G’Kar: You must understand, Ta’Lon. I have had a revelation!
Ta’Lon: What kind of revelation?
G’Kar: A most profound and substantial one, Ta’Lon. The kind of revelation that transforms your mind, your soul, your heart—even your flesh—so that you are a new creature, reborn in the instant of understanding.
Ta’Lon: That was a stirring reply, Citizen G’Kar. Unfortunately, while all answers are replies, not all replies are answers. You did not answer the question that I asked. What do you understand now that you did not understand before?
— “Point of No Return” (Babylon 5, season 3, episode 9)
Ta’Lon’s reply is, basically, my reaction to this post.
So you’re enlightened. Ok. Now what? What do you understand now that you did not understand before? What do you know now that you did not know before? What can you do now that you could not do before? What have you gained? (And why should anyone want this thing? Or should they?)
Or, to put it another way: suppose that, just prior to reading this post, my view of enlightenment was “I suspect this ‘enlightenment’ business is mostly nonsense, though there’s a chance it’s not nonsense”. Would you predict that reading this post would shift my view? If so, in which direction would you predict that my view would shift?
So you’re enlightened. Ok. Now what? What do you understand now that you did not understand before? What do you know now that you did not know before? What can you do now that you could not do before? What have you gained?
(Quick terminology thing: “enlightened” is kind of a type error, but if we force it to mean something coherent, then I’m not enlightened. In Buddhism one might say that I’ve reached stream-entry but not full Buddhahood.)
So… I’ll answer your question. But first, I’d ask you to notice the combative tone that I think is easy to read in what you’ve written. This puts me in an odd position: if I just answer, then you’re incentivized to poke and prod in a combative way. If I object to the frame, it’s easy for the audience to see me as weaseling out of falsifiability. I’m speaking to this directly because that’s not the tone I want here: I’d rather just offer what I can and work together to see truth clearly. I know that’s not the standard tone of Less Wrong; I’ve been around a while. But it’s a tone I prefer, so it’s what I’ll use.
So! With that… I think I answered some of this in my reply to Ben. It’s not exhaustive and doesn’t really speak that much to what I understand/know now, but I currently think it’s what you’re looking for. Let me know if you were hoping for something different.
(And why should anyone want this thing? Or should they?)
“Should” is a broken concept here. All y’all can do what you like! You can want this, or not, however you see fit.
…but in that, I’m yanking your chain a little bit. In this case I think I can answer your question in a way you’ll find more satisfying:
If you learn how to Look, you can see things that you can learn to interpret as novel patterns. This gives you a lot more room to do some pretty epic stuff.
…but explaining that more concretely is really best left for the upcoming post.
Can you say how? (Was it drugs?)
I’ll say how in the upcoming post.
Also, as a matter of game theory: I currently think it’s a bit dangerous to have people record in public whether they have done something that’s currently quite illegal. For the most part, people will tend to say “no” if they haven’t, which means answers of “no comment” are evidence of “yes”. Because of this, I’m implementing a strategy of answering “no comment” along with this explanation to illustrate both that I say “no comment” regardless of the true answer, and also why.
It’s illegal to take most drugs in most jurisdictions. It’s not illegal to travel to a location where it’s legal to consume then and then consume them in that jurisdiction.
Drug legality also differs a lot in different countries. Germany for example has at the moment legal 1PLSD which is an LSD analgoue that likely gets processed the same way in the brain (there’s an additional group on it that the body likely removes before it has effects).
In cases where it’s useful to communicate knowledge gained from drug experiments it might be worthwhile to create the plausible impression that the experiment was done in a jurisdiction where it’s legal.
It sounds like you’re basically saying “all will be explained in my upcoming post”. Fair enough. I look forward to reading it. (This ordering is very much not ideal, imo, but that happens sometimes.)
Re: how this “kensho” state was achieved, and whether it was drugs or not:
You are, of course, right that it’s imprudent to admit to illegal drug use on a public Internet forum. Your policy of a “no comment” response, if asked directly, is a sensible one. (It also sounds like it was not drugs in this case, because then—presumably—you would not be planning to tell us about it in your upcoming post.)
