I have taken the survey.
RainbowSpacedancer
The awakened community definitely needs more rationality and the rationality community could probably benefit from some Insight, so thank you for starting this conversation. Hopefully it’s just the first step. For anyone interested r/streamentry is a mostly woo-free, friendly community for discussing this sort of thing.
A particularly useful and traditional guideline is to wait a year and a day before claiming an attainment and completely making up your mind. This is slippery stuff sometimes, and many states and stages can easily fool someone into thinking that they are something they are not.
Do you have a teacher? I ask for two reasons. Firstly a reputable teacher will be able to provide confirmation of your attainment. Secondly what you’re describing doesn’t sound like stream entry, it sounds like A&P. There’s typically a difficult period after this which can be brutal if you’re not expecting it and it’s extremely useful to have the support of a teacher who knows the territory to guide you through it. Whatever it turns out to be it sounds like it’s reduced suffering considerably, so congratulations.
You linked to Rinzai Zen, is that the tradition in which you’ve been trained? The impression I get from your comments is that the “sudden enlightenment” paradigm is operating as a background assumption and that’s leading into conflict and unnecessary dead ends in some comment threads. The “I want cake”, “I’m giving you cake” thread is the best example of this. I think gradualism better maps onto reality, provides a better support for a daily practice and provides a better explanation of enlightenment as a concept. Gradual versus Sudden is an old debate (I’m not sure how familiar you are with it) and I don’t want to simply rehash that but I do want to point towards a few advantages that can help avoid the pitfalls I’m seeing here.
Telling people (rationalists in particular) that everything is already perfect or it doesn’t matter if they get “it” just annoys people. Gradualism provides a better framework for learning and leads to less frustration. Small steps are easier to take than a huge inferential gap. The success of The Mind Illuminated is testament to this.
Stream entry is a good example of the blurry line between sudden and gradual attainments. It’s seems like a discrete stage, you either are or you aren’t a stream enterer. Except there are many different definitions of what stream entry is and where you should place the dividing line. It’s better described as a spectrum with several significant shifts along it.
I recently attended a 10 day intensive Vipassana meditation retreat. Would a write-up of the experience be something LWers are interested in as an article for discussion?
I had minimal to moderate experience in meditation before this but now feel much more comfortable with it. I can see potential rationality relevance through,
* Discipline * Concentration * Emotion and habit regulation * Seeing reality as it is
If there is interest then I would appreciate it if someone is willing to look over a draft of the article for me as I haven’t written for LW before.
Until LessWrong 2.0 comes out, this is how I’ve been staying in touch with the Rationalist Diaspora. It took about an hour to set up and I can now see almost everything in the one place.
I’ve been using an RSS reader (I use feedly) to collate RSS feeds from these lists,
Rationist Blogs,
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/List_of_Blogs
https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalistDiaspora/
Effective Altruist Blogs,
http://www.stafforini.com/blog/effective-altruism-blogs/
Rationalist Tumblers,
http://yxoque.tumblr.com/RationalistMasterlist
And using this twitter to RSS tool for these LessWrong Twitters,
http://lesswrong.com/lw/d92/less_wrong_on_twitter/
This system is unsatisfying in a number of ways the two most obvious to me being 1) I don’t know of any way to integrate the Rationalists on Facebook into this system and 2) Upvotes from places that use them like LW or r/rational aren’t displayed. Nevertheless it is still much simpler for me to be notified of new material. If anyone has suggestions on improvements or wants to share how they follow the Diaspora that’d be most welcome.
It’s called the CART (Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking) and it’s described in this book and (PDF Warning) this paper.
If you just wanted blogs (i.e. no twitter+tumblr) the following are blogs I personally like that post frequently in rough order of how useful/insightful I have found them,
There are a few that are very infrequent but very good when they do post,
I had a very similar thought to this post. So similar in fact that I went ahead and wrote a kind of user guide for each CFAR’s techniques (though it has changed a great deal even in the last 4 months since I finished writing). I also have never been to a CFAR workshop and drew on many of the same online sources that you have. It took about a month to compile of working in my spare time. My motivation for doing so was the cost of attending a workshop (financially and time costs) were simply too high for someone in my position overseas.
I’ve printed it and only use it personally. I’ve never shared it other than with one close friend. I’m concerned about you posting this now, for the same reasons that stopped me from sharing my compilation even though I could see a great deal of benefit in it.
