I think an important part of the rationalist’s plight is attempting to understand the design intents behind these built-in unapologetic old mechanisms for recognizing ourselves in the world, which any self-preservation machine capable of rationality must surely have. But I don’t know if we can ever really understand them, they wern’t designed to be understood, in fact they seem to be designed to permit being misunderstood to a disturbing degree. I find that often when I think “I” have won, finally achieved a some sense of self-comprehension sufficient for total consciousness-subconscious integration, I get nauseous and realize that what has really happened is I have been overrun by a rampantly insolent mental process that is no more “me” than a spreading lie would be, something confused and transient and not welcome in the domain of the selfish gene, and I reset.
I find the roots of this abstraction engine reaching out over my mind again. Tentative and carefully pruned, this time.
The hardest part of the process is that the gene’s memetic safety mechanisms seem quite tolerant of delusions long after they’re planted, though not once they begin to flower. You don’t get a warning. If you bloom in the wrong way you will feel not the light of the sun but the incendiary of your mental immune system.
I think an important part of the rationalist’s plight is attempting to understand the design intents behind these built-in unapologetic old mechanisms for recognizing ourselves in the world, which any self-preservation machine capable of rationality must surely have. But I don’t know if we can ever really understand them, they wern’t designed to be understood, in fact they seem to be designed to permit being misunderstood to a disturbing degree. I find that often when I think “I” have won, finally achieved a some sense of self-comprehension sufficient for total consciousness-subconscious integration, I get nauseous and realize that what has really happened is I have been overrun by a rampantly insolent mental process that is no more “me” than a spreading lie would be, something confused and transient and not welcome in the domain of the selfish gene, and I reset.
I find the roots of this abstraction engine reaching out over my mind again. Tentative and carefully pruned, this time.
The hardest part of the process is that the gene’s memetic safety mechanisms seem quite tolerant of delusions long after they’re planted, though not once they begin to flower. You don’t get a warning. If you bloom in the wrong way you will feel not the light of the sun but the incendiary of your mental immune system.