Dark art argument. It is better to treat underlying diseases than symptoms, but akrasia is neither a disease nor a symptom, except by analogy. Using the analogy to argue that we should address things that cause akrasia, rather than akrasia itself, is a circular argument: the conclusion justifying the analogy and vise versa.
If there are things which cause akrasia which can be addressed directly, then addressing them could be an effective way of addressing akrasia. However, if the only reason these things are bad is because they cause akrasia, then whether it is better to address them or to address akrasia directly depends on which is more effective, which depends on specifics and practicalities that can’t be generalized away.
A recommendation: be careful not to use “dark art argument” as a fully general counter-argument. If you see a logical flaw, state it; if you detect an attempt to manipulate, dissect it. (You did do this, but it’s still a useful recommendation.) Not only is the term “dark arts” jargon and prejudicial, but the Dark Arts are such a grab-bag of tricks and traps that merely labeling some argument as “dark arts” barely adds any information at all.
Yes, I got the same impression. Annoyance’s advice is vague, useless, condescending, trying to sound like it has something profound to say without being specific, sonorous-sounding, promising help without offering any. It is not, however, particularly Dark Side Epistemology.
I was thinking of your Dark Side Epistemology and Yvain’s Dark Arts as two more-or-less separate things, the key difference stemming from the fact that Dark Arts are perpetrated on others and Dark Side Epistemology is perpetrated on one’s self.
You’re right that the phrase ‘dark side’ (and all other phrases of the form ‘dark X’) should probably be avoided. That bit was in reference to Defense Against The Dark Arts, which Annoyance’s post reminded me of.
Remarkable. How exactly did you come to be a fan of Zen Buddhism? Since most of the comments you object to are direct references to it, and the remainder are generally references to other philosophical traditions, many of which are well-known in popular culture and are quite easy to find and understand with a few quick web searchers, I can’t quite grasp why you can’t perceive the value you claim to find in those things in my references to them.
Perhaps your desire to shoot the messenger overwhelms your ability to appreciate the message. Or perhaps you don’t actually have any appreciation for the traditions you make reference to. Or both, of course.
Nothing causes akrasia. There is no such thing as akrasis. ‘Akrasia’ is the label you apply to a phenomenon you don’t understand and you really need to think about more deeply.
Here, I’ll make this simple: Socrates was right. What argument is unspoken but necessary to make Socrates’ statement correct?
Nothing causes akrasia. There is no such thing as akrasis. ‘Akrasia’ is the label you apply to a phenomenon you don’t understand and you really need to think about more deeply.
It would probably help if you pointed out that the reason we have the illusion of akrasia is because people’s built-in systems for modeling the intentions of other people, generate mistaken predictions about motivation and decisions when applied to one’s self. It’s sort of like looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror, and mistakenly believing you’re fatter or thinner than you actually are.
In reality, it’s not that you don’t follow through on your will, it’s that you’ve failed to understand (or even observe) how your behavior works in the first place, let alone how to change it. Most descriptions of akrasia and how to deal with it (including what I’ve read of Ainslie’s so far), strike me as trying to explain how to steer a car from the back seat, by tying ropes to the front wheels, or by building elaborate walled roads to keep the car going in the right direction.
It makes me want to scream, “but you’re not even looking at the dashboard or touching the controls!” Those things are not even IN the back seat.
They’re looking for information in the human parts of the mind, while entirely ignoring the fact that the secrets of our behavior and decisions CAN’T be there, or animals couldn’t live their entire lives without ever having a single rational, logical, or “economical” thought.
Thought is not the solution here, it’s the problem. And the answers are in the FRONT seat—in the mind-body connection. In emotions, and their somatic markers. In the internal sensory (not verbal!) representations of available choices and expected outcomes. All that equipment that was (evolutionarily) there LONG before the back-seat driver showed up and started critiquing which way the car is going.
