This essay seems perfectly clear until it reaches the phrase “It’s not enough to know about the Way and how to walk it; you need gnosis of walking.” I completely failed to understand it. I presume that “the Way” means “rational thinking” and we established that “gnosis” means “personal experience” (I would say “direct experience”), so what you’re saying here is “you need direct experience of rational thinking?” What does it mean apart from just “you need to think rationally?”
The rest of essay did nothing to clarify this point and thus was mostly lost on me. Maybe it’s only supposed to make sense for those familiar with so called “metarationality” and the other links? If so, it might be okay, but I wish you said it explicitly. On the other hand, if it’s supposed to be an advertisement for “metarationality” and so forth, I’m afraid it does a very poor job. I finished the essay with no understanding of why those concepts are valuable, although it might be a reading comprehension failure on my part?
I think that’s fair. I wanted to write this in one sitting so didn’t take the time to develop the why here, only reference other places where I point at the why. I didn’t write it to be an advertisement, although to be fair literally everything anyone writes is working to spread ideas, even if only weakly. Mostly it was that this connection to the doxa/episteme/gnosis categories became clear enough to me that I wanted to express it.
This essay seems perfectly clear until it reaches the phrase “It’s not enough to know about the Way and how to walk it; you need gnosis of walking.” I completely failed to understand it. I presume that “the Way” means “rational thinking” and we established that “gnosis” means “personal experience” (I would say “direct experience”), so what you’re saying here is “you need direct experience of rational thinking?” What does it mean apart from just “you need to think rationally?”
The rest of essay did nothing to clarify this point and thus was mostly lost on me. Maybe it’s only supposed to make sense for those familiar with so called “metarationality” and the other links? If so, it might be okay, but I wish you said it explicitly. On the other hand, if it’s supposed to be an advertisement for “metarationality” and so forth, I’m afraid it does a very poor job. I finished the essay with no understanding of why those concepts are valuable, although it might be a reading comprehension failure on my part?
I think that’s fair. I wanted to write this in one sitting so didn’t take the time to develop the why here, only reference other places where I point at the why. I didn’t write it to be an advertisement, although to be fair literally everything anyone writes is working to spread ideas, even if only weakly. Mostly it was that this connection to the doxa/episteme/gnosis categories became clear enough to me that I wanted to express it.