I agree this conversational format may not work, but I’m finding it helpful for now. I’m gonna keep saying piecemeal bits I care about. (In a more proper conversation, I’d take more care to try to paraphrase you first etc. But I’m liking you sharing the bits you’re sharing.)
I agree one can participate in a tradition of deep know-how (even as a teacher) without being I-it about it. Good cultures are typically like this IMO. I was complaining about “solving psychology,” not about “drawing on a tradition.” Chapter three of CS Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man” points to the difference, if you’ve read it or feel like reading it. A passage:
In older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao—a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen.… They initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which overarched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching new birds to fly. This will be changed. Values are now mere natural phenomena.… It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered.
(If you somehow feel like investing time in this subpoint, the place I’m coming from here will likely make more sense if you read “The abolition of man”; also happy to try by talking here.)
I would ideally like a tradition where pieces can be individually tested and thrown out, but where it’s still a tradition, not an I-it.
...
I agree there are many known psychological interventions out there of large effect-size and unclear sign, most clearly recreational drugs, but also including e.g. AoA and bodywork. It is at this point a clearly bad idea to go “I’ll go hunting for things with large effects on psychology of unknown sorts, try lots of them, gather people who can try lots of them in dialog, and call this good.”
What’s needed instead is way to tell what’s good.
The rationality community’s traditional answer to “is X psychological intervention good?” is “does it help you form more accurate beliefs” (epistemic rationality) and “does it help you hit your stated / verbally endorsed goals” (instrumental rationality). I still think this notion of “good” helped build stuff that was, in fact, good mostly. (But limited in e.g. not helping the person you mention who doesn’t know how to cry, and in setting people up for burnout, and many similar gaps).
Our new stuff at aCFAR is mostly a small but significant dif from the traditional rationality definition. We keep “form true beliefs” as a goal. But in place of the “instrumental rationality” part: instead of working to aid “agency” and verbally endorsed goals (and the ego who verbally endorses those goals), we’re working with:
pride (with what elicits small sparks/flashes of “I like this,” “this makes me feel warm and empowered and like I like what I stand for,” “this is part of the lineage that made me possible, and that I choose to tend”)
the sources of morale or energy to do stuff
the Self that Eugene Gendlin discusses in Focusing (which is the same as the Self of IFS).
These are all attempts to empower something like “be a cohesive self, who doesn’t glide past tiny notes of discord but instead tunes into all the data coming in, and is in full contact with the outside world, including all known science.”
(I expect to be more articulately coherent on this in about six months.)
ETA: I want one self encountering the outside world full-on. My objection to “solve psychology” as an angle on things, is that it divides me in two: a “psychologist” part, and a “have psychology done to me” part.
(I imagine you, Richard, agree that the goal is like this, but then think the route to this goal is more like “do psychology” / “have psychology done to you”?)
I agree this conversational format may not work, but I’m finding it helpful for now. I’m gonna keep saying piecemeal bits I care about. (In a more proper conversation, I’d take more care to try to paraphrase you first etc. But I’m liking you sharing the bits you’re sharing.)
I agree one can participate in a tradition of deep know-how (even as a teacher) without being I-it about it. Good cultures are typically like this IMO. I was complaining about “solving psychology,” not about “drawing on a tradition.” Chapter three of CS Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man” points to the difference, if you’ve read it or feel like reading it. A passage:
(If you somehow feel like investing time in this subpoint, the place I’m coming from here will likely make more sense if you read “The abolition of man”; also happy to try by talking here.)
I would ideally like a tradition where pieces can be individually tested and thrown out, but where it’s still a tradition, not an I-it.
...
I agree there are many known psychological interventions out there of large effect-size and unclear sign, most clearly recreational drugs, but also including e.g. AoA and bodywork. It is at this point a clearly bad idea to go “I’ll go hunting for things with large effects on psychology of unknown sorts, try lots of them, gather people who can try lots of them in dialog, and call this good.”
What’s needed instead is way to tell what’s good.
The rationality community’s traditional answer to “is X psychological intervention good?” is “does it help you form more accurate beliefs” (epistemic rationality) and “does it help you hit your stated / verbally endorsed goals” (instrumental rationality). I still think this notion of “good” helped build stuff that was, in fact, good mostly. (But limited in e.g. not helping the person you mention who doesn’t know how to cry, and in setting people up for burnout, and many similar gaps).
Our new stuff at aCFAR is mostly a small but significant dif from the traditional rationality definition. We keep “form true beliefs” as a goal. But in place of the “instrumental rationality” part: instead of working to aid “agency” and verbally endorsed goals (and the ego who verbally endorses those goals), we’re working with:
pride (with what elicits small sparks/flashes of “I like this,” “this makes me feel warm and empowered and like I like what I stand for,” “this is part of the lineage that made me possible, and that I choose to tend”)
the sources of morale or energy to do stuff
the Self that Eugene Gendlin discusses in Focusing (which is the same as the Self of IFS).
These are all attempts to empower something like “be a cohesive self, who doesn’t glide past tiny notes of discord but instead tunes into all the data coming in, and is in full contact with the outside world, including all known science.”
(I expect to be more articulately coherent on this in about six months.)
ETA: I want one self encountering the outside world full-on. My objection to “solve psychology” as an angle on things, is that it divides me in two: a “psychologist” part, and a “have psychology done to me” part.
(I imagine you, Richard, agree that the goal is like this, but then think the route to this goal is more like “do psychology” / “have psychology done to you”?)