I have plans to write this up more fully as a longer post explaining the broader ideas with visuals, but I thought I would highlight one that is pretty interesting and try out the new shortform feature at the same time! As such, this is not optimized for readability, has no links, and I don’t try to backup my claims. You’ve been warned!
Suppose you frequently found yourself identifying with and feeling like you were a homunculus controlling your body and mind: there’s a real you buried inside, and it’s in the driver’s seat. Sometimes your mind and body do what “you” want, sometimes it doesn’t and this is frustrating. Plenty of folks reify this in slightly different ways: rider and elephant, monkey and machine, prisoner in cave (or audience member in theater), and, to a certain extent, variations on the S1/S2 model. In fact, I would propose this is a kind of dual process theory of mind that has you identifying with one of the processes.
A few claims.
First, this is a kind of constant, low-level dissociation. It’s not the kind of high-intensity dissociation we often think of when we use that term, but it’s still a separation of sense of self from the physical embodiment of self.
Second, this is projection, and thus a psychological problem in need of resolving. There’s nothing good about thinking of yourself this way; it’s a confusion that may be temporarily helpful but it’s also something you need to learn to move beyond via first reintegrating the separated sense of self and mind/body.
Third, people drawn to the rationalist community are unusually likely to be the sort of folks who dissociate and identify with the homunculus, S2, the rider, far mode, or whatever you want to call it. It gives them a world view that says “ah, yes, I know what’s right, but for some reason by stupid brain doesn’t do what I want, so let’s learn how to make it do what I want” when this is in fact a confusion because it’s the very brain that’s “stupid” that’s producing the feeling that you think you know what you want!
To speculate a bit, this might help explain some of the rationalist/meta-rationalist divide: rationalists are still dissociating, meta-rationalists have already reintegrated, and as a result we care about very different things and look at the world differently because of it. That’s very speculative, though, and I have nothing other than weak evidence to back it up.
I have plans to write this up more fully as a longer post explaining the broader ideas with visuals, but I thought I would highlight one that is pretty interesting and try out the new shortform feature at the same time! As such, this is not optimized for readability, has no links, and I don’t try to backup my claims. You’ve been warned!
Suppose you frequently found yourself identifying with and feeling like you were a homunculus controlling your body and mind: there’s a real you buried inside, and it’s in the driver’s seat. Sometimes your mind and body do what “you” want, sometimes it doesn’t and this is frustrating. Plenty of folks reify this in slightly different ways: rider and elephant, monkey and machine, prisoner in cave (or audience member in theater), and, to a certain extent, variations on the S1/S2 model. In fact, I would propose this is a kind of dual process theory of mind that has you identifying with one of the processes.
A few claims.
First, this is a kind of constant, low-level dissociation. It’s not the kind of high-intensity dissociation we often think of when we use that term, but it’s still a separation of sense of self from the physical embodiment of self.
Second, this is projection, and thus a psychological problem in need of resolving. There’s nothing good about thinking of yourself this way; it’s a confusion that may be temporarily helpful but it’s also something you need to learn to move beyond via first reintegrating the separated sense of self and mind/body.
Third, people drawn to the rationalist community are unusually likely to be the sort of folks who dissociate and identify with the homunculus, S2, the rider, far mode, or whatever you want to call it. It gives them a world view that says “ah, yes, I know what’s right, but for some reason by stupid brain doesn’t do what I want, so let’s learn how to make it do what I want” when this is in fact a confusion because it’s the very brain that’s “stupid” that’s producing the feeling that you think you know what you want!
To speculate a bit, this might help explain some of the rationalist/meta-rationalist divide: rationalists are still dissociating, meta-rationalists have already reintegrated, and as a result we care about very different things and look at the world differently because of it. That’s very speculative, though, and I have nothing other than weak evidence to back it up.