Open Thread, Aug 29. - Sept 5. 2016

I think there's also a near/far thing going on. I can't find it now, but somewhere in the rationalist diaspora someone discussed a study showing that people will donate more to help a smaller number of injured birds. That's one reason why charity adds focus on 1 person or family's story, rather than faceless statistics.

Combining this with what you pointed out, maybe a fun place to take the discussion would be to suggest that we start with a specific one of our friends. "Exactly. Let's start with Bob. Alice next, then you. I'll volunteer to go last. After all, I wouldn't want you guys to have to suffer through the loss of all your friends, one by one. No need to thank me, it is it's own reward."

EDIT: I was thinking of scope insensitivity, but couldn't remember the name. It's not just a LW concept, but also an empirically studied bias with a Wikipedia page and everything.

However, I mis-remembered it above. It's true that I could cherry pick numbers and say that donations went down with scope in one case, but I'm guessing that's probably not statistically significant. People are probably willing to donate a little more, not less, to have an impact a hundred times as large. Perhaps there are effects from misleading vividness at a small scale, as I imply. However, on a large scale, the slope is likely largely positive, even if just barely.

Or he could use whatever pills to make his own liquid melatonin, and titrate from there.

I bought a bunch of stoppered bottles with calibrated eye droppers for the purpose. 6 bottles, 7 bucks at amazon, though that item shows no longer available.

Thanks. I haven't used liquid products much before. Anything you've noticed that's significantly different in terms of onset time, effect duration, etc?

Now I'm curious to know what it was all about...

I am not sure whether "universe is rational" is supposed to mean that (a) the universe has a relatively short description which could be understood by a mind, or that (b) the universe itself is a mind, specifically a rational one. Seems like the meaning was switched in the middle of an argument, using a sleight of hand.

Regarding the "Universe is rational"-strawman: I think the mistake which the video is trying to point out, is the mistake that a description of the universe is the universe. When it is only a description, same with anything. It is language and that is the limitation.

So for those that believe the universe is for example physics, instead of our projection, that's the flaw I think. It's simple, ask a person if gravity is real, after they respond "yes" ask them, is this not a human projection (your projection) upon the universe? What is the real universe?

What I wonder is what lesswrongers think of this strawman if it wasn't one, an actual argument towards someone (rationalist in this context) who made the statement gravity is real and not a projection of mind: "G R A V I T Y and everything else which is occurring to me in consciousness"

(b) the universe itself is a mind, specifically a rational one. Seems like the meaning was switched in the middle of an argument, using a sleight of hand.

I'm not sure what you mean with this, because "Universe is a mind" seems more of an argument then stating the opponent believes the "universe is rational" (the strawman) like "What you think is the universe is your mind projection of labels and symbols yet you're not aware of it"

In summary, my impression is of muddled thinking, and of feeling superior to the imaginary opponents.

Well. I think usually what we see in others is just a projection of our own mind. "The world is your mirror"

Actually, maybe the opponents are not imaginary -- there are many fools of various kinds out there -- it just has nothing to do with the kind of "rationality" that we use here, such as described e.g. by Stanovich.

But is there someone who can refute the argument made in the video, if you had the argument which the strawman was?

Otherwise it seems to me "Only fools would make the argument of which the strawman was targeted towards".

But "rationalism" or "rationality" in, say, the sense commonly used on LW does not in fact mean denying any of that.

But that's what you're mostly doing in your post. I will bring this up below.

The guy in the video comes across (to me at least) as smugly superior even while uttering a succession of trivialities, which doesn't do much to encourage me to watch more.

I don't think everyone shares that view, at least it's not for me. I don't know if I am contradicting myself, though. If someone was similar but in differing in opinion then me. The contradiction would then lie under if I told you the world is your mirror.

So I thought "maybe it gets more interesting later on" and skipped to 50:00. At which point he isn't bothering to make any arguments, merely preening over how he understands the world so much more deeply than rationalists, who will come and bother him with their "arguments" and "contradictions" and he can just see that they "haven't got any awareness" and trying to engage with them would be like trying to teach calculus to a dog, and that the mechanism used to brainwash suicide bombers and fundamentalists are "the exact same mechanism that very intelligent scientists use to prove their theories of space and time and whatever else". OK, then.

That's what he said, of course it's kind of harsh, but it's his way of going on these things I think, I don't know why or what's most effective but for myself I am unaffected or in the positive. That might be just because I agree.

Since I obviously wasn't enlightened enough for minute 50 of this thing, I went back to 40:00. He says it's important to connect with your emotions and not deny they're there (OK), and then he says that "rational people just assume that, well, we don't need any of that emotional stuff". OK, then. (And rational people like scientists get emotional when they argue with highly irrational people because they're attached to their rational models of the world and don't want to hear anything contrary to those models because of cognitive dissonance; they close their eyes and ears to the arational because they demonize it as irrational.)

