The position, as far as I can see, isn’t that warm fuzziness is itself mysterious; it’s that some mysterious phenomena cause warm fuzziness, possibly because they leave room for the imagination to fill in things more wonderful than the reality. We seem to mostly have run out of such things in the modern world, so maybe the solution is to create more things to be ignorant about.
I don’t find mysteriousness to be a necessary feature of warm-fuzziness. The view from the top of a mountain, or the night sky on a cloudless night, or a cold beer on a warm day with good friends, none are particularly mysterious but all produce warm-fuzziness. I often hear the claim that mystery is an essential component of warm-fuzziness but I only hear this claim from people for whom something is still a mystery. I haven’t really encountered anyone who claims to have lost any warm-fuzziness when they came to understand something that was previously mysterious. That’s certainly not been my experience.
I haven’t really encountered anyone who claims to have lost any warm-fuzziness when they came to understand something that was previously mysterious. That’s certainly not been my experience.
There is definitely some warm fuzziness to be lost through understanding. Losing religion is the obvious example, but there are many more. For many people (even myself to a certain extent) dissecting a joke, or dwelling on the role of hormones in creating physical attraction, reduces certain warm fuzzies. Luckily, understanding also creates new warm fuzzies, but a marginal improvement in understanding does not, for everyone, always create net positive number of warm fuzzies—otherwise everyone would be a rationalist.
I think you’re confusing the act of receiving information/understanding about an experience with the experience itself.
Re: the joke example, I think that one would get tired of hearing a joke too many times, and that’s what the dissection is equivalent to, because you keep hearing it in your head; but if you already get the joke, the dissection is not really adding to your understanding. If you didn’t get the joke, you will probably receive a twinge of enjoyment at the moment when you finally do understand. If you don’t understand a joke, I don’t think you can get warm fuzzies from it.
With hormones, again I think that being explicitly reminded of the role of hormones in physical attraction while experiencing physical attraction reduces warm fuzzies only because it’s distracting you from the source of the warm fuzzies and making you feel self-conscious. On the other hand, knowing more about the role of hormones should not generally distract you from your physical attraction; instead you could use it to tada get more warm fuzzies.
On the other hand, knowing more about the role of hormones should not generally distract you from your physical attraction; instead you could use it to tada get more warm fuzzies.
Indeed, my wife and I have practiced for well over a decade how to get optimum endorphin release from casual contact. (For example, we’ve identified certain spots we can apply hand pressure to on the other person that create a sensation we call “recharging”—a kind of relaxed energy.)
I think you make an important distinction, but people sometimes act like gaining understanding will result in a long-term reduction in some warm fuzzies for them. They sometimes explicitly tell me they think this will happen. While I think people may underestimate the net warm fuzzies resulting from learning (i.e. they are biased), I’m confident that they are sometimes correct. The difficult question is deciding what we should do about this.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very committed to epistemic rationality and will try to sell people on its many virtues/benefits.
I think you make an important distinction, but people sometimes act like gaining understanding will result in a long-term reduction in some warm fuzzies for them.
Certainly, people act like this, but I’m wondering whether it is actually true.
I’m confident that they are sometimes correct
First, I wouldn’t want to dismiss that some people could be correct. I’m just trying to think up some examples where they actually are. Do you have some other examples you are thinking of?
I ‘lost religion’ at such a young age that it’s arguable whether I ever really had it so I’ll have to take your word for it that losing religion is an example. I don’t feel I lack many of the things that people sometimes say they fear they will lose if they lose religion however.
I think janos makes a good point that the hormones example you describe is more a case of allowing your thoughts to distract you rather than a problem of possessing knowledge. Romantic warm fuzzies can be disrupted just as effectively by thinking too much about mundane things like work or the day’s chores as they can by thinking about the role of hormones in creating physical attraction.
