Why do you (or I, or anyone else) need mysticism (either of the sort you’ve talked about, or whatever Jordan Peterson talks about) in order to have motivation and meaning? In my experience, it is completely unnecessary to deviate even one micrometer from the path of epistemic rectitude in order to have meaning and motivation aplenty. (I, if anything, find myself with far too little time to engage in all the important, exciting projects that I’ve taken on—and there is a long queue of things I’d love to be doing, that I just can’t spare time for.)
(Perhaps partly to blame here is the view—sadly all too common in rationalist circles—that nothing is meaningful or worth doing unless it somehow “saves the world”. But that is its own problem, and said view quite deserves to be excised. We ought not compound that wrong by indulging in woo—two wrongs don’t make a right.)
Rationalists who are epistemically strong are very lucky: you can use that strength in a place where it will actually help you, like investigating mysticism, by defending you from making the common epistemic mistakes there. It should be exciting for rationalists to learn about powerful tools that carry epistemic risks, because those are precisely the tools that rationalists should be best equipped to use compared to other people! (Separately, I also think that these tools have actually improved my epistemics, by improving my ability to model myself and other people.)
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. Whether the tools in question can be used “safely” (that is, if one can use them without worsening one’s epistemics, i.e. without making one’s worldview more crazy and less correct); and, conditional on that, whether said tools meaningfully improve our grasp on reality and our ability to discover truth—is, in fact, the whole question. (To me, the answer very much seems to be a resounding “no”. What’s more, every time I see anyone—“rationalist” or otherwise—treat the question as somehow peripheral or unimportant, that “no” becomes ever more clear.)
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.”
(Perhaps partly to blame here is the view—sadly all too common in rationalist circles—that nothing is meaningful or worth doing unless it somehow “saves the world”.
It seems tautologous to me that if thing A is objectively more important than thing B, then,
all other things being equal, you should be doing thing A. Mysticism isn’t a good fit for the standard rationalist framing of “everything is ultimately about efficiently achieving arbitrary goals”, but a lot of other things aren’t either, and the framing itself needs justification.
It seems tautologous to me that if thing A is objectively more important than thing B, then, all other things being equal, you should be doing thing A.
This certainly sounds true, except that a) there’s no such thing as “objectively more important”, and b) even if there were, who says that “saving the world” is “objectively more important” than everything else?
Mysticism isn’t a good fit for the standard rationalist framing of “everything is ultimately about efficiently achieving arbitrary goals”, but a lot of other things aren’t either, and the framing itself needs justification.
Well I certainly I agree with you there—I am not a big fan of that framing myself—but I don’t really understand whether you mean to be disagreeing with me, here, or what. Please clarify.
Saving the world certainly does seem to be an instrumentally convergent strategy for many human terminal values. Whatever you value, it’s hard to get more of it if the world doesn’t exist. This point should be fairly obvious, and I find myself puzzled as to why you seem to be ignoring it entirely.
Please note that you’ve removed the scare quotes from “saving the world”, and thus changed the meaning. This suggests several possible responses to your comment, all of which I endorse:
It seems likely, indeed, that saving the world would be the most important thing. What’s not clear is whether ‘“saving the world”’ (as it’s used in these sorts of contexts) is the same thing as ‘saving the world’. It seems to me that it’s not.
It’s not clear to me that the framework of “the world faces concrete threats X, Y, and Z; if we don’t ‘save the world’ from these threats, the world will be destroyed” is even sensible in every case where it’s applied. It seems to me that it’s often misapplied.
If the world needs saving, is it necessary that all of everyone’s activity boil down to saving it? Is that actually the best way to save the world? It seems to me that it is not.
Why do you (or I, or anyone else) need mysticism (either of the sort you’ve talked about, or whatever Jordan Peterson talks about) in order to have motivation and meaning? In my experience, it is completely unnecessary to deviate even one micrometer from the path of epistemic rectitude in order to have meaning and motivation aplenty. (I, if anything, find myself with far too little time to engage in all the important, exciting projects that I’ve taken on—and there is a long queue of things I’d love to be doing, that I just can’t spare time for.)
(Perhaps partly to blame here is the view—sadly all too common in rationalist circles—that nothing is meaningful or worth doing unless it somehow “saves the world”. But that is its own problem, and said view quite deserves to be excised. We ought not compound that wrong by indulging in woo—two wrongs don’t make a right.)
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. Whether the tools in question can be used “safely” (that is, if one can use them without worsening one’s epistemics, i.e. without making one’s worldview more crazy and less correct); and, conditional on that, whether said tools meaningfully improve our grasp on reality and our ability to discover truth—is, in fact, the whole question. (To me, the answer very much seems to be a resounding “no”. What’s more, every time I see anyone—“rationalist” or otherwise—treat the question as somehow peripheral or unimportant, that “no” becomes ever more clear.)
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.”
It seems tautologous to me that if thing A is objectively more important than thing B, then, all other things being equal, you should be doing thing A. Mysticism isn’t a good fit for the standard rationalist framing of “everything is ultimately about efficiently achieving arbitrary goals”, but a lot of other things aren’t either, and the framing itself needs justification.
This certainly sounds true, except that a) there’s no such thing as “objectively more important”, and b) even if there were, who says that “saving the world” is “objectively more important” than everything else?
Well I certainly I agree with you there—I am not a big fan of that framing myself—but I don’t really understand whether you mean to be disagreeing with me, here, or what. Please clarify.
Saving the world certainly does seem to be an instrumentally convergent strategy for many human terminal values. Whatever you value, it’s hard to get more of it if the world doesn’t exist. This point should be fairly obvious, and I find myself puzzled as to why you seem to be ignoring it entirely.
Please note that you’ve removed the scare quotes from “saving the world”, and thus changed the meaning. This suggests several possible responses to your comment, all of which I endorse:
It seems likely, indeed, that saving the world would be the most important thing. What’s not clear is whether ‘“saving the world”’ (as it’s used in these sorts of contexts) is the same thing as ‘saving the world’. It seems to me that it’s not.
It’s not clear to me that the framework of “the world faces concrete threats X, Y, and Z; if we don’t ‘save the world’ from these threats, the world will be destroyed” is even sensible in every case where it’s applied. It seems to me that it’s often misapplied.
If the world needs saving, is it necessary that all of everyone’s activity boil down to saving it? Is that actually the best way to save the world? It seems to me that it is not.