But, in the counterfactual case where…
… you did achieve your not-really-enlightenment-but-something-related state via drug use, and then…
… made a blog post about having achieved this state, without revealing how…
… because it would be imprudent to admit to drug use…
… then, in that scenario, you would have done this, knowing in advance that you would refuse to reveal this crucial fact, if asked.
(“Crucial”, I say, because let’s face it—“I dropped acid and had a mystical experience and uncovered Truths, which, alas, it is nigh-impossible to put into words” is… not, shall we say, an exceedingly interesting story, nor a particularly novel one.)
In that scenario, writing this post would, of course, be quite unethical!
Anyhow, it sounds like my concern doesn’t apply here, which is gratifying.
Perhaps. If so, I certainly look forward to reading that future post.
However, I will say that before one begins to lay out an elaborate explanation of why something is hard to explain, one might perhaps begin by offering at least a taste of just why, exactly, anyone might be interested in having that thing explained at all.
An analogy: suppose I have invented a widget. Well, so I claim, anyway, having shown up in your office (you’re an investor, to whom I propose to license my invention). Upon entering, I immediately launch into a long, elaborate explanation of the fact that my widget is very difficult to manufacture—almost impossible, really. It’s quite a herculean effort, just making the thing! Yes, producing even one of these widgets is an ordeal worthy of song and story, because the process of its creation is long and arduous and complex…
Are you not liable to interrupt my tale, by saying “Yes, yes, but what is it? Do you have one? What the heck are we even talking about, here? Show it to me!”?
Coming back from the analogy, what I’d very much like to have seen first (and would still like to see) is a post along the lines of: “Observe, as I demonstrate unusual and impressive feats of thinking / writing / action! Are you not impressed? Yes, of course you are… and how did I accomplish these things? Enlightenment! And what is this ‘enlightenment’? Ah, now that’s a tricky one… settle in, because this’ll take a while…”
Your wish totally makes sense. And I might have tried harder at that. This is a teaching principle I understand well, I promise.
But… the motivation problem is subject to the same puzzle I’m outlining in the OP.
This is why so many meditation teachers and enlightenment gurus end up making claims about “lower your stress” and “improve health” and “increase concentration” and “better love-making” and “healthier relationships” and so on. Some of it is trying to point at things that actually can come from this, and some of it is people who have no clue what they’re talking about copying the claims they’ve heard others make.
But if I’m being honest, the motivation is already in you, and I don’t really care that much what your conscious mind has to think about it. I’d prefer to ease your passage as you keep doing you, but if I literally cannot get your conscious mind to understand, then oh well!
The thing I do hope is for your conscious mind to track that there is a kind of insight that it has trouble understanding the need for. “Well, why would I care about that?” Exactly.
With all that said, I really did try to give your conscious mind something to hold onto — but it looks like it didn’t stick at all, which is unsurprising given, um, everything I’ve been saying:
Once you have any meaningful grasp of how to Look, you can use it to see things that prompt novel Gears in your understanding of the world. A lot of things that previously sounded kind of mystical or incoherent will suddenly change meaning and be made of obviousness to you. And some of them really, really, really, really matter.
Seeing these things will probably transform you, although it usually seems to feel more like realizing who you have always been and what has always mattered most to you. Your reflective priorities rearrange, you start caring in a different and deeper way, and most of the things you had previously been so stressed or concerned about stop mattering. You actually start to get what’s at stake and what’s worth doing.
I started writing a comment responding to things you said, there.
Then I noticed that nothing in your comment was actually responsive to my comment. Hm.
I asked you to demonstrate what you know, or understand, or can do, now that you’ve achieved whatever-it-is. But you responded by talking about what amazing (but, of course, hard to verbalize) things would happen for me if I were to achieve this thing (or, worse, not even what would happen as a result of achieving the thing, but reasons I allegedly already want this thing—without knowing it).
That seems like a non sequitur, and is definitely not at all a response to what I asked.
It would be as if—to return to the widgets analogy—I asked you to demonstrate your amazing widget, and you started telling me how great it would be if I made a widget of my own. I hope you can see how that might not quite be the most satisfying response.
