to overcome unnecessary suffering. This is what most gurus do. If you want a typical example, search Youtube for Gangaji, a typical mystic skilled at helping ordinary people reduce their suffering.
I take you back to the fact that a full mystical experience is 1,000,000 times more pleasurable than anything a person would ordinarily experience. That blots out or makes irrelevant everything else that is happening to the person! So the person is able to sit under a tree without moving for weeks and months while his body slowly rots away. People do that in India: a case was in the news a few years ago.
Of course he should get up from sitting under the tree and go home and finish college. Or fetch wood, carry water. Or whatever it is he needs to do to maintain his health, prosperity, intelligence and creativity. But the experience of sitting under the tree can put the petty annoyances and the petty grievances of life in perspective so that they do not have as much influence on the person’s thinking and behavior as they used to. Which is quite useful.
Most mystics reject science and rationality (and I think I have a pretty good causal model of why that is) but there have been scientific rational mystics, e.g., physicist David Bohm. I know of no reason why a person who starts out committed to science and rationality should lose that commitment through mystical training and mystical experience if he has competent advice.
My main interest in mystical experience is that it is a hole in the human motivational system—one of the few ways for a person to become independent from what Eliezer calls the thousand shards of desire. Most of the people in this community (notably Eliezer) assign intrinsic value to the thousand shards of desire, but I am indifferent to them except for their instrumental value. (In my experience the main instrumental value of keeping a connection to them is that it makes one more effective at interpersonal communication.)
Transcending the thousand shards of desire while we are still flesh-and-blood humans strikes me as potentially saner and better than “implementing them in silicon” and relying on cycles within cycles to make everything come out all right. And the public discourse on subjects like cryonics would IMHO be much crisper if more of the participants would overcome certain natural human biases about personal identity and the continuation of “the self”.
I am not a mystic or aspiring mystic (I became indifferent to the thousand shards of my own desire a different way) but have a personal relationship of long standing with a man who underwent the full mystical experience: ecstacy 1,000,000 times greater than any other thing he ever experienced, uncommonly good control over his emotional responses, interpersonal ability to attract trusting followers without even trying. And yes, I am sure that he is not lying to me: I had a business relationship with him for about 7 years before he even mentioned (causally, tangentially) his mystical experience, and he is among the most honest people I have ever met.
Marin County, California, where I live, has an unusually high concentration of mystics, and I have in-depth personal knowledge of more than one of them.
Mystical experience is risky. (I hope I am not the first person to tell you that, Stefan!) It can create or intensify certain undesirable personality traits, like dogmatism, passivity or a messiah complex, and even with the best advice available, there is no guarantee that one will not lose one’s commitment to rationality. But it has the potential to be extremely valuable, according to my way of valuing thing.
If you really do want to transcend the natural human goal system, Stefan, I encourage you to contact me.
Not so. You don’t assign value to your drives because they were inbuilt in you by evolution, you don’t value your qualities just because they come as a package deal, just because you are human [*]. Instead, you look at what you value, as a person. And of the things you value, you find that most of them are evolution’s doing, but you don’t accept all of them, and you look at some of them in a different way from what evolution intended.
[*] Related, but overloaded with other info: No License To Be Human.
Nesov points out that Eliezer picks and chooses rather than identifying with every shard of his desire.
Fair enough, but the point remains that it is not too misleading to say that I identify with fewer of the shards of human desire than Eliezer does—which affects what we recommend to other people.
I would be interested to know what it is then that you desire nowadays.
And does everyone who gives up the thousand shards of desire end up desiring the same thing?
Bongo asks me what is it then that I desire nowadays?
And my answer is, pretty much the same things everyone else desires! There are certain things you have to have to remain healthy and to protect your intelligence and your creativity, and getting those things takes up most of my time. Also, even in the cases where my motivational structure is different from the typical, I often present a typical facade to the outside world because typical is comfortable and familiar to people whereas atypical is suspicious or just too much trouble for people to learn.
Bongo, the human mind is very complex, so the temptation is very great to oversimplify, which is what I did above. But to answer your question, there is a ruthless hard part of me that views my happiness and the shards of my desire as means to an end. Kind of like money is also a means to an end for me. And just as I have to spend some money every day, I have to experience some pleasure every day in order to keep on functioning.
A means to what end? I hear you asking. Well, you can read about that. The model I present on the linked page is a simplification of a complex psychological reality, and it makes me look more different from the average person than I really am. Out of respect for Eliezer’s wishes, do not discuss this “goal system zero” here. Instead, discuss it on my blog or by private email.
Now to bring the discussion back to mysticism. My main interest in mysticism is that it gives the individual flexibility that can be used to rearrange or “rationalize” the individual’s motivational structure. A few have used that flexibility to rearrange emotional valences so that everything is a means to one all-embracing end, resulting in a sense of morality similar to mine. But most use it in other ways. One of the most notorious way to use mysticism is to use it to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to win a person’s trust (because the person can sense that you are not relating to him in the same anxious or greedy way that most people relate to him) and then once you have his trust, to teach him to overcome unnecessary suffering. This is what most gurus do. If you want a typical example, search Youtube for Gangaji, a typical mystic skilled at helping ordinary people reduce their suffering.
I take you back to the fact that a full mystical experience is 1,000,000 times more pleasurable than anything a person would ordinarily experience. That blots out or makes irrelevant everything else that is happening to the person! So the person is able to sit under a tree without moving for weeks and months while his body slowly rots away. People do that in India: a case was in the news a few years ago.
Of course he should get up from sitting under the tree and go home and finish college. Or fetch wood, carry water. Or whatever it is he needs to do to maintain his health, prosperity, intelligence and creativity. But the experience of sitting under the tree can put the petty annoyances and the petty grievances of life in perspective so that they do not have as much influence on the person’s thinking and behavior as they used to. Which is quite useful.
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