This response makes it sound as though you are trying to win a fight rather than interested in understanding something.
SpectrumDT
[Question] How to deal with the sense of demotivation that comes from thinking about determinism?
[Question] Has anyone here investigated the occult community? It is curious to me that many magicians consider themselves empiricists.
There are other agents in the population than humans.
(I apologize for the late reply. I didn’t check my notifications.)
[Question] Things can be difficult in 3 ways: Painful, time-consuming, or uncontrollable. Is this reasonable to say?
[Question] What are some good Lesswrong-related accounts or hashtags on Mastodon that I should follow?
What does “Asia” refer to here? As far as I can see your excerpts mention only one country in Asia, namely China. Do these findings about “Asia” apply only to China (and countries culturally related to China, such as Japan)? Or do some of them also apply to other countries in Asia such as India?
Similarly, does “the West” mean specifically “the United States of America”, or were any other Western countries considered?
I think this is wrong in an interesting way: it’s an Industrial Age blind spot.
I think “most people in time and space” have lived in the industrial age. Am I wrong?
I found the opening parts quite interesting.
I found your usage of the terms yin and yang confusing. Skimming the Wikipedia article about it did not help. In my opinion it would help if you would lead with a link to an article that explains yin and yang in the sense you use them and in a relatively concise way. (If such an article exists. If it does not, you might want to consider writing it.)
Likewise the term God. You seem to be using it to refer to something ineffable that you cannot describe adequately. It was not obvious to me that this concept was coherent.
EDIT: The article about yin/yang that I was hoping for appears to be the one about deep atheism which you did in fact link to: https://joecarlsmith.com/2024/01/04/deep-atheism-and-ai-risk
You seem to assume as a matter of course that boredom equals suffering.
Buddhists will say that it is possible to learn to stop craving constant stimulation, such that you will no longer suffer when bored.
Buddhists will agree that you should not take damage from moving or working, but I think Buddhists will also say that you should not take damage from being idle.
(I am not a Buddhist, but I practice Buddhist-inspired meditation and other practices, and so far it taught me to take less damage from work and boredom alike.)
Originally I felt happy about these, because “mostly agreeing” is an unusually positive outcome for that opening. But these discussions are grueling. It is hard to express kindness and curiosity towards someone yelling at you for a position you explicitly disclaimed. Any one of these stories would be a success but en masse they amount to a huge tax on saying anything about veganism, which is already quite labor intensive.
The discussions could still be worth it if it changed the arguer’s mind, or at least how they approached the next argument. But I don’t get the sense that’s what happens. Neither of us have changed our minds about anything, and I think they’re just as likely to start a similar fight the next week.
May I ask what your motivation was when you decided to spend your time on the aforementioned discussions? Were you hoping to learn something or to persuade the other, or both?
It sounds to me as though the solution here is to be more cautious before spending time arguing. Sometimes (often) it is IMO wiser to cut your losses and stop replying.
What have you tried?
In my experience, meditation works wonders to improve focus. Some people might recommend exercise as a way to improve energy. (Meditation and exercise also takes time, of course.)
I don’t agree that the solution to it is to shut up and go practice more. Or rather, it may help the individual who makes that choice, but it doesn’t help the community in general. It just means that in the absence of that one person, the other people will shift their philosophizing to other topics.
A good example of evaporative cooling. :)
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs
The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?
General Relativity makes testable predictions. Conversely, whenever I hear descriptions of “nonduality”, it is not at all clear that these claims make any predictions at all. Most statements I have heard about nonduality seem like non-statements with no ramifications. But I might be wrong.
You do bring up one example of a potentially testable prediction of nonduality:
A consequence of the statement “we are all One” is that we should be able to experience this unity. If there exist people who experience this as a reality (and not just as an altered state,) they should be able to detect the thoughts and feelings of others around them.
Why merely “others around them”? If “we are all One”, I would think it should also be possible to detect the thoughts and feelings of people on the other side of the Earth.
- 21 Dec 2023 17:33 UTC; 2 points) 's comment on The Hard Work of Translation (Buddhism) by (
> The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?
Yes. Of course you do.
I was surprised to hear this from you. In other threads you have seemed rather quick to dismiss mystical claims without trying to master the underlying “language”.
Neat! Could you elaborate on what the person in question “used” the idea of the Trinity for?
Thanks.
As for a community, have you tried r/StreamEntry on Reddit? There might be some. I don’t know. I am no Finder.
Thanks! Apparently his first name is spelled Jeffery.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44019415-the-finders
Interesting! Have you written about this experience—i.e., where concentration practices stopped working? (If it’s something personal I won’t pry, but if you’ve written about it before I am very curious to read it.)
Your link has since rotted. But I found this other article which also paraphrases Batchelor’s paraphrase of the parable: https://thebuddhistcentre.com/westernbuddhistreview/does-it-float-stephen-batchelors-secular-buddhism
It references Batchelor’s book Secular Buddhism.