My thoughts for not sharing it are,
CFAR has all of this material readily available likely in a much more comprehensive and accurate format. CFAR are altruists. Smart altruists. The lack of anything like this canon suggests that they don’t think having this publicly available is a good idea. Not yet anyway. Even the workbook handed out at the workshops isn’t available.
I highly value CFAR as an organisation. I want them to be highly funded and want as many people to attend their workshops as possible. It would upset me to learn that someone had read my compilation and not attended a workshop thinking they had gotten most of the value they could.
Thanks for this podcast! I’m one of those people that primarily consume audio. Wanted to offer some encouragement, production quality definitely surpassed my expectations. Pleasure to listen to.
I’m not advocating trying for kenshō. You can’t try for it in any useful way. That’s not how it works. I honestly don’t care whether I persuade anyone of its value, because it does not matter whether you try for it. Or rather, if it does matter, it does so by making you obsessed in a way that can actually block the seeing. So, there isn’t really any good benefit to fighting with your analysis to try to persuade you of its value.
I understand where you are coming from. Efforting blocks realisation and kenshō doesn’t come from discursive thought—those are common traps. This is good advice for the experienced meditation practitioner. The practitioner that has already seen the benefit practice brings and has the momentum built up to carry them through difficult periods. Further effort and analysis blocks progress after a point.
The typical lesswronger is a beginner and needs the exact opposite advice. Kenshō needs to be advocated for because they need a reason to practice instead of doing something else. And they need to know that trying for it is useful so that they can establish the right discipline and mental habits.
The reason I visit LW is it satisfies a need for community. I’m glad to see the recent efforts at revitalisation, as a large part of the value for me generated by a single conversational locus is the social support it provides. This site has been inactive for a long time—and yet to my puzzlement I still found myself checking it regularly, despite not learning anything. I discovered that it’s because I just wanted to keep in touch with what’s going on in rationalist circles, and hang out a bit. I see myself as an aspiring rationalist, and that’s a hard thing to be alone. Spending time with people that share your goals, values, concerns and language is rejuvenating, and that’s what my mind was seeking when I had the impulse to visit here. I’m aware of the dangers of tribalism and identity and yet I find myself with a brain built for life in a tribe. It’s lonely out there. So thanks for coming back everyone, I’ll do what I can to see this community flourish.
When pushed on why Anthony Magnabosco is out interviewing people he responds with, “I like talking to people and finding out what they believe.” True enough, but disingenuous. He presents himself as a seeker of the truth and his root goal is he is out to change minds. If the obtaining the truth was your primary motivation, street interviews is an incredibly inefficient method. The interviews come off as incredibly patronising. Questions such as, “If I gave you evidence about a biblical contradiction, and I’m not saying I do, but if I did, would you change your mind?” Of course you have a contradiction up your sleeve.
Honesty and effectiveness appear to be conflicting goals in street epistemology.
There is value in the techniques taught and there are also serious concerns about the methodology, marketing, and psychological safety of the course. It’s messy to talk about because it’s simultaneously problematic and can be helpful so participants tend to come out on a particular side. I’d encourage anyone considering purchasing/supporting the course to read this review from an ex-participant or DIY the course with the techniques here.
TLDR of the review
While Finders Course advertises itself as a scientific research protocol on awakening/enlightenment, it’s more close to a wellness product sold by an online business (Willow Inc.).
It is a get-enlightened-quick scheme, that uses an appearance of science as a marketing tool, sells dubious forms of new-age spirituality (i.e. law of attraction, synchronicities), and adopt psychological conditioning in many forms to 1) attract customers 2) sell them an expensive product 3) convince them they reached some sort of spiritual awakening.
Many people come out of the course believing they have achieved some type of awakening, and while we can’t deny that possibility, the main secret ingredient of Finders Course seems to be encouraging self-delusion. Most importantly, and as I’d try to demonstrate in the rest of the review, there seems to be a deliberate intent behind Finders Course to deceive people.
All FC alumni I interacted with seem to be honest believers, that end up even volunteering their free time to support the organization, unaware that they are supporting a scam. To them I extend my compassion.
I have large PR problems when talking about rationality with others unfamiliar with it, with the Straw Vulcan being the most common trap conversation will fall into.
Are there any guides out there in the vein of the EA Pitch Wiki that could help someone avoid these traps and portray rationality in a more positive light? If not, would it be worth creating one?
So far I’ve found, how rationality can make your life more awesome, rationality for curiosity sake, rationality as winning, PR problems and the contrary rationality isn’t all that great.
Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they’ve determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it’s crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light.
