Comment by pb-1 on [deleted post] 2024-03-01T06:06:03.792Z

Good question! Thankyou. I mean that I cannot imagine the conversation happening successfully.

And that challenges a redefinition of success. It may be that being heard is enough, for me, to feel equipped to speak out if strings later do get applied.

And it also suggests the strong possibility that I am being defensive - that in fact those suggestions and ideas may be extremely or fairly helpful. In fact, it’s probable they will be.

Comment by PB (pb-1) on Original Seeing · 2024-02-29T00:54:20.367Z · LW · GW

Imagine explaining subjectivity to someone, a person, with only an objective sense of self. A hypothetically purely rational being.

Or, again, imagine explaining subjective intuitions to somebody who somehow supposes their subjective intuitions to only be objective reasonings.

When I became aware that others lack or are incapable of accessing or perhaps are unwilling to access these apparently normal ranges of human experience, subjective and objective, I became far more cautious to express my sentiments of quality. Indeed, I mostly stopped expressing them, because they were met with simple incomprehension.

So original seeing may be as Pirsig says a direct experience, or indeed that direct experience may simply be an inexamined presumption.

It seems to me the phenomenological subjectivity itself is the fundament. But who knows?

Comment by PB (pb-1) on What are the open problems in Human Rationality? · 2024-02-28T23:48:50.978Z · LW · GW

Thinking about one’s thinking is certainly interesting and rare, and the demonstration of such a capability in this comment is entertaining. The utility of such processes suggests that their value be ultimately directed toward benefitting other people in order for personal benefit to be derived.

For example, by sharing the very human and common difficulty with the loft bed, one thereby grounds a personal experience in the generality of human reflection, a category of general interest anchored by a particular experience.

Comment by PB (pb-1) on The 10% Improvement Problem · 2024-02-28T23:33:55.422Z · LW · GW

The answer might be as a kind of Bayesian mindfulness.

I sit down to do a job, and immediately notice in a resistance to doing the job.

On a scale of one to 10 where 10 is complete hostile avoidance of the job, and one is not particularly feeling, like doing it, would I say I am over or below 5?

Is it a “hell yes” or a “heck no”? If so then it’s a 1, 2, 9, or 10.

With more refined mindfulness, very accurate numbers become possible.

By making big circles of large guesses about probabilities, it becomes increasingly possible to draw smaller circles and make more exact guesses about probability, whilst at the same time mindfulness.