A loss of empathy with “regular people”. My friend, for instance, loves the opera Tosca where the ultimate plight and trial comes down to the lead soprano, Tosca, committing suicide despite certain damnation.
The rational mind (of the temperature often suggested here) might have a difficult time mirroring that sort of conundrum, however it’s been used to talk about and explore the topics of depression and sacrifice for just over a century now.
So if you take part of your job to be an educator of those still under the compulsion of strange mythology, you probably will have a hard time communicating with them if you absolve all connection to that mythology.
I believe that in general, being able to make decisions that lead to the best consequences requires being able to imagine consequences of decisions, which requires being able to imagine counterfactuals well. If you want to be able to evaluate whether a claim is true or false, you have to be able to imagine a world in which the claim is true, and another in which the claim is false.
As a result, although it’s irrational to believe in eternal damnation, a rational mind should certainly be able to empathize with someone afraid of eternal damnation. If a religious (or otherwise irrational) work of art is good, it would be irrational not to appreciate that. I think the reason you may see the opposite effect would be atheists who are afraid of admitting they felt moved by a religious work of art because it feels like an enemy argument.
That’s close, but the object of concern isn’t religious artwork but instead states of mind that are highly irrational but still compelling. Many (most?) people do a great deal of reasoning with their emotions, but rationality (justifiably) demonizes it.
Can you truly say you can communicate well with someone who is contemplating suicide and eternal damnation versus the guilt of killing the man responsible for the death of your significant other? It’s probably a situation that a rationalist would avoid and definitely a state of mind far different from one a rationalist would take.
So how do you communicate with a person who empathizes with it and relates those conundrums to personal tragedies? I feel rather incapable of communicating with a deeply religious person because we simply appreciate (rightfully or wrongfully) completely different aspects of the things we talk about. Even when we agree on something actionable, our conceptions of that action are non-overlapping. (As a disclaimer, I lost contact with a significant other in this way. It’s painful, and motivating of some of the thoughts here, but I don’t think it’s influencing my judgement such that it’s much different than my beliefs before her.)
In particular, the entire situation is not so different from Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide narrative if you want to tie it to LW canon material. Value systems can in part define admissible methods of cognition and that can manifest itself as inability to communicate.
What were the solutions suggested? Annihilation, utility function smoothing, rebellion and excommunication?
Murder, suicide, and Catholicism don’t mix. It’s supposed to be an challenging opera for a culture that truly believes in the religious moral compass. You empathize with Tosca and her decisions to damn herself. The guy she kills is rather evil.
Can you taboo “rational[ity]” and explain exactly what useful skills or mindsets you worry would be associated with decreased empathy or humaneness?
A loss of empathy with “regular people”. My friend, for instance, loves the opera Tosca where the ultimate plight and trial comes down to the lead soprano, Tosca, committing suicide despite certain damnation.
The rational mind (of the temperature often suggested here) might have a difficult time mirroring that sort of conundrum, however it’s been used to talk about and explore the topics of depression and sacrifice for just over a century now.
So if you take part of your job to be an educator of those still under the compulsion of strange mythology, you probably will have a hard time communicating with them if you absolve all connection to that mythology.
I believe that in general, being able to make decisions that lead to the best consequences requires being able to imagine consequences of decisions, which requires being able to imagine counterfactuals well. If you want to be able to evaluate whether a claim is true or false, you have to be able to imagine a world in which the claim is true, and another in which the claim is false.
As a result, although it’s irrational to believe in eternal damnation, a rational mind should certainly be able to empathize with someone afraid of eternal damnation. If a religious (or otherwise irrational) work of art is good, it would be irrational not to appreciate that. I think the reason you may see the opposite effect would be atheists who are afraid of admitting they felt moved by a religious work of art because it feels like an enemy argument.
That’s close, but the object of concern isn’t religious artwork but instead states of mind that are highly irrational but still compelling. Many (most?) people do a great deal of reasoning with their emotions, but rationality (justifiably) demonizes it.
Can you truly say you can communicate well with someone who is contemplating suicide and eternal damnation versus the guilt of killing the man responsible for the death of your significant other? It’s probably a situation that a rationalist would avoid and definitely a state of mind far different from one a rationalist would take.
So how do you communicate with a person who empathizes with it and relates those conundrums to personal tragedies? I feel rather incapable of communicating with a deeply religious person because we simply appreciate (rightfully or wrongfully) completely different aspects of the things we talk about. Even when we agree on something actionable, our conceptions of that action are non-overlapping. (As a disclaimer, I lost contact with a significant other in this way. It’s painful, and motivating of some of the thoughts here, but I don’t think it’s influencing my judgement such that it’s much different than my beliefs before her.)
In particular, the entire situation is not so different from Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide narrative if you want to tie it to LW canon material. Value systems can in part define admissible methods of cognition and that can manifest itself as inability to communicate.
What were the solutions suggested? Annihilation, utility function smoothing, rebellion and excommunication?
Tosca sounds like it has some strange theology. Surely most people who believe in Hell also believe in Absolution?
Murder, suicide, and Catholicism don’t mix. It’s supposed to be an challenging opera for a culture that truly believes in the religious moral compass. You empathize with Tosca and her decisions to damn herself. The guy she kills is rather evil.