Edit: This part…
A lot of things that previously sounded kind of mystical or incoherent will suddenly change meaning and be made of obviousness to you. And some of them really, really, really, really matter.
seems ripe for examples. You need not even tell us what amazing new insights you have gained; at least enumerate a few of these previously-confusing things which are now laid bare to you (and, preferably, tell us why they matter).
I asked you to demonstrate what you know, or understand, or can do, now that you’ve achieved whatever-it-is. But you responded by talking about what amazing (but, of course, hard to verbalize) things would happen for me if I were to achieve this thing (or, worse, not even what would happen as a result of achieving the thing, but reasons I allegedly already want this thing—without knowing it).
This doesn’t strike me as much of a non-sequitur. At least the first part. Assuming that the benefits of the thing Val is describing are similarly for different people, then you getting benefit X after learning it, has a strong implication that Val got benefit X after learning it, and both are direct evidence for “you will benefit if you put effort into learning/engaging-with this”.
You might still have found his arguments weak, but at least the specific thing you describe doesn’t seem to fall into the specific category of “non-sequitur”.
Ah, no. I was just responding to these two paragraphs in isolation.
I asked you to demonstrate what you know, or understand, or can do, now that you’ve achieved whatever-it-is. But you responded by talking about what amazing (but, of course, hard to verbalize) things would happen for me if Iwere to achieve this thing (or, worse, not even what would happen as a result of achieving the thing, but reasons I allegedly already want this thing—without knowing it).
That seems like a non sequitur, and is definitely not at all a response to what I asked.
While obviously context is always important, this comment of mine should be parsable without any knowledge of Val’s original comment.
(And as such might also not be super valuable. The thing that generated this comment was more the part of my brain that goes through a proof/argument step-by-step and analyses its internal logic, and not the part of my brain that was trying to parse the larger context of the conversation.)
Then, I confess I am having trouble grasping your point.
You don’t think that “let me tell what you will get from this” is a non-sequitur in response to “show me what you got from this”? I think it is… but, perhaps reasonable people can differ on this. It is, in any case, a very unsatisfying sort of response, even if it isn’t literally a non sequitur.
(There is also the fact that even as I try to think of just what specific benefits Valentine has made reference to, I find it hard to pin them down. Perhaps someone might make a concise list?)
Edit: It seems like you edited your comment shortly after posting, to add the second paragraph? Or did I just miss it the first time I read? Anyway, I retract the “trouble grasping your point”, in light of that, but the rest of my comment stands.
Look, that’s the question the entire post was attempting to answer, including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words. You can claim that you still haven’t understood but I think it’s uncharitable to claim that there was no attempt to explain.
I do feel the post is not really trying to explain why you should care to achieve enlightenment. It highlights that it is difficult to talk about enlightenment, and that it is difficult to point at the benefits elightenment might provide, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually trying to give me evidence about the benefits of enlightenment, and that’s the part I am actually most skeptical about.
I believe we have many deep epistemic blindspots, and deep ontological frameworks we cannot easily break out off. I expect there are methods to expand your ontology in various ways, and this seems like one of them, but it is competing with hundreds of other ways I could expand my horizon (for example by studying math, or coming to deeply understand poetry, or going through intense social experiences like circling, or participating in intense religious experiences). Mindspace is deep and wide, and while I believe that you’ve had many internal experiences I haven’t, just highlighting that you had them and I have not does not make me want to spend dozens of hours trying to achieve yours. It’s not completely unconvincing, but a pretty weak sell overall.
My disagreement here is similar to the many discussions I’ve had with people about taking LSD. They usually go “the experience of LSD is really hard to describe, and I don’t think you can get it any other way, and it’s a totally novel way of experiencing the world” and my usual response is “cool, but does that now actually help you achieve your goals?”, and sometimes when I dig into it like that, the response is “yes”, but often the response is “not really” and sometimes “in retrospect yes, but I don’t know whether taking it might have changed my values and that past me might not be happy about the changes”.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You’re right, I wasn’t trying to sell enlightenment. It really doesn’t matter if I sell y’all on it. Promise.
