The Twin Webs of Knowledge

True, though... it was intended to be a way to sell rationalism and science to those who aren't already rationalists (as well as enforcing the rationalism of those not so certain about it), so being pornish was kinda part of the design spec. Though looking at it that way, I can understand that it might evoke negative reactions because of that.

Thank you, that's valuable advice. (Funnily enough, I originally thought that one of the problems may had been in the fact that it was too short to make an impact.)

So in your opinion, it'd have been better if it'd been something like this:

Imagine a graph showing the flow of information from people and events to you. You are at the center of it, surrounded by the brightly glowing information sources you're in direct contact with. They are surrounded by others, each progressive step making them glow less brightly, until finally they're only barely visible against the dark background. Now overlay that graph against maps showing all that is known in the sciences and the arts, and the glow of each node will push back the darkness in that field and reveal to you what is known there.

That network is mirrored by another, the network of the things you know. For as long as you don't forget the things you've learnt, you will retain some connections to the nodes you learnt them from, and of the landscapes around those. As time passes you'll retain the memory of what those landscapes were once like, though if you don't revisit them, not necessarily the way they are now. Below the highly advanced maps of the sciences and the arts are the more basic maps of all the things you mastered as a child. Those are the ones you originally branched out from, and as you expand your currently existing maps, you will branch out to many more still.

...hum. It still needs some work, but you are right - it does seem better.

That's okay - anything in particular that made you vote it down? Just the thing about finding out about your own nature, or something else as well?

Okay, glad to hear that at least somebody liked it. Thanks, you saved my day. :)

I wouldn't say "internal catastrophe", more just a long line of disappointments. To wit: finding out that when we humans profess our undying love for each other, we are actually simply deluded. The real nature of human relationships is a compromise between co-operation and defection, as evidence by human nonpaternity studies.

Or, take the example of charity and the extent to which many people give just enough money to charity to purchase moral satisfaction and no more. And the degree to which people are eager to help people like tramps who are near and immediate, but not the much more worthy cause of third world poverty. And also the extent to which people react badly to suggestions about efficient charity.

Hell, consider that most people just don't give anything to charity, and don't think that there's a problem with ordering their nice new flatscreen TV whilst the kids in Africa die of malaria. And, of course, there's an evo-psych explanation for this.

Or, to take a leaf from the book of Frank Adamek, consider the extent to which humans do not magically become super-motivated and super effective when they know that their actions determine, with non-negligible probability, the fate of the universe:

What we do have are foibles, eccentricities, and fixations. We have imperfections and disabilities, irrational modes of thought and poor calibration. We’re dragged down by fear and self-doubt and insecurities. We’re given to rash and ineffective violence, and to thinking in tribalistic, us-versus-them mindsets. We shake and we cry and we bleed, we get sick and we get disparaged and we get depressed.

In each of these cases, more self knowledge shatters our pleasant delusions about ourselves.

Now, since I am still here, I haven't had an "internal catastrophe" upon learning these things, because as PJEby says, knowing your weaknesses is the first step to overcoming them. In essence, this little comment explains both the urgent need for transhumanism, and why it is so unpopular.

And lastly, the best thing one could ever learn about human nature is that we will succeed this century in spite of our flaws. And that, I guess, is singularitarianism. Unfortunately, it is a dream which may or may not come true.

Suppose that you're just an ordinary person, with an ordinary person's personality, habits, and idiosyncrasies. Then, somehow, you come to find out that your personality, habits, and idiosyncrasies are all caused by the fact that there's not enough iron in your blood, or some of the proteins in your brain are misbehaving, and you fix the problem, causing your personality, habits, and idiosyncrasies to be erased and replaced with something else. Maybe you're happier and also more skilled as a result. But what part of you has been preserved?

I've been pleasantly surprised by the fact that every piece of knowledge I feared has turned out not to cause an internal catastrophe once I obtained it.

What did you fear?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this phrasing, but I really don't like that "once I obtained it." It would be plausible if you were saying that you feared things from afar, but once you were forced to deal with them, it turned out that you could live with them, and you could have figured that out if you'd confronted them ahead of time. But it sounds like you're saying that they only turned out to be unproblematic when you got close to them, which sounds suspicious to me.

This is true, to some extent.

We are able to make small changes to human nature, including our own nature. Just how far do you think that can be taken, though? Can a lazy person recognize that they are lazy and go on to become a millionaire?

There is no ability to change human nature as yet.

Also, the level of happiness usually can't be systematically affected.

It is probably true that learning things is unlikely to make you any happier or unhappier than you were to start with.

How generally does your statement apply?

It seems to be fairly general. Can you point to a set of news items about human nature that makes us feel better about ourselves? I can point to lots that probe human self-delusion, weakness and mechanicity.