I think there’s also an intuitive (naive-realist) view that anything that produces a sufficient level of warm fuzzies must be mysterious: if an experience is strange, powerful, and wonderful, then its cause must be strange, powerful, and wonderful as well. (Think of the amount of magical nonsense said about love, for instance.) It seems plausible that religion exists in the first place largely because of this line of reasoning applied to ‘mystical’ experience by people who had no way to know better.
The position, as far as I can see, isn’t that warm fuzziness is itself mysterious; it’s that some mysterious phenomena cause warm fuzziness, possibly because they leave room for the imagination to fill in things more wonderful than the reality. We seem to mostly have run out of such things in the modern world, so maybe the solution is to create more things to be ignorant about.
I don’t find mysteriousness to be a necessary feature of warm-fuzziness. The view from the top of a mountain, or the night sky on a cloudless night, or a cold beer on a warm day with good friends, none are particularly mysterious but all produce warm-fuzziness. I often hear the claim that mystery is an essential component of warm-fuzziness but I only hear this claim from people for whom something is still a mystery. I haven’t really encountered anyone who claims to have lost any warm-fuzziness when they came to understand something that was previously mysterious. That’s certainly not been my experience.
There is definitely some warm fuzziness to be lost through understanding. Losing religion is the obvious example, but there are many more. For many people (even myself to a certain extent) dissecting a joke, or dwelling on the role of hormones in creating physical attraction, reduces certain warm fuzzies. Luckily, understanding also creates new warm fuzzies, but a marginal improvement in understanding does not, for everyone, always create net positive number of warm fuzzies—otherwise everyone would be a rationalist.
I think you’re confusing the act of receiving information/understanding about an experience with the experience itself.
Re: the joke example, I think that one would get tired of hearing a joke too many times, and that’s what the dissection is equivalent to, because you keep hearing it in your head; but if you already get the joke, the dissection is not really adding to your understanding. If you didn’t get the joke, you will probably receive a twinge of enjoyment at the moment when you finally do understand. If you don’t understand a joke, I don’t think you can get warm fuzzies from it.
With hormones, again I think that being explicitly reminded of the role of hormones in physical attraction while experiencing physical attraction reduces warm fuzzies only because it’s distracting you from the source of the warm fuzzies and making you feel self-conscious. On the other hand, knowing more about the role of hormones should not generally distract you from your physical attraction; instead you could use it to tada get more warm fuzzies.
Indeed, my wife and I have practiced for well over a decade how to get optimum endorphin release from casual contact. (For example, we’ve identified certain spots we can apply hand pressure to on the other person that create a sensation we call “recharging”—a kind of relaxed energy.)
I think you make an important distinction, but people sometimes act like gaining understanding will result in a long-term reduction in some warm fuzzies for them. They sometimes explicitly tell me they think this will happen. While I think people may underestimate the net warm fuzzies resulting from learning (i.e. they are biased), I’m confident that they are sometimes correct. The difficult question is deciding what we should do about this.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very committed to epistemic rationality and will try to sell people on its many virtues/benefits.
Certainly, people act like this, but I’m wondering whether it is actually true.
First, I wouldn’t want to dismiss that some people could be correct. I’m just trying to think up some examples where they actually are. Do you have some other examples you are thinking of?
I ‘lost religion’ at such a young age that it’s arguable whether I ever really had it so I’ll have to take your word for it that losing religion is an example. I don’t feel I lack many of the things that people sometimes say they fear they will lose if they lose religion however.
I think janos makes a good point that the hormones example you describe is more a case of allowing your thoughts to distract you rather than a problem of possessing knowledge. Romantic warm fuzzies can be disrupted just as effectively by thinking too much about mundane things like work or the day’s chores as they can by thinking about the role of hormones in creating physical attraction.
I think there’s also an intuitive (naive-realist) view that anything that produces a sufficient level of warm fuzzies must be mysterious: if an experience is strange, powerful, and wonderful, then its cause must be strange, powerful, and wonderful as well. (Think of the amount of magical nonsense said about love, for instance.) It seems plausible that religion exists in the first place largely because of this line of reasoning applied to ‘mystical’ experience by people who had no way to know better.