gjm, point well taken. I wonder if it would be easier for people inside or outside Berkeley to spot if anyone there is seriously going off the rails and say something about it.
Anyway, I do want to elaborate a little bit on my “Efficient Frontier” idea. If anyone can build a map of which “mystical experiences” are safe/dangerous/worthwhile/useless and for whom, it should be people like us. I think it’s a worthwhile project and it has to be done communally, given how different each person’s experience may be and how hard it is to generalize.
The main example here is Sam Harris, a hardcore epistemic rationalist who has also spent a lot of time exploring “altered states of consciousness”. He wrote a book about meditation, endorses psychedelics with caveats, is extremely hostile to any and all religions, and probably thinks that Peterson is kinda crazy after arguing with him for four hours. Those are good data points, but we need 20 more Sam Harrises. I’m hoping that LW can be the platform for them.
Perhaps we need to establish some norms for talking about “mystical experiences”, fake frameworks, altered consciousness etc. so that people feel safe both talking and listening.
gjm, point well taken. I wonder if it would be easier for people inside or outside Berkeley to spot if anyone there is seriously going off the rails and say something about it.
Anyway, I do want to elaborate a little bit on my “Efficient Frontier” idea. If anyone can build a map of which “mystical experiences” are safe/dangerous/worthwhile/useless and for whom, it should be people like us. I think it’s a worthwhile project and it has to be done communally, given how different each person’s experience may be and how hard it is to generalize.
The main example here is Sam Harris, a hardcore epistemic rationalist who has also spent a lot of time exploring “altered states of consciousness”. He wrote a book about meditation, endorses psychedelics with caveats, is extremely hostile to any and all religions, and probably thinks that Peterson is kinda crazy after arguing with him for four hours. Those are good data points, but we need 20 more Sam Harrises. I’m hoping that LW can be the platform for them.
Perhaps we need to establish some norms for talking about “mystical experiences”, fake frameworks, altered consciousness etc. so that people feel safe both talking and listening.
There’s Daniel Ingram, Vincent Horn, Kenneth Folk and the other Buddhist geeks.