Asking the question this way invites us to do something stupid, which is to think that it has an answer waiting for us, that the term “rationality quote” either really includes this kind of quote or it doesn’t and that epistemic debate can resolve it.
Really, “rationality quote” is a policy that we have, about what kind of quotes we want to have in these threads. We aren’t figuring out what the policy is, we’re collectively deciding it. So do we want this kind of quote in the thread? Well, if it’s useful, that’s a plus. It might be interpreted as support for something the poster doesn’t actually support, which is a minus. A quote with a double meaning like this is kind of interesting, and it’s fun to imagine Pascal turning in his grave hearing us use it this way. So especially if the double meaning is pointed out, I approve of this category of quote being allowed.
let them recognise that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him. But as for those who live without knowing Him and without seeking Him, they judge themselves so little worthy of their own care, that they are not worthy of the care of others; and it needs all the charity of the religion which they despise, not to despise them even to the point of leaving them to their folly.
How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.!
Probably written in the sense: “If you were really strong of mind, you’d will yourself into believing because I just threw an infinity into your expected value calculations”, and upvoted in the sense: “Atheism is evidence of strength of mind, but it’s become too common to serve as a really good test.” (I know I’ve heard this idea on LessWrong before, I can’t remember where though).
This, but in a more general sense for the first: Pascal thought there were a bunch of sophisticated philosophical reasons that you should be a Catholic; the Wager was just the one he’s famous for.
You might have heard it on Ex Urbe too. Back when he wrote about Machiavelli he was linked from LW a few times, among them his discussion of what it took for somebody to be an atheist back in the renaissance.
From reading what Pascal wrote it’s that atheists take the easy road. The are to sure of themselves.
Pascal writes a bit later: “Whereas in my present state, ignorant of what I am or of what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty.”
I might add that a lot of atheists shield themselves from the kind of experiences that make believers believers.
It’s one thing to have your spiritual experiences and then say, this is just my mind playing some tricks. It’s quite another challenge to be actually go there and have the experiences and then come back and be stable in your atheism.
I remember a recent discussion where just because someone innocently dropped the word “god”, suddenly half of the room was absent minded and in their own thoughts and stopped following the discussion.
Someone who has strange of mind of the kind you get through meditating a lot doesn’t get absent minded just because someone drops a charged word.
It depends what you mean with real belief. The kind of people you are talking about profess to belief but they are usually quite unsure about their beliefs and cringe to them. As a result they get uptight when you suggest their belief might be wrong.
If I tell you that Mars surrounds the earth you don’t get uptight because you belief that I’m deeply wrong but you might laugh at me for saying something silly. It’s similar for dealing with religious people are real believers who do have experiences that validate their world views.
Escaping that state you are talking about is a sign of strength of mind.
That remind me of the kind of people who get excited about the concept of near death experiences. My own perspective is just, been there done that, I have my own and don’t need to read accounts of others to build my world view based on what I read in a book. Quite often those people are even to lazy to meditate.
It’s quite fun to have discussions with people who pretend to be believers coming for the place of mind mind that they are doing a poor job at having real faith.
I mean if your family is Christian and judges you for not believing, they have ready-made talking points for why atheism is wrong, they don’t have those talking points for someone catching them.
But take care, some people can get quite emotional when you call their bluff.
It’s quite another challenge to be actually go there
Go where? Spiritual experiences are notoriously difficult to produce on demand. I don’t think getting high on hallucinogens or screwing up your mind via, say, starvation or sleep deprivation counts.
Go where? Spiritual experiences are notoriously difficult to produce on demand.
There are various reasons why meditation is good even if you don’t want spiritual experiences.
When reading in venues like this there are a lot of people who try to learn meditation through books and reading stuff instead of actually going to someone with a new age background and learning meditation from a teacher.
I can understand when someone was better things to do with his time then seeking spiritual experiences. I primarily want to advocate openness. But in my experience a lot of self labeled atheists go out of their way to avoid having those kind of experience when they are faced with relevant opportunities. For the record I self label these days as ignostic. I don’t have any identity invested in the question of whether or not god is real and for what values of god and real that might be true.
If the teacher is any good I would expect that most reddit atheists would experience bunch of things for which they have very low priors.
On his blog LW member jimmy describes well how he’s doing things like giving people the experience of their hand sticking to a table. I never did the sticking hands to object things myself.
I think if one takes the average reddit atheist and gives them a simple experience such as their hand sticking to a table, it freakes them out.
Yes, you can say that it’s child play and no proper spiritual experience. The effect is small and works as party trick.