I do think there’s something to Looking, though. And I think it’s interwoven into the core of a lot of rationality. And the failure to learn to Look, instead replacing it with a particular kind of intellectual activity that simulates some of the apparent effects of having Looked, seems to me to be one of the hulking reasons why the sense that more is possible is so hard to actualize.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You are in fact doing a beautiful job of being you. That’s very you. You make sense.
Who said there was no attempt to explain…? I think you might be reading things into my comment that aren’t there…
(That said, I don’t actually see where in the post my questions are, in fact, answered. Do you?)
including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words
I’m sure you can see how that might be, shall we say, rather unsatisfying.
Man, alright, so I’m going to be honest here. I feel like you’re being a huge asshole in this conversation, and I’m feeling a strong desire to defend Val from what feels to me like an attack on your part. I expect admitting this will give you plenty of ammunition to continue attacking if that’s what you want to do, but I really wish you wouldn’t.
I don’t want to win this conversation. I think Val is explaining something important and if someone gets something out of his explanation that would make me very happy. It’s looking unlikely that you’re going to be one of those people, and that’s okay, but it also feels to me like you’re implicitly accusing Val of having violated norms—that’s the attack I want to defend against—and if that’s how you’re feeling I wish you’d be more explicit about it.
It does seem like a somewhat common pattern that your comments get interpreted as hostile. I think this is both a reason to extend you more charitability, since I don’t actually think those worries have ever been clearly demonstrated to be true, but is also a sign of something more general going wrong that I don’t really know how to deal with.
(Happy to continue this thread via private chat or in meta. I am hesitant to have even more meta on this post.)
Said, you do not get to decide what people read into your words. What you’ve communicated to others is what they get from your communication, no more and no less. There’s a tight analogy to teaching: you do not get to decide what you teach to your students. What you’ve taught is what they’ve learned, no more and no less.
I believe that you’re trying to get something out of Val’s explanations, but there are other things you’re doing in the course of that trying and they’re really rubbing me the wrong way. That is at least as much a fact about me as about you, but I am a real human having a real experience of being pissed at you, and you don’t get to define that experience away just because you don’t see anything in your comments worth getting pissed about.
Note that at this point the thread doesn’t seem super valuable to continue to me, and that I might lock it down in case it continues in a way that I expect to go badly. Discussion via PM or in Meta is welcome.
Good faith strikes me as a weird descriptor. Do appreciate the sincerity and articulation. (I do think it’s important that Qiaochu doesn’t undeservedly get the label of “good faith”, in particular in a conversation in which he is suggesting someone is lacking exactly that attribute)
edit: replaced “accusing” with “suggesting” for less combatative framing
Ta’Lon’s reply is, basically, my reaction to this post.
So you’re enlightened. Ok. Now what? What do you understand now that you did not understand before? What do you know now that you did not know before? What can you do now that you could not do before? What have you gained? (And why should anyone want this thing? Or should they?)
Or, to put it another way: suppose that, just prior to reading this post, my view of enlightenment was “I suspect this ‘enlightenment’ business is mostly nonsense, though there’s a chance it’s not nonsense”. Would you predict that reading this post would shift my view? If so, in which direction would you predict that my view would shift?
Can you say how? (Was it drugs?)
(Quick terminology thing: “enlightened” is kind of a type error, but if we force it to mean something coherent, then I’m not enlightened. In Buddhism one might say that I’ve reached stream-entry but not full Buddhahood.)
So… I’ll answer your question. But first, I’d ask you to notice the combative tone that I think is easy to read in what you’ve written. This puts me in an odd position: if I just answer, then you’re incentivized to poke and prod in a combative way. If I object to the frame, it’s easy for the audience to see me as weaseling out of falsifiability. I’m speaking to this directly because that’s not the tone I want here: I’d rather just offer what I can and work together to see truth clearly. I know that’s not the standard tone of Less Wrong; I’ve been around a while. But it’s a tone I prefer, so it’s what I’ll use.
