I am impressed and appreciative towards Logan for trying to say things on this post despite not being very coherent. I am appreciative and have admiration towards Anna for making sincere attempts to communicate out of a principled stance in favor of information sharing. I am surprised and impressed by Zoe’s coherence on a pretty triggering and nuanced subject. I enjoy hearing from jessicata, and I appreciate the way her mind works; I liked this post, and I found it kind of relieving.
I am a bit crestfallen at my own lack of mental skillfulness in response to reading posts like this one.
While this feels like a not-very-LW-y way to go about things, I will just try to make a list… of …. things …
I don’t like LW’s discussion norms or the structure of its website. I think it favors left-brained non-indexical dialogue—which I believe compounds on many of the major problems of science today. I want to holistically appreciate the role of emotions, intuitions, physical sensations, facial expressions, felt senses, identity, and background context on truth-seeking. LW feels like it wants to strip that away or makes it very hard to bring them in. I don’t blame LW, its creators, or whatever for any of that. It’s fine, it’s fine.
My reaction here doesn’t seem very skillful, but I basically feel super blocked on engaging on LW for the above reason. I don’t like it! My communication style is pretty nonverbal and seems like it only works in person, and thisisnobody’sfault eerg.
I appreciate Michael Vassar for the work that he’s done; I think he’s helped people. I think he’s made certain things more clear that are difficult to see. That said, I also detect a poison in the framing (that I associate with him and his group) that is corrosively seeping into certain narratives about trust, narrative control, institutions, etc. Namely, the poison takes the form of cynicism or “trust no one” or paranoia. I feel like yelling about it.
I don’t think psychosis is a good thing to induce in a person, ever. Period. I don’t care if they have ‘consented’ to it, I don’t think it’s a wise or loving thing to do to oneself or to another. I believe similarly about suicide. That said, if people are determined to go through with it, then my “seeming non-acceptance” about it is more likely to cause harm to the fabric of community. At bottom, I accept people. And I distinguish this from accepting certain actions that people might take. But I get that people conflate their personhood with their behaviors, so. Here we are.
I accept you no matter what. Sorry if my words feel like a rejection.
This “person X infecting person Y with a demon” framing seems to have the ‘paranoia’ poison mentioned above, and therefore, I don’t like it. It’s not ‘entirely wrong / inaccurate’ but I want people to frame the thing in a way that feels less mentally destabilizing to internalize.
You might be thinking that reality is just mentally destabilizing when you get down to it, and so maybe people doing the truth-seeking thing… some of them are just gonna go mad, if they’re doing it right. But friends, I wanna make a claim. It’s possible to build mental capacity such that difficult truths can be seen without being terrible for you. (Monastic training has been helpful for me.) Some people are maybe not willing to go through extensive mental training before getting to learn forbidden truths, but … my take: The end of the world doesn’t need your brain to explode on top of all its other issues. Manic insight trips are not what we need. Beware a sense of urgency that tells you that you need to make drastic changes to your psyche or that you need to take drugs in order to “accelerate your progress”.
It’s not worth risking your mind; your mind is precious. Also you are not special. Mutant super soldier Elon-Musk experimentation that risks your death or insanity is not gonna make the world a better place, and I claim… for at least some of you, you’re probably attracted to it in the first place because you secretly hope for your own annihilation. This is foolishness.
OK, end rant. I made a bunch of claims and definitely didn’t try to explain them. Sorry, LW. I am happy for you to make your own discoveries about these claims. I have done my own investigations into them over a long period of time and a lifetime of mistakes; unfortunately I am pretty bad at legibility. … Some knowledge might be best discovered by walking the path for yourself.
I think I would be more legible in a one-on-one convo, with a fair amount of patience. Scaling is hard.
I am impressed and appreciative towards Logan for trying to say things on this post despite not being very coherent. I am appreciative and have admiration towards Anna for making sincere attempts to communicate out of a principled stance in favor of information sharing. I am surprised and impressed by Zoe’s coherence on a pretty triggering and nuanced subject. I enjoy hearing from jessicata, and I appreciate the way her mind works; I liked this post, and I found it kind of relieving.
I am a bit crestfallen at my own lack of mental skillfulness in response to reading posts like this one.
While this feels like a not-very-LW-y way to go about things, I will just try to make a list… of …. things …
I don’t like LW’s discussion norms or the structure of its website. I think it favors left-brained non-indexical dialogue—which I believe compounds on many of the major problems of science today. I want to holistically appreciate the role of emotions, intuitions, physical sensations, facial expressions, felt senses, identity, and background context on truth-seeking. LW feels like it wants to strip that away or makes it very hard to bring them in. I don’t blame LW, its creators, or whatever for any of that. It’s fine, it’s fine.
My reaction here doesn’t seem very skillful, but I basically feel super blocked on engaging on LW for the above reason. I don’t like it! My communication style is pretty nonverbal and seems like it only works in person, and thisisnobody’sfault eerg.
I appreciate Michael Vassar for the work that he’s done; I think he’s helped people. I think he’s made certain things more clear that are difficult to see. That said, I also detect a poison in the framing (that I associate with him and his group) that is corrosively seeping into certain narratives about trust, narrative control, institutions, etc. Namely, the poison takes the form of cynicism or “trust no one” or paranoia. I feel like yelling about it.
I don’t think psychosis is a good thing to induce in a person, ever. Period. I don’t care if they have ‘consented’ to it, I don’t think it’s a wise or loving thing to do to oneself or to another. I believe similarly about suicide. That said, if people are determined to go through with it, then my “seeming non-acceptance” about it is more likely to cause harm to the fabric of community. At bottom, I accept people. And I distinguish this from accepting certain actions that people might take. But I get that people conflate their personhood with their behaviors, so. Here we are.
I accept you no matter what. Sorry if my words feel like a rejection.
This “person X infecting person Y with a demon” framing seems to have the ‘paranoia’ poison mentioned above, and therefore, I don’t like it. It’s not ‘entirely wrong / inaccurate’ but I want people to frame the thing in a way that feels less mentally destabilizing to internalize.
You might be thinking that reality is just mentally destabilizing when you get down to it, and so maybe people doing the truth-seeking thing… some of them are just gonna go mad, if they’re doing it right. But friends, I wanna make a claim. It’s possible to build mental capacity such that difficult truths can be seen without being terrible for you. (Monastic training has been helpful for me.) Some people are maybe not willing to go through extensive mental training before getting to learn forbidden truths, but … my take: The end of the world doesn’t need your brain to explode on top of all its other issues. Manic insight trips are not what we need. Beware a sense of urgency that tells you that you need to make drastic changes to your psyche or that you need to take drugs in order to “accelerate your progress”.
It’s not worth risking your mind; your mind is precious. Also you are not special. Mutant super soldier Elon-Musk experimentation that risks your death or insanity is not gonna make the world a better place, and I claim… for at least some of you, you’re probably attracted to it in the first place because you secretly hope for your own annihilation. This is foolishness.
OK, end rant. I made a bunch of claims and definitely didn’t try to explain them. Sorry, LW. I am happy for you to make your own discoveries about these claims. I have done my own investigations into them over a long period of time and a lifetime of mistakes; unfortunately I am pretty bad at legibility. … Some knowledge might be best discovered by walking the path for yourself.
I think I would be more legible in a one-on-one convo, with a fair amount of patience. Scaling is hard.
Open to feedback. Open to changing my mind.
Not open to drama.
oh man sounds like we have a really similar relationship with LW for the same reasons