And the back-seat driver is only confused because he thinks he’s the one who’s supposed to be driving… when he’s really only there to wave out the window and yell at the other drivers.
And maybe persuade them… that he knows where he’s going.
“It would probably help if you pointed out that the reason we have the illusion of akrasia is because people’s built-in systems for modeling the intentions of other people, generate mistaken predictions about motivation and decisions when applied to one’s self.”
Jorge Luis Borges once asked a famous question: “What is the only word that cannot be used in a riddle whose answer is ‘time’?”
What’s the one thing I can’t state openly in my attempt to get people to recognize a certain truth for themselves?
Pointing out what you suggest would utterly defeat my purpose, and in the long run, would fail to help those I’m speaking to. Since those people don’t seem capable of grasping my point anyway, maybe you’re right that it would have been helpful to just state it directly.
Pointing out what you suggest would utterly defeat my purpose, and in the long run, would fail to help those I’m speaking to.
You’re using a style of teaching that works better on disciples than on random strangers. The strangers appreciate being given more substantial hints that give them a basis for believing that you actually have something useful to say, and for being motivated to think about what you’re asking them to think about.
Parables before koans, in other words.
Since those people don’t seem capable of grasping my point anyway, maybe you’re right that it would have been helpful to just state it directly.
If you state it directly, those who are interested at least have the option of checking into it. Not stating it directly means random wandering for years, wondering whether you’re getting anywhere near it.
Having spent years wandering this particular desert for myself, I don’t see any reason to make other people do it, too. The least I can do is point out a few landmarks and share a few travel tips.
I have an unfortunate tendency to initially overestimate the intelligence of people I talk to. Stories and pointers that I consider trivially obvious seem to be too complex for most of the people here.
Per your later point: I happen to believe that a certain amount of desert travel is not only desirable but absolutely necessary. Wandering in circles should obviously be avoided, but it’s not possible to give the answers to people, in roughly the same way that jokes usually can’t be effectively explained. High-level conscious understanding has nothing to do with “getting the joke”, and if people don’t recognize the implied contradiction in the material for themselves, the resolution of tension that we call ‘humor’ isn’t produced.
A long time ago, I realized that there are two kinds of mystic obscurantism. The first belongs to lesser schools, that try to hide their ideas so that outsiders won’t get them. The second belongs to the greater schools, that try to speak truths clearly and directly, but that most can’t understand.
Finding a way to convey the truths of enlightenment to people who haven’t reached that level is difficult, and possibly counterproductive. I will think further on this matter.
You’re arrogant. Also obnoxious. And completely failing at Zen. If this were a koan the teacher would be chasing you out of the temple with a stick, thwacking you as you run. What on earth do you expect to gain by insulting people’s intelligence and berating them for not getting koans (and ignoring the evidence that they got, shrugged, and said “so?”). When has sneering ever been a technique of instruction? You should demote yourself to bottom-most neophyte and restart from sitting.
I have an unfortunate tendency to initially overestimate the intelligence of people I talk to. Stories and pointers that I consider trivially obvious seem to be too complex for most of the people here.
I suspect you tend to overestimate the transparency of your writing rather than the intelligence of the reader, and tend to underestimate the inferential distance you need to cover to communicate rather than the complexity of what you’re communicating.
I have an unfortunate tendency to initially overestimate the intelligence of people I talk to. Stories and pointers that I consider trivially obvious seem to be too complex for most of the people here.
I’d say what you’re overestimating is how much like you other people are. (Perhaps you consider that statement redundant.)
When a particular koan is considered to be easy, and people don’t get it, my estimation of them drops.
When the meaning can easily be found by conducting a quick Google, and people don’t search for it yet demand to be told what it means, my estimation of them drops.
And when people talk about rationality and becoming more rational, but don’t make an effort to be so or to do so, guess what happens?
Perhaps I should just give up. I’m not certain what good I can do in a community that collectively never considered the possibility that certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons.