So! With that… I think I answered some of this in my reply to Ben. It’s not exhaustive and doesn’t really speak that much to what I understand/know now, but I currently think it’s what you’re looking for. Let me know if you were hoping for something different.
“Should” is a broken concept here. All y’all can do what you like! You can want this, or not, however you see fit.
…but in that, I’m yanking your chain a little bit. In this case I think I can answer your question in a way you’ll find more satisfying:
If you learn how to Look, you can see things that you can learn to interpret as novel patterns. This gives you a lot more room to do some pretty epic stuff.
…but explaining that more concretely is really best left for the upcoming post.
I’ll say how in the upcoming post.
Also, as a matter of game theory: I currently think it’s a bit dangerous to have people record in public whether they have done something that’s currently quite illegal. For the most part, people will tend to say “no” if they haven’t, which means answers of “no comment” are evidence of “yes”. Because of this, I’m implementing a strategy of answering “no comment” along with this explanation to illustrate both that I say “no comment” regardless of the true answer, and also why.
It’s illegal to take most drugs in most jurisdictions. It’s not illegal to travel to a location where it’s legal to consume then and then consume them in that jurisdiction.
Drug legality also differs a lot in different countries. Germany for example has at the moment legal 1PLSD which is an LSD analgoue that likely gets processed the same way in the brain (there’s an additional group on it that the body likely removes before it has effects).
In cases where it’s useful to communicate knowledge gained from drug experiments it might be worthwhile to create the plausible impression that the experiment was done in a jurisdiction where it’s legal.
It sounds like you’re basically saying “all will be explained in my upcoming post”. Fair enough. I look forward to reading it. (This ordering is very much not ideal, imo, but that happens sometimes.)
Re: how this “kensho” state was achieved, and whether it was drugs or not:
You are, of course, right that it’s imprudent to admit to illegal drug use on a public Internet forum. Your policy of a “no comment” response, if asked directly, is a sensible one. (It also sounds like it was not drugs in this case, because then—presumably—you would not be planning to tell us about it in your upcoming post.)
But, in the counterfactual case where…
… you did achieve your not-really-enlightenment-but-something-related state via drug use, and then…
… made a blog post about having achieved this state, without revealing how…
… because it would be imprudent to admit to drug use…
… then, in that scenario, you would have done this, knowing in advance that you would refuse to reveal this crucial fact, if asked.
(“Crucial”, I say, because let’s face it—“I dropped acid and had a mystical experience and uncovered Truths, which, alas, it is nigh-impossible to put into words” is… not, shall we say, an exceedingly interesting story, nor a particularly novel one.)
In that scenario, writing this post would, of course, be quite unethical!
Anyhow, it sounds like my concern doesn’t apply here, which is gratifying.
I’m betting that this is what he plans on explaining in the next post, where this post is a precursor to explain why it’s difficult to convey.
Perhaps. If so, I certainly look forward to reading that future post.
However, I will say that before one begins to lay out an elaborate explanation of why something is hard to explain, one might perhaps begin by offering at least a taste of just why, exactly, anyone might be interested in having that thing explained at all.
An analogy: suppose I have invented a widget. Well, so I claim, anyway, having shown up in your office (you’re an investor, to whom I propose to license my invention). Upon entering, I immediately launch into a long, elaborate explanation of the fact that my widget is very difficult to manufacture—almost impossible, really. It’s quite a herculean effort, just making the thing! Yes, producing even one of these widgets is an ordeal worthy of song and story, because the process of its creation is long and arduous and complex…
Are you not liable to interrupt my tale, by saying “Yes, yes, but what is it? Do you have one? What the heck are we even talking about, here? Show it to me!”?
Coming back from the analogy, what I’d very much like to have seen first (and would still like to see) is a post along the lines of: “Observe, as I demonstrate unusual and impressive feats of thinking / writing / action! Are you not impressed? Yes, of course you are… and how did I accomplish these things? Enlightenment! And what is this ‘enlightenment’? Ah, now that’s a tricky one… settle in, because this’ll take a while…”
… or something. You know?
Your wish totally makes sense. And I might have tried harder at that. This is a teaching principle I understand well, I promise.
