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 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.”