Very simple! Write a post explicitly explaining why certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons! And if you think that idea is itself communicated only indirectly for good reasons… sounds to me like a too-convenient coincidence.
“why certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons” by Pre.
Rather than use an obscure example like Zen, we’ll use a fairly simple idea: Learning how to catch a ball.
Now I can directly explain to you how a ball is caught. I can describe the simultaneous ballistic equations that govern the flight of the ball, instruct you on how to alter your idea of where the ball will land based on Bayesian reasoning given certain priors and measured weather conditions.
These things are almost certainly needed if you’re gonna program a computer to catch a ball.
If you’re gonna teach a human to catch a ball though, you’re just going to have to throw a lot of balls at them and tell ’em to keep theirs eyes on it.
I suspect most Zen koans are just poor jokes, but if there’s a point to ’em it’s the same as the point of throwing those balls at a student catcher.
Just to get you to practice thinking in that way. Because you, as a human, will become better at the things you practice.
If the thing you are practising is spouting existential bullshit this may or may not be a good idea. ;)
If you say you’re teaching someone how to catch balls, and then provide them with sequences of equations, there’s a dangerous meta-message involved. You’re conveying the (unspoken, implicit) idea that the equations are what’s needed to make the student good at catching.
If the student then believes that because they’ve mastered the equations they’ve learned how to catch, they’ll go out into the world—and fail and fail and fail.
One real-life example of this may be people who attain high status in martial arts training schools and then get themselves slaughtered in actual fights, where the only rules are those of physics and people have chosen optimized strategies for reality.
I would expect their real-life experience to be sufficient to convince them that it’s possible to catch a ball.
More importantly, if they’re not sure that’s possible, they shouldn’t be looking for someone to teach them how to do it. They should be trying to determine if it’s possible before they do anything else.
These things are almost certainly needed if you’re gonna program a computer to catch a ball.
Incidentally, that’s not how we tend to program computers to do things like catch balls (successfully). We instead build a sort-of general learning system attached to grasping and visual systems, and then teach it how through observation.
Dark art argument. It is better to treat underlying diseases than symptoms, but akrasia is neither a disease nor a symptom, except by analogy. Using the analogy to argue that we should address things that cause akrasia, rather than akrasia itself, is a circular argument: the conclusion justifying the analogy and vise versa.
If there are things which cause akrasia which can be addressed directly, then addressing them could be an effective way of addressing akrasia. However, if the only reason these things are bad is because they cause akrasia, then whether it is better to address them or to address akrasia directly depends on which is more effective, which depends on specifics and practicalities that can’t be generalized away.
A recommendation: be careful not to use “dark art argument” as a fully general counter-argument. If you see a logical flaw, state it; if you detect an attempt to manipulate, dissect it. (You did do this, but it’s still a useful recommendation.) Not only is the term “dark arts” jargon and prejudicial, but the Dark Arts are such a grab-bag of tricks and traps that merely labeling some argument as “dark arts” barely adds any information at all.
Yes, I got the same impression. Annoyance’s advice is vague, useless, condescending, trying to sound like it has something profound to say without being specific, sonorous-sounding, promising help without offering any. It is not, however, particularly Dark Side Epistemology.
I was thinking of your Dark Side Epistemology and Yvain’s Dark Arts as two more-or-less separate things, the key difference stemming from the fact that Dark Arts are perpetrated on others and Dark Side Epistemology is perpetrated on one’s self.
You’re right that the phrase ‘dark side’ (and all other phrases of the form ‘dark X’) should probably be avoided. That bit was in reference to Defense Against The Dark Arts, which Annoyance’s post reminded me of.
Remarkable. How exactly did you come to be a fan of Zen Buddhism? Since most of the comments you object to are direct references to it, and the remainder are generally references to other philosophical traditions, many of which are well-known in popular culture and are quite easy to find and understand with a few quick web searchers, I can’t quite grasp why you can’t perceive the value you claim to find in those things in my references to them.