But… the motivation problem is subject to the same puzzle I’m outlining in the OP.
This is why so many meditation teachers and enlightenment gurus end up making claims about “lower your stress” and “improve health” and “increase concentration” and “better love-making” and “healthier relationships” and so on. Some of it is trying to point at things that actually can come from this, and some of it is people who have no clue what they’re talking about copying the claims they’ve heard others make.
But if I’m being honest, the motivation is already in you, and I don’t really care that much what your conscious mind has to think about it. I’d prefer to ease your passage as you keep doing you, but if I literally cannot get your conscious mind to understand, then oh well!
The thing I do hope is for your conscious mind to track that there is a kind of insight that it has trouble understanding the need for. “Well, why would I care about that?” Exactly.
With all that said, I really did try to give your conscious mind something to hold onto — but it looks like it didn’t stick at all, which is unsurprising given, um, everything I’ve been saying:
I started writing a comment responding to things you said, there.
Then I noticed that nothing in your comment was actually responsive to my comment. Hm.
I asked you to demonstrate what you know, or understand, or can do, now that you’ve achieved whatever-it-is. But you responded by talking about what amazing (but, of course, hard to verbalize) things would happen for me if I were to achieve this thing (or, worse, not even what would happen as a result of achieving the thing, but reasons I allegedly already want this thing—without knowing it).
That seems like a non sequitur, and is definitely not at all a response to what I asked.
It would be as if—to return to the widgets analogy—I asked you to demonstrate your amazing widget, and you started telling me how great it would be if I made a widget of my own. I hope you can see how that might not quite be the most satisfying response.
Edit: This part…
seems ripe for examples. You need not even tell us what amazing new insights you have gained; at least enumerate a few of these previously-confusing things which are now laid bare to you (and, preferably, tell us why they matter).
This doesn’t strike me as much of a non-sequitur. At least the first part. Assuming that the benefits of the thing Val is describing are similarly for different people, then you getting benefit X after learning it, has a strong implication that Val got benefit X after learning it, and both are direct evidence for “you will benefit if you put effort into learning/engaging-with this”.
You might still have found his arguments weak, but at least the specific thing you describe doesn’t seem to fall into the specific category of “non-sequitur”.
Hm, are you saying that this part
… was intended to be read as a list of benefits that I would get, and Valentine has gotten, from his achievement?
I did not read it that way, but if your reading was the intended one, then indeed, that is the sort of thing I meant.
Valentine, could you clarify?
Ah, no. I was just responding to these two paragraphs in isolation.
While obviously context is always important, this comment of mine should be parsable without any knowledge of Val’s original comment.
(And as such might also not be super valuable. The thing that generated this comment was more the part of my brain that goes through a proof/argument step-by-step and analyses its internal logic, and not the part of my brain that was trying to parse the larger context of the conversation.)
Then, I confess I am having trouble grasping your point.
You don’t think that “let me tell what you will get from this” is a non-sequitur in response to “show me what you got from this”? I think it is… but, perhaps reasonable people can differ on this. It is, in any case, a very unsatisfying sort of response, even if it isn’t literally a non sequitur.
(There is also the fact that even as I try to think of just what specific benefits Valentine has made reference to, I find it hard to pin them down. Perhaps someone might make a concise list?)
Edit: It seems like you edited your comment shortly after posting, to add the second paragraph? Or did I just miss it the first time I read? Anyway, I retract the “trouble grasping your point”, in light of that, but the rest of my comment stands.
Ah, yes. I edited. I usually omit the explicit “edit” if I do it less than five minutes after posting, but I guess this time that was the wrong call.
Look, that’s the question the entire post was attempting to answer, including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words. You can claim that you still haven’t understood but I think it’s uncharitable to claim that there was no attempt to explain.
I do feel the post is not really trying to explain why you should care to achieve enlightenment. It highlights that it is difficult to talk about enlightenment, and that it is difficult to point at the benefits elightenment might provide, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually trying to give me evidence about the benefits of enlightenment, and that’s the part I am actually most skeptical about.
