This post feels to me in some ways like the first chapter of a religious teaching. The post keeps talking about wholesomeness in a way where I have a (perhaps unjustified) sense the post is pretending or expecting me to know what it means, and talking like it has successfully explained it, but I’m not sure it succeeds (e.g. the circular definition for how to make wholesome decisions), and that feels common for religious texts about how to live a good life.
This is partly a feature: since I feel happier that I’m pointing to a coherent concept than I feel happy with any of my short articulations of it, one of the ways to continue to point is to use it in various ways, and let the way it’s being used implicitly convey some information about the boundaries or subtleties of the concept.
Of course it seems great to continue to try to find better short articulations, to explore more examples, or otherwise to explicitly specify the boundaries/subtleties of the concept. If some of that happens in the comments it seems great to me. (Or if it gets poked at and turns out to be less of coherent concept than I think, I’d very much like to know that!)
Interesting observation that this comes up in religious texts about how to live a good life. I guess the reason is similar: there’s a lot of complexity and nuance about how to live a good life, and it’s helpful to be able to talk about some general directions and features of the landscape, even if one can’t give a precise articulation of those features.
I don’t think it has to be hard to say what wholesomeness is. I don’t know what you mean by the word, but to me it’s simply acting in a way that has compassion and respect to everything, leaving nothing out. Very hard to do, but easy enough to state.
I like this articulation. Would you object if I were to borrow it into the main text?
At the same time I’m not certain, if you just gave someone this definition, if they’d properly grasp the idea (if they didn’t kind of understand it already). There are lots of different possible interpretations. Some are obviously impossible and so not action-guiding (“have individual compassion and respect for each electron, leaving none out”). More realistically, I think someone might hear it as automatically satisfied by an EA-style impartiality (and I think there’s more to it than that, and also guess you think there’s more to it than that).
Sure, feel free to use it, or riff on it to create something better.
This is a fully general problem with using words: the categories they point to are always a bit off, especially if the reader doesn’t share a lot of our context. I find it best to state things as directly as I can, and let others sort out their own confusion.
Your definition reads like a sazen to me. A good pointer once you know the concept, but won’t get it across to someone who really hasn’t gotten it yet.
I don’t think there’s any other option. Wholesomeness is something you have to learn by doing. If you try to imitate what you think is wholesome after reading about it, you’ll likely end up in some uncanny valley of weirdly unwholesome behavior even though it has all the trappings of wholesomeness.
Seems like a valid choice you can make when blogging, it’s a high standard to meet. I’ll just say that concept-shaped holes can be very hard to notice and that posts that can successfully show them to those who are missing them are very valuable.
This post feels to me in some ways like the first chapter of a religious teaching. The post keeps talking about wholesomeness in a way where I have a (perhaps unjustified) sense the post is pretending or expecting me to know what it means, and talking like it has successfully explained it, but I’m not sure it succeeds (e.g. the circular definition for how to make wholesome decisions), and that feels common for religious texts about how to live a good life.
This is partly a feature: since I feel happier that I’m pointing to a coherent concept than I feel happy with any of my short articulations of it, one of the ways to continue to point is to use it in various ways, and let the way it’s being used implicitly convey some information about the boundaries or subtleties of the concept.
Of course it seems great to continue to try to find better short articulations, to explore more examples, or otherwise to explicitly specify the boundaries/subtleties of the concept. If some of that happens in the comments it seems great to me. (Or if it gets poked at and turns out to be less of coherent concept than I think, I’d very much like to know that!)
Interesting observation that this comes up in religious texts about how to live a good life. I guess the reason is similar: there’s a lot of complexity and nuance about how to live a good life, and it’s helpful to be able to talk about some general directions and features of the landscape, even if one can’t give a precise articulation of those features.
I don’t think it has to be hard to say what wholesomeness is. I don’t know what you mean by the word, but to me it’s simply acting in a way that has compassion and respect to everything, leaving nothing out. Very hard to do, but easy enough to state.
I like this articulation. Would you object if I were to borrow it into the main text?
At the same time I’m not certain, if you just gave someone this definition, if they’d properly grasp the idea (if they didn’t kind of understand it already). There are lots of different possible interpretations. Some are obviously impossible and so not action-guiding (“have individual compassion and respect for each electron, leaving none out”). More realistically, I think someone might hear it as automatically satisfied by an EA-style impartiality (and I think there’s more to it than that, and also guess you think there’s more to it than that).
Sure, feel free to use it, or riff on it to create something better.
This is a fully general problem with using words: the categories they point to are always a bit off, especially if the reader doesn’t share a lot of our context. I find it best to state things as directly as I can, and let others sort out their own confusion.
Your definition reads like a sazen to me. A good pointer once you know the concept, but won’t get it across to someone who really hasn’t gotten it yet.
I don’t think there’s any other option. Wholesomeness is something you have to learn by doing. If you try to imitate what you think is wholesome after reading about it, you’ll likely end up in some uncanny valley of weirdly unwholesome behavior even though it has all the trappings of wholesomeness.
I am more optimistic about the power of clear explanations. That’s something I got from reading SlateStarCodex.
Wouldn’t that imply the existence of this essay, available for anyone passing by to read, is a net negative?
Yes. I think that any attempt to explain wholesomeness in written words will be inadequate at best and misleading at worst.
Seems like a valid choice you can make when blogging, it’s a high standard to meet. I’ll just say that concept-shaped holes can be very hard to notice and that posts that can successfully show them to those who are missing them are very valuable.