Not off topic. I acknowledge that I am messing with dangerous forces. But I think it’s approximately as dangerous to not mess with it as to mess with them. Traditional epistemic rationality techniques can help us learn important new things. But it can be difficult to bring our emotions and intuitions in line with that knowledge. If we can’t make important concepts emotionally resonant, it will be harder to act upon them. I wrote about my concerns about the danger of ritual in this article.
While I think your concern is miscalibrated (in terms of actual danger) I do acknowledge that many people in the community are turned off by this. I won’t be publicizing the more extreme ritual-y stuff in the main discussion area, but bringing it up in an Open thread seemed reasonable to me.
I also note that the theme of Moore Day is not “Amazing technology is coming and it will magically fix everything.” It’ll be more like “Amazing technology is coming and we don’t know exactly what the ramifications are going to be, good or bad, but one way or another its going to be interesting.”
And it’s followed up by the Winter solstice, whose purpose is to remind us that the universe is a complex, unforgivingly neutral place, and not technology nor democracy nor human nature can be counted on to keep us safe. If you want to have a promising future, you yourself are going to have to work hard, not only to accomplish the right actions, but figure out for yourself what the right actions are.
Not off topic. I acknowledge that I am messing with dangerous forces. But I think it’s approximately as dangerous to not mess with it as to mess with them. Traditional epistemic rationality techniques can help us learn important new things. But it can be difficult to bring our emotions and intuitions in line with that knowledge. If we can’t make important concepts emotionally resonant, it will be harder to act upon them. I wrote about my concerns about the danger of ritual in this article.
While I think your concern is miscalibrated (in terms of actual danger) I do acknowledge that many people in the community are turned off by this. I won’t be publicizing the more extreme ritual-y stuff in the main discussion area, but bringing it up in an Open thread seemed reasonable to me.
I also note that the theme of Moore Day is not “Amazing technology is coming and it will magically fix everything.” It’ll be more like “Amazing technology is coming and we don’t know exactly what the ramifications are going to be, good or bad, but one way or another its going to be interesting.”
And it’s followed up by the Winter solstice, whose purpose is to remind us that the universe is a complex, unforgivingly neutral place, and not technology nor democracy nor human nature can be counted on to keep us safe. If you want to have a promising future, you yourself are going to have to work hard, not only to accomplish the right actions, but figure out for yourself what the right actions are.