Perhaps your desire to shoot the messenger overwhelms your ability to appreciate the message. Or perhaps you don’t actually have any appreciation for the traditions you make reference to. Or both, of course.
“Dark art argument.”
Shibboleth applause light.
Nothing causes akrasia. There is no such thing as akrasis. ‘Akrasia’ is the label you apply to a phenomenon you don’t understand and you really need to think about more deeply.
Here, I’ll make this simple: Socrates was right. What argument is unspoken but necessary to make Socrates’ statement correct?
It would probably help if you pointed out that the reason we have the illusion of akrasia is because people’s built-in systems for modeling the intentions of other people, generate mistaken predictions about motivation and decisions when applied to one’s self. It’s sort of like looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror, and mistakenly believing you’re fatter or thinner than you actually are.
In reality, it’s not that you don’t follow through on your will, it’s that you’ve failed to understand (or even observe) how your behavior works in the first place, let alone how to change it. Most descriptions of akrasia and how to deal with it (including what I’ve read of Ainslie’s so far), strike me as trying to explain how to steer a car from the back seat, by tying ropes to the front wheels, or by building elaborate walled roads to keep the car going in the right direction.
It makes me want to scream, “but you’re not even looking at the dashboard or touching the controls!” Those things are not even IN the back seat.
They’re looking for information in the human parts of the mind, while entirely ignoring the fact that the secrets of our behavior and decisions CAN’T be there, or animals couldn’t live their entire lives without ever having a single rational, logical, or “economical” thought.
Thought is not the solution here, it’s the problem. And the answers are in the FRONT seat—in the mind-body connection. In emotions, and their somatic markers. In the internal sensory (not verbal!) representations of available choices and expected outcomes. All that equipment that was (evolutionarily) there LONG before the back-seat driver showed up and started critiquing which way the car is going.
And the back-seat driver is only confused because he thinks he’s the one who’s supposed to be driving… when he’s really only there to wave out the window and yell at the other drivers.
And maybe persuade them… that he knows where he’s going.
“It would probably help if you pointed out that the reason we have the illusion of akrasia is because people’s built-in systems for modeling the intentions of other people, generate mistaken predictions about motivation and decisions when applied to one’s self.”
Jorge Luis Borges once asked a famous question: “What is the only word that cannot be used in a riddle whose answer is ‘time’?”
What’s the one thing I can’t state openly in my attempt to get people to recognize a certain truth for themselves?
Pointing out what you suggest would utterly defeat my purpose, and in the long run, would fail to help those I’m speaking to. Since those people don’t seem capable of grasping my point anyway, maybe you’re right that it would have been helpful to just state it directly.
You’re using a style of teaching that works better on disciples than on random strangers. The strangers appreciate being given more substantial hints that give them a basis for believing that you actually have something useful to say, and for being motivated to think about what you’re asking them to think about.
Parables before koans, in other words.
If you state it directly, those who are interested at least have the option of checking into it. Not stating it directly means random wandering for years, wondering whether you’re getting anywhere near it.
Having spent years wandering this particular desert for myself, I don’t see any reason to make other people do it, too. The least I can do is point out a few landmarks and share a few travel tips.
I have an unfortunate tendency to initially overestimate the intelligence of people I talk to. Stories and pointers that I consider trivially obvious seem to be too complex for most of the people here.
Per your later point: I happen to believe that a certain amount of desert travel is not only desirable but absolutely necessary. Wandering in circles should obviously be avoided, but it’s not possible to give the answers to people, in roughly the same way that jokes usually can’t be effectively explained. High-level conscious understanding has nothing to do with “getting the joke”, and if people don’t recognize the implied contradiction in the material for themselves, the resolution of tension that we call ‘humor’ isn’t produced.
A long time ago, I realized that there are two kinds of mystic obscurantism. The first belongs to lesser schools, that try to hide their ideas so that outsiders won’t get them. The second belongs to the greater schools, that try to speak truths clearly and directly, but that most can’t understand.
