I also suspect something along the lines of “Many (most?) great spiritual leaders were making a good-faith effort to understand the same ground truth with the same psychological equipment and got significantly farther than most normal people do.” But in order for that to be plausible, you would need a reason why the almost-truths they found are so goddamn antimemetic that the most studied and followed people in history weren’t able to make them stick. Some of the selection pressure surely comes down to social dynamics. I’d like to think that people who have grazed some great Truth are less likely to torture and kill infidels than someone who thinks they know a great truth. Cognitive blind spots could definitely explain things, though.
The problem is, the same thing that would make blind spots good at curbing the spread of enlightenment also makes them tricky to debate as a mechanism for it. They’re so slippery that until you’ve gotten past one yourself it’s hard to believe they exist (especially when the phenomenal experience of knowing-something-that-was-once-utterly-unknowable can also seemingly be explained by developing a delusion). They’re also hard to falsify. What you call active blind spots are a bit easier to work with, I think most people can accept the idea of something like “a truth you’re afraid to confront” even if they haven’t experienced such a thing themselves (or are afraid to confront the fact that they have).
I look forward to reading your next post(s) as well as this site’s reaction to them
But in order for that to be plausible, you would need a reason why the almost-truths they found are so goddamn antimemetic that the most studied and followed people in history weren’t able to make them stick.
A few thoughts:
I think many of the truths do stick (like “it’s never too late to repent for your misdeeds”), but end up getting wrapped up in a bunch of garbage.
The geeks, mops, and sociopaths model feels very relevant, with the great spiritual leaders / people who were serious about doing inner work being the geeks.
In some sense, these truths are fundamentally about beating Moloch, and so long as Moloch is in power, Moloch will naturally find ways to subvert them.
They’re so slippery that until you’ve gotten past one yourself it’s hard to believe they exist (especially when the phenomenal experience of knowing-something-that-was-once-utterly-unknowable can also seemingly be explained by developing a delusion).
YES. I think this is extraordinarily well-articulated.
I think you accidentally pointed the link about geeks, mops, and sociopaths to this article. I googled the term instead.
It does a really good work of explaining what happened in most religions in late antiquity, for evidence about Christianity actually being a better subculture than paganism back then you just have to look at how envious the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, was of their spontaneous altruism.
I also suspect something along the lines of “Many (most?) great spiritual leaders were making a good-faith effort to understand the same ground truth with the same psychological equipment and got significantly farther than most normal people do.” But in order for that to be plausible, you would need a reason why the almost-truths they found are so goddamn antimemetic that the most studied and followed people in history weren’t able to make them stick. Some of the selection pressure surely comes down to social dynamics. I’d like to think that people who have grazed some great Truth are less likely to torture and kill infidels than someone who thinks they know a great truth. Cognitive blind spots could definitely explain things, though.
The problem is, the same thing that would make blind spots good at curbing the spread of enlightenment also makes them tricky to debate as a mechanism for it. They’re so slippery that until you’ve gotten past one yourself it’s hard to believe they exist (especially when the phenomenal experience of knowing-something-that-was-once-utterly-unknowable can also seemingly be explained by developing a delusion). They’re also hard to falsify. What you call active blind spots are a bit easier to work with, I think most people can accept the idea of something like “a truth you’re afraid to confront” even if they haven’t experienced such a thing themselves (or are afraid to confront the fact that they have).
I look forward to reading your next post(s) as well as this site’s reaction to them
A few thoughts:
I think many of the truths do stick (like “it’s never too late to repent for your misdeeds”), but end up getting wrapped up in a bunch of garbage.
The geeks, mops, and sociopaths model feels very relevant, with the great spiritual leaders / people who were serious about doing inner work being the geeks.
In some sense, these truths are fundamentally about beating Moloch, and so long as Moloch is in power, Moloch will naturally find ways to subvert them.
YES. I think this is extraordinarily well-articulated.
I think you accidentally pointed the link about geeks, mops, and sociopaths to this article. I googled the term instead.
It does a really good work of explaining what happened in most religions in late antiquity, for evidence about Christianity actually being a better subculture than paganism back then you just have to look at how envious the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, was of their spontaneous altruism.