I believe we have many deep epistemic blindspots, and deep ontological frameworks we cannot easily break out off. I expect there are methods to expand your ontology in various ways, and this seems like one of them, but it is competing with hundreds of other ways I could expand my horizon (for example by studying math, or coming to deeply understand poetry, or going through intense social experiences like circling, or participating in intense religious experiences). Mindspace is deep and wide, and while I believe that you’ve had many internal experiences I haven’t, just highlighting that you had them and I have not does not make me want to spend dozens of hours trying to achieve yours. It’s not completely unconvincing, but a pretty weak sell overall.
My disagreement here is similar to the many discussions I’ve had with people about taking LSD. They usually go “the experience of LSD is really hard to describe, and I don’t think you can get it any other way, and it’s a totally novel way of experiencing the world” and my usual response is “cool, but does that now actually help you achieve your goals?”, and sometimes when I dig into it like that, the response is “yes”, but often the response is “not really” and sometimes “in retrospect yes, but I don’t know whether taking it might have changed my values and that past me might not be happy about the changes”.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You’re right, I wasn’t trying to sell enlightenment. It really doesn’t matter if I sell y’all on it. Promise.
I do think there’s something to Looking, though. And I think it’s interwoven into the core of a lot of rationality. And the failure to learn to Look, instead replacing it with a particular kind of intellectual activity that simulates some of the apparent effects of having Looked, seems to me to be one of the hulking reasons why the sense that more is possible is so hard to actualize.
You are in fact doing a beautiful job of being you. That’s very you. You make sense.
And also, I’m laughing.
(In good faith. Promise.)
Who said there was no attempt to explain…? I think you might be reading things into my comment that aren’t there…
(That said, I don’t actually see where in the post my questions are, in fact, answered. Do you?)
I’m sure you can see how that might be, shall we say, rather unsatisfying.
Man, alright, so I’m going to be honest here. I feel like you’re being a huge asshole in this conversation, and I’m feeling a strong desire to defend Val from what feels to me like an attack on your part. I expect admitting this will give you plenty of ammunition to continue attacking if that’s what you want to do, but I really wish you wouldn’t.
I don’t want to win this conversation. I think Val is explaining something important and if someone gets something out of his explanation that would make me very happy. It’s looking unlikely that you’re going to be one of those people, and that’s okay, but it also feels to me like you’re implicitly accusing Val of having violated norms—that’s the attack I want to defend against—and if that’s how you’re feeling I wish you’d be more explicit about it.
Now you are definitely reading things into my comments that aren’t there.
I would certainly like to get something out of Valentine’s explanations. It seems to me that I have been trying to do exactly that. That’s all.
It does seem like a somewhat common pattern that your comments get interpreted as hostile. I think this is both a reason to extend you more charitability, since I don’t actually think those worries have ever been clearly demonstrated to be true, but is also a sign of something more general going wrong that I don’t really know how to deal with.
(Happy to continue this thread via private chat or in meta. I am hesitant to have even more meta on this post.)
Said, you do not get to decide what people read into your words. What you’ve communicated to others is what they get from your communication, no more and no less. There’s a tight analogy to teaching: you do not get to decide what you teach to your students. What you’ve taught is what they’ve learned, no more and no less.
I believe that you’re trying to get something out of Val’s explanations, but there are other things you’re doing in the course of that trying and they’re really rubbing me the wrong way. That is at least as much a fact about me as about you, but I am a real human having a real experience of being pissed at you, and you don’t get to define that experience away just because you don’t see anything in your comments worth getting pissed about.
[Moderation Note]
Note that at this point the thread doesn’t seem super valuable to continue to me, and that I might lock it down in case it continues in a way that I expect to go badly. Discussion via PM or in Meta is welcome.
I love Qiaochu’s comment for its sincerity, good faith, and articulation.
Good faith strikes me as a weird descriptor. Do appreciate the sincerity and articulation. (I do think it’s important that Qiaochu doesn’t undeservedly get the label of “good faith”, in particular in a conversation in which he is suggesting someone is lacking exactly that attribute)
edit: replaced “accusing” with “suggesting” for less combatative framing
I also think good faith is a weird descriptor of what I said.