I have said this to you twice now and I am going to keep saying it: are we talking about whether mysticism would be useful for Said, or useful for people in general? It seems to me that you keep making claims about what is useful for people in general, but your evidence continues to be about whether it would be useful for you.
I consider myself to be making a weak claim, not “X is great and everyone should do it” but “X is a possible tool and I want people to feel free to explore it if they want.” I consider you to be making a strong claim, namely “X is bad for people in general,” based on weak evidence that is mostly about your experiences, not the experiences of people other than you. In other words, from my perspective, you’ve consistently been typical minding every time we talk about this sort of thing.
I’m glad that you’ve been able to find plenty of meaning and motivation in your life as it stands, but other people, like me, aren’t so lucky, and I’m frustrated at you for refusing to acknowledge this.
You do a disservice to that last point by treating it as a mere parenthetical; it is, in fact, crucial. If the tools in question are epistemically beneficial—if they are truth-tracking—then we ought to master them and use them. If they are not, then we shouldn’t.
The parenthetical was not meant to imply that the point was unimportant, just that it wasn’t the main thrust of what I was trying to say.
I’m glad that you’ve been able to find plenty of meaning and motivation in your life as it stands, but other people, like me, aren’t so lucky, and I’m frustrated at you for refusing to acknowledge this.
Why do you say it’s luck? I didn’t just happen to find these things. It took hard work and a good long time. (And how else could it be? —except by luck, of course.)
I’m not refusing to acknowledge anything. I do not for a moment deny that you’re advocating a solution to a real problem. I am saying that your solution is a bad one, for most (or possibly even “all”) people—especially “rationalist”-type folks like you and I are. And I am saying that your implication—that this is the best solution, or maybe even the only solution—is erroneous. (And how else to take the comment that I have been lucky not to have to resort to the sort of thing you advocate, and other comments in a similar vein?)
So, to answer your question:
I have said this to you twice now and I am going to keep saying it: are we talking about whether mysticism would be useful for Said, or useful for people in general? It seems to me that you keep making claims about what is useful for people in general, but your evidence continues to be about whether it would be useful for you.
I, at least, am saying this: of course these things would not be useful for me; they would be detrimental to me, and to everyone, and especially to the sorts of people who post on, and read, Less Wrong.
Is this a strong claim? Am I very certain of it? It’s not my most strongly held belief, that’s for sure. I can imagine many things that could change my mind on this (indeed, given my background[1], I start from a place of being much more sympathetic to this sort of thing than many “skeptic” types). But what seems to me quite obvious is that in this case, firm skepticism makes a sensible, solid default. Starting from that default, I have seen a great deal of evidence in favor of sticking with it, and very little evidence (and that, of rather low quality) in favor of abandoning it and moving to something like your view.
So this is (among other reasons) why I push for specifics when people talk about these sorts of things, and why I don’t simply dismiss it as woo and move on with my life (as I would if, say, someone from the Flat Earth Society were to post on Less Wrong about the elephants which support the world on their backs). It’s an important thing to be right about. The wrong view seems plausible to many people. It’s not so obviously wrong that we can simply dismiss it without giving it serious attention. But (it seems to
me) it is still wrong—not only for me, but in general.
I am going to make one more response (namely this one) and then stop, because the experience of talking to you is painful and unpleasant and I’d rather do something else.
And I am saying that your implication—that this is the best solution, or maybe even the only solution—is erroneous.
I don’t think I’ve said anything like that here. I’ve said something like that elsewhere, but I certainly don’t mean anything like “mysticism is the only solution to the problem of feeling unmotivated” since that’s easy to disprove with plenty of counterexamples. My position is more like:
“There’s a cluster of things which look vaguely like mysticism which I think is important for getting in touch with large and neglected parts of human value, as well as for the epistemic problem of how to deal with metacognitive blind spots. People who say vaguely mystical things are currently the experts on doing this although this need not be the case in principle, and I suspect whatever’s of value that the mystics know could in principle be separated from the mysticism and distilled out in a form most rationalists would be happy with, but as far as I know that work mostly hasn’t been done yet. Feeling more motivated is a side effect of getting in touch with these large parts of human value, although that can be done in many other ways.”
I have said this to you twice now and I am going to keep saying it: are we talking about whether mysticism would be useful for Said, or useful for people in general? It seems to me that you keep making claims about what is useful for people in general, but your evidence continues to be about whether it would be useful for you.
I consider myself to be making a weak claim, not “X is great and everyone should do it” but “X is a possible tool and I want people to feel free to explore it if they want.” I consider you to be making a strong claim, namely “X is bad for people in general,” based on weak evidence that is mostly about your experiences, not the experiences of people other than you. In other words, from my perspective, you’ve consistently been typical minding every time we talk about this sort of thing.
I’m glad that you’ve been able to find plenty of meaning and motivation in your life as it stands, but other people, like me, aren’t so lucky, and I’m frustrated at you for refusing to acknowledge this.
The parenthetical was not meant to imply that the point was unimportant, just that it wasn’t the main thrust of what I was trying to say.
Why do you say it’s luck? I didn’t just happen to find these things. It took hard work and a good long time. (And how else could it be? —except by luck, of course.)
I’m not refusing to acknowledge anything. I do not for a moment deny that you’re advocating a solution to a real problem. I am saying that your solution is a bad one, for most (or possibly even “all”) people—especially “rationalist”-type folks like you and I are. And I am saying that your implication—that this is the best solution, or maybe even the only solution—is erroneous. (And how else to take the comment that I have been lucky not to have to resort to the sort of thing you advocate, and other comments in a similar vein?)
So, to answer your question:
I, at least, am saying this: of course these things would not be useful for me; they would be detrimental to me, and to everyone, and especially to the sorts of people who post on, and read, Less Wrong.
Is this a strong claim? Am I very certain of it? It’s not my most strongly held belief, that’s for sure. I can imagine many things that could change my mind on this (indeed, given my background[1], I start from a place of being much more sympathetic to this sort of thing than many “skeptic” types). But what seems to me quite obvious is that in this case, firm skepticism makes a sensible, solid default. Starting from that default, I have seen a great deal of evidence in favor of sticking with it, and very little evidence (and that, of rather low quality) in favor of abandoning it and moving to something like your view.
So this is (among other reasons) why I push for specifics when people talk about these sorts of things, and why I don’t simply dismiss it as woo and move on with my life (as I would if, say, someone from the Flat Earth Society were to post on Less Wrong about the elephants which support the world on their backs). It’s an important thing to be right about. The wrong view seems plausible to many people. It’s not so obviously wrong that we can simply dismiss it without giving it serious attention. But (it seems to me) it is still wrong—not only for me, but in general.
[1] No, it’s not religion.
I am going to make one more response (namely this one) and then stop, because the experience of talking to you is painful and unpleasant and I’d rather do something else.
I don’t think I’ve said anything like that here. I’ve said something like that elsewhere, but I certainly don’t mean anything like “mysticism is the only solution to the problem of feeling unmotivated” since that’s easy to disprove with plenty of counterexamples. My position is more like:
“There’s a cluster of things which look vaguely like mysticism which I think is important for getting in touch with large and neglected parts of human value, as well as for the epistemic problem of how to deal with metacognitive blind spots. People who say vaguely mystical things are currently the experts on doing this although this need not be the case in principle, and I suspect whatever’s of value that the mystics know could in principle be separated from the mysticism and distilled out in a form most rationalists would be happy with, but as far as I know that work mostly hasn’t been done yet. Feeling more motivated is a side effect of getting in touch with these large parts of human value, although that can be done in many other ways.”