Given the ease with which CFAR could publish all their material online it seems worth considering why they haven’t done so. If spreading rationality wide is indeed their goal, then why haven’t they picked this low hanging fruit yet? I’d rather not have to make any assumptions so if someone from CFAR is reading this perhaps they can answer that.
So much for the Internet-era model of “free information to be disseminated to all”. Without a deferential attitude toward the Great Rationalists of CFAR, Occam’s Razor suggests that perhaps they’re simply trying to keep the money flowing. Would it upset you if thousands of people without the resources or time to make it to a CFAR workshop had access to a self-study version of the CFAR curriculum?
Of course that would not upset me. If the CFAR curriculum remained forever available only to the few who attended their workshops that would be sad indeed. But CFAR Labs is currently working on new rationality sequences, and I don’t think the curriculum will be as inaccessible for much longer.
I want the world to be a more rational place. I want as many people as possible to have the opportunity to become more rational in the most effective way available. More than any other individual or group it seems to me that CFAR is best positioned to achieve that goal. Even if the reason is money—if that money goes towards increasing the speed at which effective rationality techniques are developed and spread worldwide then all the better.
The epub and mobi links both lead to “page not found”.
Also having problems with the links within the PDF. They are blacked out though they still function as links. Same problem with the AI to Zombies ebook I think.
Otherwise very excited to read this!
Is it easy for you to sketch what the map you’re referring to is?
Not OP, but I can describe the map he’s referring too. Jeffery Martin interviewed 1,200 enlightened individuals and found that while their reported experience was different, their descriptions of their new phenomenological experience fell into similar clusters or ‘locations’. There’s around 20-40 locations in all (he is vague about exactly how many there are) but Jeffery only talks about the first 4 because that’s where the vast majority of people spend their time and he believes talking about the later locations is dangerous. The project is a little sketchy but there’s no one else doing what he’s doing. People have noticed a resemblance between the locations and the Theravadan 4 path model but locations are typically temporary ‘states’ whereas paths are irreversable shifts.
The quick summary of the distinctive characteristics of each location are,
Location 1
Expansion of sense of self, connection to divine
Much less affected by ‘self’ thoughts
Distance from but still have positive and negative emotions
Deep peace but can be suppressed by triggered conditioning
Effects from perceptual triggers fall off quickly
Deep peace and beingness feels more real than anything previous
Trust in ‘how things are’
Personal history less relevant, memories less
Location 2
‘Self’ thoughts continue to fade
Peace increasingly harder to suppress/conditioning fades
Shift towards increasingly positive emotions, until only very positive emotions remain
Intermediate levels of perceptual triggers increasingly fade
More likely to feel that there is a correct decision or path to take when presented with choices
Higher well-being than location one
Location 3
Only single positive emotion remains
Feels like a combination of universal compassion, love, joy, …
Higher well-being than location 2
Location 4
No sense of agency
No emotions
No ‘self’ thoughts
Perceptual triggers at their bare minimum
No sense of divine or universal consciousness
Life was simply unfolding and they were watching the process happen
Memory deficits/scheduled appointments, etc.
Highest well-being reported
Great post! Some small formatting fixes that might help people searching this list.
‘Exercise’ the last section under ‘Rest’ isn’t listed in the contents.
Two of the headings have non obvious renames for anyone doing a really quick skim. ‘Expect to actually make progress’ becomes ‘Expect work to be effective’ and ‘Actually care about the task you’re doing’ becomes ‘Increase the value of your task’.
This is a great post helldago. I’ve found a lot of these useful myself and the others I’m excited to try out because I can relate a lot. A couple of other things I have found useful for resilience.
A Mental Health section in my Anki deck. There’s about 170 cards which includes things like cognitive reframes (a bad behaviour doesn’t make you a bad person, failure is useful if you use the information gained to update your plan etc.), common depression traps I might be caught in (comparison, labelling, all or nothing), stoic quotes and the like. I’ve never been able to get those mindsets to stick permanently so the periodic reminders pull me out of ruts and provide a mood boost.
Going outside when you’ve got brain fog. I think there is at least a couple of parts behind this. Sunlight seems to have an almost instant positive mood boost once the warmth hits you. Also subtle shifts in temperature and air quality can happen very gradually without my noticing and I’ll become uncomfortable and restless without realising it. The shift in climate puts my mind in a new frame.
CGP Grey follows a cycle that repeats → (40 min work − 7 min break − 40 min work − 20 min break). I think he mentions it in here somewhere but I don’t know the exact time. It seems probable that the most appropriate length and cycle for an individual should be based on their attention span and recovery.
I have taken the survey.