Experiencing something like past life regression takes a bit more work but there are straightforward way to do it under hypnosis on demand if you have a willing participant.
At the moment I’m not at a time where I’m into the party trick thing, but maybe I will be in 2 1⁄2 months for the European LW meetup. At least enough for produces low-prior experiences. Hopefully in an usable form that makes for more than just a weird experience.
There is another common party trick of using chemical substances such as LSD or psilocybin to alter perception and thought processes.
For some people, this trick leads them to believe that the universe is full of messages from beyond; or that people who have used this trick are epistemically superior to those who haven’t; or other spiritual beliefs. For other people, this trick leads them to believe that the mind — yes, the very mind you are, thinking these very thoughts — runs on chemistry, and so of course can be altered with chemistry.
Some people freak out. Others grin a lot and say it’s cool.
When reading in venues like this there are a lot of people who try to learn meditation through books and reading stuff instead of actually going to someone with a new age background and learning meditation from a teacher.
This is a little off-topic, but if you want to learn meditation, I’d strongly suggest not going to someone with a New Age background. New Age isn’t an umbrella term for nondenominational mysticism, it describes a specific cluster of spiritual practices—and, not to put too fine a point on it, but generally not a very coherent one.
More generally, meditation in the West tends to come bundled with a lot of questionable spirituality, and that’s bad, but avoiding traditional religious identification doesn’t automatically solve the problem. In fact, it can make it worse.
New Age isn’t an umbrella term for “vaguely mystical by Western standards”, it describes a specific cluster of spiritual practices
Which people who are “vaguely mystical by Western standards” but don’t self label as part of New Age would you recommend?
I’m not opposed to going to a ‘real’ Buddhist temple and learning meditation at that place.
I think giving good general advice for finding a good mediation teacher is hard. I don’t think apparent coherence is a good standard to judge a meditation teacher. If everything the teacher says seems coherent to you, he probably doesn’t have much to teach to you.
It’s not easy to see the difference between someone who gives you an answer that takes you halve a year to digest and someone who gives you an answer that’s bullshit.
I personally found a teacher through an impressive experience with one person who then made a recommendation which I followed.
In the absence of someone who can give you a good recommendation I would look for experience. Did the teacher put in his 10,000 hours? Did the teacher expose themselves to multiple other teachers with reputation?
Which people who are “vaguely mystical by Western standards” but don’t self label as part of New Age would you recommend?
Well, I’m not sure it’s really my place to be giving recommendations here; I know the basics, but there are people on this site far more advanced than I. That said, I think it’d probably be a good bet to learn from an established school of Buddhist meditation—not necessarily a temple—but this carries the additional caveat that there are many different kinds of meditation taught within Buddhism, and not all of them are aimed at things we’d be interested in. It must also be said that Buddhism as it’s taught in the West varies greatly in texture; some strains are almost exclusively fluff. Several other religions also contain meditative practices, and there are some secular teachers of meditation outside the New Age scene, but I don’t know as much about them.
With regard to coherence, though, I think I’d distinguish between apparent coherence regarding specific practices, or esoteric points of doctrine, and in terms of an overall worldview. Meditation for example involves some pretty exotic mental states; attempts to explain it by analogy with everyday life are probably going to be vague or contradictory, and that’s fine, bearing in mind the inferential gap. Likewise you’re going to find a few clots of irreducible spirituality if you dig deep enough into almost any religion, and that sort of comes with the territory. But if there are contradictions at the press-release level, or you’re seeing features of two or more spiritual systems kludged together without much care, or someone’s trying to preach nothing but irreducible spirituality in a quivering aspic of feel-good memes… those are bad signs.
I know the basics, but there are people on this site far more advanced than I.
I think the basics are the hardest part. In some sense the fancy mental states are not the things that’s hardest to learn.
If you think you know the basics you won’t be in “beginners mind”. The hard thing is to see where you don’t get the basics.
When I lately asked for the basics of rationality of this website the first response I got was: “Could you please more clear, I don’t know what exactly you mean with basics.”
Then I did get a bunch of interesting stuff but most of it wasn’t atomic.
Part of the reason why we don’t have a good Anki deck for rationality made by someone on Lesswrong is that we don’t know the basics of rationality well enough to break rationality down into atomic units that could be learned via Anki.
The post I wrote asking about the basic of rationality was motivated by having an experience during something of a meditation session with discussion afterwards in which I learned something new about basics and I think the teacher as well. And I’m a person who has years of experience with meditation, spent significant effort last year in trying to learn grammar to get a better understanding of individual chunks of meaning and tried to atomize knowledge for Anki learning for years.
