(Speaking as a mod) Elo, this is the third time (1, 2) in the past two weeks that you’ve joined a discussion with a two-line comment telling people off people for not trying or being engaged with mystical things.
The top calibre of people on LW are people who are very often willing to follow the evidence, reasoning and empirical testing where it leads them, in the face of strong preconceptions. Telling them off without providing substantive reasons why they’re wrong isn’t an effective strategy to help change their minds. A better way to do this would be to write a post explaining the reasons why their current strategies can be improved.
One way would be for you to helpfully bridge the gap by giving an object-level explanation of the mechanisms by which some of the mystical ideas are useful. Here are some greatexamples of curated posts (that I really like) that attempt to demystify* why certain types of meditation are useful, that caused me to think differently about my own mind.
On the meta level, there’s a spectrum of when we should engage more with an idea and when we should move past it, and if you can make a cogent meta-level argument that many folks’ current heuristics here are mistaken, maybe then they’d take the action that seems right.
When I repeatedly read short comments that attempt to punish someone for the same reason with no substance, it sends me strong signals of being uncooperative. I think there are much more cooperative methods of achieving your goals, and I encourage you to use them.
(Speaking as a mod) Elo, this is the third time (1, 2) in the past two weeks that you’ve joined a discussion with a two-line comment telling people off people for not trying or being engaged with mystical things.
The top calibre of people on LW are people who are very often willing to follow the evidence, reasoning and empirical testing where it leads them, in the face of strong preconceptions. Telling them off without providing substantive reasons why they’re wrong isn’t an effective strategy to help change their minds. A better way to do this would be to write a post explaining the reasons why their current strategies can be improved.
One way would be for you to helpfully bridge the gap by giving an object-level explanation of the mechanisms by which some of the mystical ideas are useful. Here are some great examples of curated posts (that I really like) that attempt to demystify* why certain types of meditation are useful, that caused me to think differently about my own mind.
On the meta level, there’s a spectrum of when we should engage more with an idea and when we should move past it, and if you can make a cogent meta-level argument that many folks’ current heuristics here are mistaken, maybe then they’d take the action that seems right.
When I repeatedly read short comments that attempt to punish someone for the same reason with no substance, it sends me strong signals of being uncooperative. I think there are much more cooperative methods of achieving your goals, and I encourage you to use them.
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*pardon the word choice.
Of note, I did stop commenting in this way and shifted to different types of communication.