Tsvi has many underrated posts. This one was rated correctly.
I didn’t previously have a crisp conceptual handle for the category that Tsvi calls Playful Thinking. Initially it seemed a slightly unnatural category. Now it’s such a natural category that perhaps it should be called “Thinking”, and other kinds should be the ones with a modifier (e.g. maybe Directed Thinking?).
Tsvi gives many theoretical justifications for engaging in Playful Thinking. I want to talk about one because it was only briefly mentioned in the post:
Your sense of fun decorrelates you from brain worms / egregores / systems of deference, avoiding the dangers of those.
For me, engaging in intellectual play is an antidote to political mindkilledness. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t work for very long. But it does help.
When I switch from intellectual play to a politically charged topic, there’s a brief period where I’m just.. better at thinking about it. Perhaps it increases open-mindedness. But that’s not it. It’s more like increased ability to run down object-level thoughts without higher-level interference. A very valuable state of mind.
But this isn’t why I play. I play because it’s fun. And because it’s natural? It’s in our nature.
It’s easy to throw this away under pressure, and I’ve sometimes done so. This post is a good reminder of why I shouldn’t.
Tsvi has many underrated posts. This one was rated correctly.
I didn’t previously have a crisp conceptual handle for the category that Tsvi calls Playful Thinking. Initially it seemed a slightly unnatural category. Now it’s such a natural category that perhaps it should be called “Thinking”, and other kinds should be the ones with a modifier (e.g. maybe Directed Thinking?).
Tsvi gives many theoretical justifications for engaging in Playful Thinking. I want to talk about one because it was only briefly mentioned in the post:
For me, engaging in intellectual play is an antidote to political mindkilledness. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t work for very long. But it does help.
When I switch from intellectual play to a politically charged topic, there’s a brief period where I’m just.. better at thinking about it. Perhaps it increases open-mindedness. But that’s not it. It’s more like increased ability to run down object-level thoughts without higher-level interference. A very valuable state of mind.
But this isn’t why I play. I play because it’s fun. And because it’s natural? It’s in our nature.
It’s easy to throw this away under pressure, and I’ve sometimes done so. This post is a good reminder of why I shouldn’t.