By becoming aware of the emotions that you are suppressing, not the "feeling emotions" rationally because the reason of emotion is rational.

OK, clearly still too advanced for me. Back to 30:00. Apparently, if your "awareness" is low then you think thinking is great (OK...), you think thinking is all there is (huh?)

There is awareness of thoughts, not only thoughts, and the awareness is not a thought. That is a definition game of what is a thought, consider it being different from awareness.

Yes, you don't have a thought of a thought, you have awareness of thought. Otherwise, you're trapped in thinking and don't know that there is something else.

, you think thinking is a powerful tool for understanding reality (OK...), but as you gain in "awareness" you realise that thinking is a system of symbols, and "this gulf between the map and the territory just grows wider and wider and wider, until you see that the map is just a complete fiction, a complete illusion", and once you realise this you see "the gross limitations of thinking".

Einstein's theory of gravity isn't revealing anything deep about the world, it's just a set of sounds and symbols on paper. "That's what it literally is, except your awareness is too low to actually see that". And then he pulls an interesting move where he complains about people with "low" "awareness" getting "sucked into the content" of a theory because they don't see the "larger context".

See how he never mentions the larger context of an understanding of relativity itself? But the context of which sounds and symbols make up our "reality".

You might think he's now going to explain what the larger context is and how it should affect our understanding of relativity. Ha, ha. What a silly idea. Only someone with low awareness would expect that. What he actually does is to tell us how when rationalists criticize him they're doing it "on the level of thoughts" while he is "on the level of awareness, which is a much higher level". Bleh.

You missed the point, there was nothing said about affecting the understanding of relativity, you fell into the exact paradigm which the video said.

The larger context of the symbols and sounds on the paper. Not the theory itself according to physicists. That's the matrix.

Oh, wait, he has something resembling an actual point somewhere around 35:00. Rationalists give too much credit to logic, he says, because logic "has no teeth", because it depends on its premises and the premises are doing the real work, and if your premises are dodgy then so are your conclusions, and "most of them are very very wrong". Cool, he's going to tell us what wrong premises we have. ... Oh, no, silly me, he isn't. He just says they're very wrong but gives no specifics.

He gave the specifics right after that, rationality itself. Asking about the premises which make rationality possible.

Saying things that are true but elementary and not in fact denied by rationalists. For some of these, he actually gives some kind of justification.

It seems like you disagree on numerous points, but not being aware of it. Like Einstein's equation is simply symbols and sounds (and pretty much everything else which you give attribute to)

Saying that rationalists are wrong in various ways (giving too much weight to X, having wrong premises, ...). In every instance of this I heard (though I have not listened to the whole dreary thing) either the claim is flatly wrong, or he offers no sort of support for it, or both.

Let's say the rational mind cannot understand something, why continue to use the rational mind? Is there something else? Maybe awareness? There might be something worth pursuing there.

Now I know I am not responding to my quote of your text. Rationality is wrong because of rationality itself. It cannot be right without the right context. The context of which rationality exists. Where thinking exists. Which is "outside" the subjective experience according to you. That's the whole point. It's right under your nose if you'd bother to meditate and separate awareness from thoughts.

Saying smugly how much more "aware" he is than rationalists are, and how this puts him on a higher level than them. If there's anything actually useful there, I missed it. And now I've listened to enough of this without any sign that he has anything useful to teach me, and I'm going to go and do something else. My apologies for not sitting through all 82 minutes of it.

Well. You're capable of becoming aware as well. It's not a radical difference. :)

Oh god. This is really bad.

Someone should tell him about the straw vulcan.

The more we (lw'ers) are tied to the word "Rationality". That should happen less. If you feel personally affected by the idea that someone says this part of your identity is wrong, then maybe it's time to be more fox and less hedgehog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

I think it is worth it. You don't have to process the information and adapt it as your own. Simply give an argument against it if you're willing to teach others.

Of course I don't know if it's worth it for you, it certainly is worth it for me to ask.

Basically, everything in the universe is simply as it is, and that we humans have put a virtual reality layer over it without being aware of it. That subjective experience makes you aware of this. Meditation, enlightenment etc.

It's fine to calculate things, send people to mars and so forth, but that we shouldn't attach ourselves to it like if the universe is that way. Scientists should be aware of this, even though they can still do it and enjoy it. Going meta.

Like if you throw a ball, the ball moves in the air in a certain way. You decide to calculate everything out about the ball and figure out different laws "of the universe". In that moment you created a human projection of the ball and the universe, not what the universe really is. Your projection.

That gravity does not exist, it is only a concept we project upon the universe. Of course, it is useful for technology, science and so on.. It is language, symbols.

That was about 18 minutes into the video with my own twist to it.

Nope. Won't work.

The cheap goods can't be available to the poor, because then they'd be available to the not poor, and the government enabled rent seeking would no longer work.