You might be right, that you are probably not in a good position to give recommendations on finding a good teacher.
I suspect this was written and is being upvoted in very different senses.
Very true. Is it still a rationality quote if it isn’t rational at all in the original context, but can be useful out of context?
Asking the question this way invites us to do something stupid, which is to think that it has an answer waiting for us, that the term “rationality quote” either really includes this kind of quote or it doesn’t and that epistemic debate can resolve it.
Really, “rationality quote” is a policy that we have, about what kind of quotes we want to have in these threads. We aren’t figuring out what the policy is, we’re collectively deciding it. So do we want this kind of quote in the thread? Well, if it’s useful, that’s a plus. It might be interpreted as support for something the poster doesn’t actually support, which is a minus. A quote with a double meaning like this is kind of interesting, and it’s fun to imagine Pascal turning in his grave hearing us use it this way. So especially if the double meaning is pointed out, I approve of this category of quote being allowed.
Yes, it was written in the same text as:
What are the two opposing senses you have in mind?
Probably written in the sense: “If you were really strong of mind, you’d will yourself into believing because I just threw an infinity into your expected value calculations”, and upvoted in the sense: “Atheism is evidence of strength of mind, but it’s become too common to serve as a really good test.” (I know I’ve heard this idea on LessWrong before, I can’t remember where though).
This, but in a more general sense for the first: Pascal thought there were a bunch of sophisticated philosophical reasons that you should be a Catholic; the Wager was just the one he’s famous for.
You might have heard it on Ex Urbe too. Back when he wrote about Machiavelli he was linked from LW a few times, among them his discussion of what it took for somebody to be an atheist back in the renaissance.
From reading what Pascal wrote it’s that atheists take the easy road. The are to sure of themselves. Pascal writes a bit later: “Whereas in my present state, ignorant of what I am or of what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty.”
I might add that a lot of atheists shield themselves from the kind of experiences that make believers believers. It’s one thing to have your spiritual experiences and then say, this is just my mind playing some tricks. It’s quite another challenge to be actually go there and have the experiences and then come back and be stable in your atheism.
I remember a recent discussion where just because someone innocently dropped the word “god”, suddenly half of the room was absent minded and in their own thoughts and stopped following the discussion. Someone who has strange of mind of the kind you get through meditating a lot doesn’t get absent minded just because someone drops a charged word.
Actually ISTM the experience that most often makes believers believers is being raised by believing parents.
It depends what you mean with real belief. The kind of people you are talking about profess to belief but they are usually quite unsure about their beliefs and cringe to them. As a result they get uptight when you suggest their belief might be wrong.
If I tell you that Mars surrounds the earth you don’t get uptight because you belief that I’m deeply wrong but you might laugh at me for saying something silly. It’s similar for dealing with religious people are real believers who do have experiences that validate their world views.
Escaping that state you are talking about is a sign of strength of mind.
That remind me of the kind of people who get excited about the concept of near death experiences. My own perspective is just, been there done that, I have my own and don’t need to read accounts of others to build my world view based on what I read in a book. Quite often those people are even to lazy to meditate.
It’s quite fun to have discussions with people who pretend to be believers coming for the place of mind mind that they are doing a poor job at having real faith. I mean if your family is Christian and judges you for not believing, they have ready-made talking points for why atheism is wrong, they don’t have those talking points for someone catching them. But take care, some people can get quite emotional when you call their bluff.
Where did I use the word “real” in my comment? ;-)
Go where? Spiritual experiences are notoriously difficult to produce on demand. I don’t think getting high on hallucinogens or screwing up your mind via, say, starvation or sleep deprivation counts.
There are various reasons why meditation is good even if you don’t want spiritual experiences. When reading in venues like this there are a lot of people who try to learn meditation through books and reading stuff instead of actually going to someone with a new age background and learning meditation from a teacher.
I can understand when someone was better things to do with his time then seeking spiritual experiences. I primarily want to advocate openness. But in my experience a lot of self labeled atheists go out of their way to avoid having those kind of experience when they are faced with relevant opportunities. For the record I self label these days as ignostic. I don’t have any identity invested in the question of whether or not god is real and for what values of god and real that might be true.
If the teacher is any good I would expect that most reddit atheists would experience bunch of things for which they have very low priors.
On his blog LW member jimmy describes well how he’s doing things like giving people the experience of their hand sticking to a table. I never did the sticking hands to object things myself.
I think if one takes the average reddit atheist and gives them a simple experience such as their hand sticking to a table, it freakes them out. Yes, you can say that it’s child play and no proper spiritual experience. The effect is small and works as party trick.