Finding a way to convey the truths of enlightenment to people who haven’t reached that level is difficult, and possibly counterproductive. I will think further on this matter.
You’re arrogant. Also obnoxious. And completely failing at Zen. If this were a koan the teacher would be chasing you out of the temple with a stick, thwacking you as you run. What on earth do you expect to gain by insulting people’s intelligence and berating them for not getting koans (and ignoring the evidence that they got, shrugged, and said “so?”). When has sneering ever been a technique of instruction? You should demote yourself to bottom-most neophyte and restart from sitting.
Convey the truths of enlightenment? *thwack*
Considering how irritating “Annoyance” is, their nickname is apt-ironic :-(
If this is not Caledonian, then there are two Caledonians.
A whole country of them, north of England.
Did you honestly think that wasn’t intentional?
I like to think Socrates’ “gadfly” worked into the nickname.
They do it to give themselves permission.
I suspect you tend to overestimate the transparency of your writing rather than the intelligence of the reader, and tend to underestimate the inferential distance you need to cover to communicate rather than the complexity of what you’re communicating.
I’d say what you’re overestimating is how much like you other people are. (Perhaps you consider that statement redundant.)
It could also straightforwardly result from all kinds of self-overestimation.
When a particular koan is considered to be easy, and people don’t get it, my estimation of them drops.
When the meaning can easily be found by conducting a quick Google, and people don’t search for it yet demand to be told what it means, my estimation of them drops.
And when people talk about rationality and becoming more rational, but don’t make an effort to be so or to do so, guess what happens?
Perhaps I should just give up. I’m not certain what good I can do in a community that collectively never considered the possibility that certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons.
Very simple! Write a post explicitly explaining why certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons! And if you think that idea is itself communicated only indirectly for good reasons… sounds to me like a too-convenient coincidence.
“why certain ideas are communicated only indirectly for good reasons” by Pre.
Rather than use an obscure example like Zen, we’ll use a fairly simple idea: Learning how to catch a ball.
Now I can directly explain to you how a ball is caught. I can describe the simultaneous ballistic equations that govern the flight of the ball, instruct you on how to alter your idea of where the ball will land based on Bayesian reasoning given certain priors and measured weather conditions.
These things are almost certainly needed if you’re gonna program a computer to catch a ball.
If you’re gonna teach a human to catch a ball though, you’re just going to have to throw a lot of balls at them and tell ’em to keep theirs eyes on it.
I suspect most Zen koans are just poor jokes, but if there’s a point to ’em it’s the same as the point of throwing those balls at a student catcher.
Just to get you to practice thinking in that way. Because you, as a human, will become better at the things you practice.
If the thing you are practising is spouting existential bullshit this may or may not be a good idea. ;)
But first explaining how to catch a ball won’t keep the person from then learning how to catch it.
If you say you’re teaching someone how to catch balls, and then provide them with sequences of equations, there’s a dangerous meta-message involved. You’re conveying the (unspoken, implicit) idea that the equations are what’s needed to make the student good at catching.
If the student then believes that because they’ve mastered the equations they’ve learned how to catch, they’ll go out into the world—and fail and fail and fail.
One real-life example of this may be people who attain high status in martial arts training schools and then get themselves slaughtered in actual fights, where the only rules are those of physics and people have chosen optimized strategies for reality.
In fact, such an explanation can help to assure them that catching a ball is possible before they commit to practicing.
I would expect their real-life experience to be sufficient to convince them that it’s possible to catch a ball.
More importantly, if they’re not sure that’s possible, they shouldn’t be looking for someone to teach them how to do it. They should be trying to determine if it’s possible before they do anything else.
Incidentally, that’s not how we tend to program computers to do things like catch balls (successfully). We instead build a sort-of general learning system attached to grasping and visual systems, and then teach it how through observation.
My own reaction, frankly, is “Take your unoriginal bluffs elsewhere.”