One of the founders of Circling Europe sincerely and apropos-of-nothing thanked me for writing this post earlier this year, which I view as a sign that there were good consequences of me writing this post. My guess is that a bunch of rationalists found their way to Circling, and it was beneficial for people.
I’ve heard it said that this is one of the more rationalist-friendly summaries of Circling. I don’t know it’s the best possible such, but I think it’s doing OK. I would certainly write it differently now, but shrug.
At this point I’ve done 1000+ hours of Circling, and this post isn’t that far off from what I currently believe about Circling.
I’m less clear on the connection between Circling and ‘rationality’ because I have lost some touch with what ‘rationality’ is, and I think the concept ‘rationality’ is less personally meaningful to me now.
I do believe that Circling has a deep connection to epistemics, belief formation, and belief updating, and can teach us many things about how those things work. Similar to meditation, Circling can guide people to understanding perception and seeing through their own perceptions (the lens that sees its lens that sees its lens etc).
I believe the pitfalls are still more or less accurate, but I wouldn’t quite frame them the way I did. I think I was catering to a rationalist audience then. But yeah I don’t really personally agree with the perspective I took.
RE: how to learn about Circling. Right now I would recommend heavily people start with something like Aletheia or Integral-style Circling and then go on to try official Circling Europe events in Austin or SAS. Or maybe online at Circle Anywhere. For my first experience, I would try going to ‘official’ events and avoid ‘wild west’ style events / events with independent facilitators. That’s my personal opinion.
I have lost some touch with what ‘rationality’ is, and I think the concept ‘rationality’ is less personally meaningful to me now.
is useful information in itself, in that it suggests that maybe Circling, or some other things that for whatever reason tend to accompany it, may tend to move people who do it away from LW-style “rationality” with time. Whether that’s a good thing (because LW-style “rationality” is actually too narrow or something of the kind) or a bad thing (because LW-style “rationality” is still more or less the best that’s on offer, and moving away from it almost inevitably means not thinking so clearly) is a separate question, of course.
My personal understanding of rationality is that Rationality(tm) was always open to being discarded along the way to attaining the 12th virtue.
If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.
To be clear, I still highly value truth-seeking, model-building, winning, etc. I just don’t know what ‘rationality’ is actually trying to refer to these days. Maybe it feels small and incomplete to me, given my current perspectives.
One of the founders of Circling Europe sincerely and apropos-of-nothing thanked me for writing this post earlier this year, which I view as a sign that there were good consequences of me writing this post. My guess is that a bunch of rationalists found their way to Circling, and it was beneficial for people.
I’ve heard it said that this is one of the more rationalist-friendly summaries of Circling. I don’t know it’s the best possible such, but I think it’s doing OK. I would certainly write it differently now, but shrug.
At this point I’ve done 1000+ hours of Circling, and this post isn’t that far off from what I currently believe about Circling.
I’m less clear on the connection between Circling and ‘rationality’ because I have lost some touch with what ‘rationality’ is, and I think the concept ‘rationality’ is less personally meaningful to me now.
I do believe that Circling has a deep connection to epistemics, belief formation, and belief updating, and can teach us many things about how those things work. Similar to meditation, Circling can guide people to understanding perception and seeing through their own perceptions (the lens that sees its lens that sees its lens etc).
I believe the pitfalls are still more or less accurate, but I wouldn’t quite frame them the way I did. I think I was catering to a rationalist audience then. But yeah I don’t really personally agree with the perspective I took.
RE: how to learn about Circling. Right now I would recommend heavily people start with something like Aletheia or Integral-style Circling and then go on to try official Circling Europe events in Austin or SAS. Or maybe online at Circle Anywhere. For my first experience, I would try going to ‘official’ events and avoid ‘wild west’ style events / events with independent facilitators. That’s my personal opinion.
I think this
is useful information in itself, in that it suggests that maybe Circling, or some other things that for whatever reason tend to accompany it, may tend to move people who do it away from LW-style “rationality” with time. Whether that’s a good thing (because LW-style “rationality” is actually too narrow or something of the kind) or a bad thing (because LW-style “rationality” is still more or less the best that’s on offer, and moving away from it almost inevitably means not thinking so clearly) is a separate question, of course.
My personal understanding of rationality is that Rationality(tm) was always open to being discarded along the way to attaining the 12th virtue.
To be clear, I still highly value truth-seeking, model-building, winning, etc. I just don’t know what ‘rationality’ is actually trying to refer to these days. Maybe it feels small and incomplete to me, given my current perspectives.
I’m interested in some details about how you’d write it differently, if you’re up for it.
I gave some of those details above. I don’t have further thoughts.