It just seems like those situations don’t present themselves very often. More often, a situation presents itself like this: A team member makes all the wrong arguments to support a thesis I disagree with. Previously, I would just fight against each of his arguments. Now, I don’t do anything much (I’m not good at convincing people) but instead keep thinking “yeah, yeah, arguments, soldiers, written the bottom line, blah, blah” without it actually being useful.
That’s not really related to my main problems, but in general, rationality for me poses that problem, that merely thinking in a Sequences-like fashion causes me to feel sad and doesn’t bring enough benefit to compensate, I suspect.
When you ask “how do I forget rationality?”, it seems to me that you’re asking how to go back to deceiving yourself. After all, rationality is the adherence of beliefs to reality, and there’s nothing that subtracts you joy by changing your beliefs so that they are more in tune with reality: after all, reality was there all along. Perhaps ponderating on the joy of the merely real could help.
“Reality was there all along.” The fact that someone believes something is part of reality, and if it changes, then reality is changing. There is no reason that this cannot take away some joy from someone, even if their beliefs end up less accurate.
As St. Paul said, “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” Asserting that conforming your beliefs to reality cannot make you less joyful is itself a form of wishful thinking in which you refuse to conform your beliefs to reality.
If I correctly read what you’re saying, you’re basically asserting that you can be sad because your belief structure has changed. That implies to have meta-beliefs, which are extremely dangerous from a rationality point of view. As a rationalist, you should keep your identity very small and do not presuppose anything about the general structure of how your beliefs should be like, because you will be almost certainly wrong (and disappointed). Consider this extreme example.
On the other hand, I don’t understand the Paul quote: we’re exactly saying that you shouldn’t be judgemental (about reality, that is). Obviously we’re talking about ideals to aspire, as with everything in this forum and self-improvement.
No, it does not imply that you have “meta-beliefs”, although everyone does. It implies that your beliefs affect the world, as for example by making you say things. If your beliefs affect the world, changing your beliefs will both change the part of the world which is your beliefs, and also other parts of the world. All of that has the possibility of making you sad.
This is all perfectly obvious, and I should not have to bring up examples from real life.
It could be that reality has nasty things in mind for us that we can’t yet see and that we cannot affect in any way, and therefore I would be happier if I didn’t know of them in advance. Encountering a new idea like this that somebody has discovered is one my constant worries when browsing this site.
You’re referring to http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/, yes?
It just seems like those situations don’t present themselves very often. More often, a situation presents itself like this: A team member makes all the wrong arguments to support a thesis I disagree with. Previously, I would just fight against each of his arguments. Now, I don’t do anything much (I’m not good at convincing people) but instead keep thinking “yeah, yeah, arguments, soldiers, written the bottom line, blah, blah” without it actually being useful.
That’s not really related to my main problems, but in general, rationality for me poses that problem, that merely thinking in a Sequences-like fashion causes me to feel sad and doesn’t bring enough benefit to compensate, I suspect.
No, I was making a reference to the Litany of Tarski.
When you ask “how do I forget rationality?”, it seems to me that you’re asking how to go back to deceiving yourself. After all, rationality is the adherence of beliefs to reality, and there’s nothing that subtracts you joy by changing your beliefs so that they are more in tune with reality: after all, reality was there all along.
Perhaps ponderating on the joy of the merely real could help.
“Reality was there all along.” The fact that someone believes something is part of reality, and if it changes, then reality is changing. There is no reason that this cannot take away some joy from someone, even if their beliefs end up less accurate.
As St. Paul said, “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” Asserting that conforming your beliefs to reality cannot make you less joyful is itself a form of wishful thinking in which you refuse to conform your beliefs to reality.
If I correctly read what you’re saying, you’re basically asserting that you can be sad because your belief structure has changed. That implies to have meta-beliefs, which are extremely dangerous from a rationality point of view.
As a rationalist, you should keep your identity very small and do not presuppose anything about the general structure of how your beliefs should be like, because you will be almost certainly wrong (and disappointed).
Consider this extreme example.
On the other hand, I don’t understand the Paul quote: we’re exactly saying that you shouldn’t be judgemental (about reality, that is). Obviously we’re talking about ideals to aspire, as with everything in this forum and self-improvement.
No, it does not imply that you have “meta-beliefs”, although everyone does. It implies that your beliefs affect the world, as for example by making you say things. If your beliefs affect the world, changing your beliefs will both change the part of the world which is your beliefs, and also other parts of the world. All of that has the possibility of making you sad.
This is all perfectly obvious, and I should not have to bring up examples from real life.
It could be that reality has nasty things in mind for us that we can’t yet see and that we cannot affect in any way, and therefore I would be happier if I didn’t know of them in advance. Encountering a new idea like this that somebody has discovered is one my constant worries when browsing this site.