The reason I want to convince you to entertain this notion is that an awful lot of energy gets wasted by arguing against religious beliefs on logical grounds, pointing out contradictions in the Bible and whatnot.
LessWrong isn’t a place that spends a lot of energy on arguing against religious beliefs. I don’t think it makes much sense to copy every article from Intentional Insights to this place (even when Gleb isn’t doing it himself) if the article is written for a different audience.
Spiritual is a word is a variety of different meanings:
1) Refering to the 5th element, spirit. That thing that goes around in circles. Planets move in circles around the earth because they are made from it. I think angels are also supposed to made from it. That notion of spirit also means that astrology is about spirituality when it’s not about alterned state of consciousness. 2) Refering to sacredness. A value that’s not tradeable with money. Moral beliefs are that way. But the Iranian’s belief that Iran has a right to their own civil nuclear program also belongs in that category. 3) The feeling of being connected. 4) Deriving knowledge from intuition. 5) Epoché. 6) Surrendering. 7) Marveling at the greatness of the universe 8) Dealing with an immortal soul that distinct from our biological body and lives on after we die. 9) Feeling states of bliss 10) Things having meaning
11) Getting visions
If you want to write for LW, define your terms. Don’t argue with vague notions but be specific about what you are arguing for.
I will take your advice to heart in the future. This was my first post to LW, and was actually a little unsure about how appropriate it was. Now I know.
Eh, don’t take it personally. I’m guessing commenters are implicitly taking the title question as a challenge and are pouncing to poke holes in your argument. I thought your essay was well written and thought provoking. Keep posting!
First, regarding InIn articles. I very much agree that not every article from Intentional Insights should be posted on Less Wrong! That would not be helpful, as most LWs are familiar with the content that InIn popularizes for a broad audience.
Only select articles are a good fit, ones that are not obvious and might reveal interesting things to LWs. This, I believe, is one of them. As an active Less Wronger myself, I gained some insights from reading it, for example here and other ones as well. I think other LWs might as well, and some of the comments on this post attest to this, I think.
Second, regarding the word spiritual. The ten things you listed also have some vagueness to them. For example, what does it mean for things to have meaning? What does it mean to feel connected? What does it meant to have a feeling of sacredness?
Communication is hard. It’s difficult to translate mentalese into English, especially with vague concepts like “meaning,” “connectedness,” “sacredness,” “spirituality.” So while I personally don’t prefer the term spiritual myself due to its overuse by religious people, but I am comfortable with other aspiring rationalists using it if that’s the term that resonates with them and their experience. Heck, lisper acknowledges it’s not the perfect term, and is open to suggestions for better ones.
I think the key is to figure out if the territory we are describing is the same, because the semantics of the mental map are less important than the territory of reality. That would be a very productive conversation, I think.
Tabooing vague terms is a key rationality technique. If you want to write an article about spirituality on LW, I think you should start with tabooing the term and explaing what you mean. Once you have done so, I’m fine with you continuing to use the word.
Without going through that exercise there a huge danger of being to vague to be wrong.
Heck, lisper acknowledges it’s not the perfect term, and is open to suggestions for better ones.
The problem is not that it’s the wrong term but that the article doesn’t spend effort into trying to clarify what it means with the term.
Given that he says that he means “social cohesion” with the term later in this thread, it seems to me like he’s not clear what he means with it himself.
What does it meant to have a feeling of sacredness?
I haven’t spoken about a feeling of sacredness but wanted to refer to sacred values. I mean what the decision science literature means with the term. It operationalized the term. See Emerging sacred values: Iran’s nuclear program if you want to know more.
I certainly hear your point about explaining more about what spirituality means, and I’m glad that the discussion here prompted lisper to clarify that more. Also agreed that the article would have been better if it went into definitions of spirituality more than it did just by comparing it to euphoria.
I enjoyed the sacred values piece, thanks for linking it!
LessWrong isn’t a place that spends a lot of energy on arguing against religious beliefs. I don’t think it makes much sense to copy every article from Intentional Insights to this place (even when Gleb isn’t doing it himself) if the article is written for a different audience.
Spiritual is a word is a variety of different meanings:
1) Refering to the 5th element, spirit. That thing that goes around in circles. Planets move in circles around the earth because they are made from it. I think angels are also supposed to made from it. That notion of spirit also means that astrology is about spirituality when it’s not about alterned state of consciousness.
2) Refering to sacredness. A value that’s not tradeable with money. Moral beliefs are that way. But the Iranian’s belief that Iran has a right to their own civil nuclear program also belongs in that category.
3) The feeling of being connected.
4) Deriving knowledge from intuition.
5) Epoché.
6) Surrendering.
7) Marveling at the greatness of the universe
8) Dealing with an immortal soul that distinct from our biological body and lives on after we die.
9) Feeling states of bliss
10) Things having meaning 11) Getting visions
If you want to write for LW, define your terms. Don’t argue with vague notions but be specific about what you are arguing for.
I will take your advice to heart in the future. This was my first post to LW, and was actually a little unsure about how appropriate it was. Now I know.
Eh, don’t take it personally. I’m guessing commenters are implicitly taking the title question as a challenge and are pouncing to poke holes in your argument. I thought your essay was well written and thought provoking. Keep posting!
First, regarding InIn articles. I very much agree that not every article from Intentional Insights should be posted on Less Wrong! That would not be helpful, as most LWs are familiar with the content that InIn popularizes for a broad audience.
Only select articles are a good fit, ones that are not obvious and might reveal interesting things to LWs. This, I believe, is one of them. As an active Less Wronger myself, I gained some insights from reading it, for example here and other ones as well. I think other LWs might as well, and some of the comments on this post attest to this, I think.
Second, regarding the word spiritual. The ten things you listed also have some vagueness to them. For example, what does it mean for things to have meaning? What does it mean to feel connected? What does it meant to have a feeling of sacredness?
Communication is hard. It’s difficult to translate mentalese into English, especially with vague concepts like “meaning,” “connectedness,” “sacredness,” “spirituality.” So while I personally don’t prefer the term spiritual myself due to its overuse by religious people, but I am comfortable with other aspiring rationalists using it if that’s the term that resonates with them and their experience. Heck, lisper acknowledges it’s not the perfect term, and is open to suggestions for better ones.
I think the key is to figure out if the territory we are describing is the same, because the semantics of the mental map are less important than the territory of reality. That would be a very productive conversation, I think.
Tabooing vague terms is a key rationality technique. If you want to write an article about spirituality on LW, I think you should start with tabooing the term and explaing what you mean. Once you have done so, I’m fine with you continuing to use the word.
Without going through that exercise there a huge danger of being to vague to be wrong.
The problem is not that it’s the wrong term but that the article doesn’t spend effort into trying to clarify what it means with the term.
Given that he says that he means “social cohesion” with the term later in this thread, it seems to me like he’s not clear what he means with it himself.
I haven’t spoken about a feeling of sacredness but wanted to refer to sacred values. I mean what the decision science literature means with the term. It operationalized the term. See Emerging sacred values: Iran’s nuclear program if you want to know more.
Agreed about tabooing being valuable!
I certainly hear your point about explaining more about what spirituality means, and I’m glad that the discussion here prompted lisper to clarify that more. Also agreed that the article would have been better if it went into definitions of spirituality more than it did just by comparing it to euphoria.
I enjoyed the sacred values piece, thanks for linking it!