Experiencing something like past life regression takes a bit more work but there are straightforward way to do it under hypnosis on demand if you have a willing participant.
At the moment I’m not at a time where I’m into the party trick thing, but maybe I will be in 2 1⁄2 months for the European LW meetup. At least enough for produces low-prior experiences. Hopefully in an usable form that makes for more than just a weird experience.
There is another common party trick of using chemical substances such as LSD or psilocybin to alter perception and thought processes.
For some people, this trick leads them to believe that the universe is full of messages from beyond; or that people who have used this trick are epistemically superior to those who haven’t; or other spiritual beliefs. For other people, this trick leads them to believe that the mind — yes, the very mind you are, thinking these very thoughts — runs on chemistry, and so of course can be altered with chemistry.
Some people freak out. Others grin a lot and say it’s cool.
This is a little off-topic, but if you want to learn meditation, I’d strongly suggest not going to someone with a New Age background. New Age isn’t an umbrella term for nondenominational mysticism, it describes a specific cluster of spiritual practices—and, not to put too fine a point on it, but generally not a very coherent one.
More generally, meditation in the West tends to come bundled with a lot of questionable spirituality, and that’s bad, but avoiding traditional religious identification doesn’t automatically solve the problem. In fact, it can make it worse.
Which people who are “vaguely mystical by Western standards” but don’t self label as part of New Age would you recommend?
I’m not opposed to going to a ‘real’ Buddhist temple and learning meditation at that place.
I think giving good general advice for finding a good mediation teacher is hard. I don’t think apparent coherence is a good standard to judge a meditation teacher. If everything the teacher says seems coherent to you, he probably doesn’t have much to teach to you.
It’s not easy to see the difference between someone who gives you an answer that takes you halve a year to digest and someone who gives you an answer that’s bullshit.
I personally found a teacher through an impressive experience with one person who then made a recommendation which I followed.
In the absence of someone who can give you a good recommendation I would look for experience. Did the teacher put in his 10,000 hours? Did the teacher expose themselves to multiple other teachers with reputation?
Well, I’m not sure it’s really my place to be giving recommendations here; I know the basics, but there are people on this site far more advanced than I. That said, I think it’d probably be a good bet to learn from an established school of Buddhist meditation—not necessarily a temple—but this carries the additional caveat that there are many different kinds of meditation taught within Buddhism, and not all of them are aimed at things we’d be interested in. It must also be said that Buddhism as it’s taught in the West varies greatly in texture; some strains are almost exclusively fluff. Several other religions also contain meditative practices, and there are some secular teachers of meditation outside the New Age scene, but I don’t know as much about them.
With regard to coherence, though, I think I’d distinguish between apparent coherence regarding specific practices, or esoteric points of doctrine, and in terms of an overall worldview. Meditation for example involves some pretty exotic mental states; attempts to explain it by analogy with everyday life are probably going to be vague or contradictory, and that’s fine, bearing in mind the inferential gap. Likewise you’re going to find a few clots of irreducible spirituality if you dig deep enough into almost any religion, and that sort of comes with the territory. But if there are contradictions at the press-release level, or you’re seeing features of two or more spiritual systems kludged together without much care, or someone’s trying to preach nothing but irreducible spirituality in a quivering aspic of feel-good memes… those are bad signs.
I think the basics are the hardest part. In some sense the fancy mental states are not the things that’s hardest to learn. If you think you know the basics you won’t be in “beginners mind”. The hard thing is to see where you don’t get the basics.
When I lately asked for the basics of rationality of this website the first response I got was: “Could you please more clear, I don’t know what exactly you mean with basics.” Then I did get a bunch of interesting stuff but most of it wasn’t atomic.
Part of the reason why we don’t have a good Anki deck for rationality made by someone on Lesswrong is that we don’t know the basics of rationality well enough to break rationality down into atomic units that could be learned via Anki.
The post I wrote asking about the basic of rationality was motivated by having an experience during something of a meditation session with discussion afterwards in which I learned something new about basics and I think the teacher as well. And I’m a person who has years of experience with meditation, spent significant effort last year in trying to learn grammar to get a better understanding of individual chunks of meaning and tried to atomize knowledge for Anki learning for years.
You might be right, that you are probably not in a good position to give recommendations on finding a good teacher.
Seconded. I pretty strongly identify “New Age” with “inability to think coherently”.
I don’t see how this demonstrates anything.
Give a drug-naive person a tab of LSD and s/he will experience a bunch of things for which s/he has very low priors. So?