in case it’s a form of self-defense, I’d like to warn against it.
Nope! It’s a conscious decision. I challenge myself and discover things I’ve been avoiding. (hiding from others → hiding from self). It’s a way to step into my power.
If you’re watching a movie with a group of people and you make a sound to break the immersion, you’ve been rude. It’s the same with social reality. The fear of being exposed/seen though is similar to the fear of being judged. Not looking too closely is good manners.
It’s complicated! I tend to break it in interesting ways, with people that enjoy creative reframings. I know the power/joy of narratives, and try to do this in ways that serve the group. Hard to put into words, but people who are usually “stuck” in social reality express that they are surprised over feeling safe enough to open up, and seem happy enough.
If I “see through” somebody , it’s only to compliment them. I try not noticing their flaws too much. This helps them to relax.
I almost never judge. I’ve practised nonviolent communication, creating “mental handles” for my judgements. When I start judging someone, I relate to my judgement as something occurring in me, rather than projecting it on the other person.
I also don’t think of people’s actions as good or bad. I rather try to understand why they are acting as they do. Some actions are untrained/unskillful.
At the same time, I’m very selective with who I hang out with :)
I hope you are allowing yourself to be human, to not always be correct, moral, and objective. That you allow yourself immersion in life, rather than a birds-eye-perspective which keeps you permanently disillusioned. Perhaps this is the anxiety-inducing self-consciousness you’re avoiding? If so, no problem!
I’m not improving my moral character because I think I should. I do it because I enjoy progress and challenge. Virtue is the sole good ;)
I feel generally happy and life feels meaningful. It feels more meaningful the more I learn about it.
Some of my writing is on the wilder side, exploring dominance dynamics, tantra and similar. I’m not at risk of being morally inhibited, and tend to value (virtue) ethics over inhibiting norms/morals.
But I assume you know how slatestarcodex got shut down despite having high ethical standards? The closer one is to public opinion, the less they can get away with.
I don’t see the danger. I’m open to my family and friends—no blackmail leverage. I keep away from culture war stuff, writing to an advanced audience. I am independently wealthy, enough to semi-retire. I earn money by facilitating philosophical inquiry, no boss to fire me.
At this point, I’d rather not live in fear. I’m as safe as it gets, and want to shift the overton window. Re: slatestarcodex—it seems to be going well for Scott.
P.S: It’s interesting to reflect with you, but this is getting a tad long for my taste, so I’ll try to stop at this point. If you are curious about anything and would like me to write about it, I’m open for suggestions.
I’ll stop here then, but allow me a final attempt at explaining the potential problem. If you realize the legitimacy and pros and cons of every viewpoint, it may be difficult to create or believe in your own viewpoint. The “inside-out” perspective becomes inaccessible, one is stuck in the outside-in, detached, analytical, impersonal birds-eye view. This likely makes it hard to hate others or even get angry at them. It can also make it difficult to be assertive, as every viewpoint cancels out. Everyone is right from their perspective. One becomes a mere observer. And a therapist or doctor-like relationship to another person allows for quick intimacy, but it’s not personal nor equal. A programmer and a player will experience videogames differently, the latter having a much more magical experience precisely because they lack knowledge. It’s this magic that a lot of rationalists rob from themselves through knowledge, and it applies to relationships as well.
These problem led me to change my approach. One of the changes being intentionally lowering my own self-awareness, letting system 2 do as it pleases despite its irrationality. If you’ve managed to avoid these problems and/or you live a happy life, there’s likely no issues! It’s important for me to share these insights though, as they don’t seem to exist anywhere else in the world.
Posts like yours are gold, and contain a lot of obscure/rare knowledge, so you have my full appreciation! For now I will act on my knowledge rather than collecting more of it, but I will be reading your future posts
That’s a funny coincidence! I came up with the concept independently. I will share a few thoughts here, as I don’t yet have a substack account. If I make one, I will definitely subscribe to you :)
If we generalize the problem of asking “who am i?”, perhaps we can conclude that assertions are valuable. Not discovery and doubt, but creation and affirmation.
Outside-in perspectives aren’t inherently bad, what’s bad is increasing the scale too much. Feel free to include your friends or perhaps family. But if you zoom out to the entire nation, or the entire universe, and you lose yourself. Even your friend and familities are reduced to nothingness. I wouldn’t go beyond Dunbar’s number (~150 people) myself. The more things you compare, the smaller the overlap between them. Regression to the mean means that, as you zoom further out, you destroy the particularities/uniqueness of every individual (and their values, etc). At least that’s my intuition
Nope! It’s a conscious decision. I challenge myself and discover things I’ve been avoiding. (hiding from others → hiding from self). It’s a way to step into my power.
It’s complicated! I tend to break it in interesting ways, with people that enjoy creative reframings. I know the power/joy of narratives, and try to do this in ways that serve the group. Hard to put into words, but people who are usually “stuck” in social reality express that they are surprised over feeling safe enough to open up, and seem happy enough.
I almost never judge. I’ve practised nonviolent communication, creating “mental handles” for my judgements. When I start judging someone, I relate to my judgement as something occurring in me, rather than projecting it on the other person.
I also don’t think of people’s actions as good or bad. I rather try to understand why they are acting as they do. Some actions are untrained/unskillful.
At the same time, I’m very selective with who I hang out with :)
I’m not improving my moral character because I think I should. I do it because I enjoy progress and challenge. Virtue is the sole good ;)
I feel generally happy and life feels meaningful. It feels more meaningful the more I learn about it.
Some of my writing is on the wilder side, exploring dominance dynamics, tantra and similar. I’m not at risk of being morally inhibited, and tend to value (virtue) ethics over inhibiting norms/morals.
I don’t see the danger. I’m open to my family and friends—no blackmail leverage. I keep away from culture war stuff, writing to an advanced audience. I am independently wealthy, enough to semi-retire. I earn money by facilitating philosophical inquiry, no boss to fire me.
At this point, I’d rather not live in fear. I’m as safe as it gets, and want to shift the overton window. Re: slatestarcodex—it seems to be going well for Scott.
P.S: It’s interesting to reflect with you, but this is getting a tad long for my taste, so I’ll try to stop at this point. If you are curious about anything and would like me to write about it, I’m open for suggestions.
I’ll stop here then, but allow me a final attempt at explaining the potential problem.
If you realize the legitimacy and pros and cons of every viewpoint, it may be difficult to create or believe in your own viewpoint. The “inside-out” perspective becomes inaccessible, one is stuck in the outside-in, detached, analytical, impersonal birds-eye view.
This likely makes it hard to hate others or even get angry at them. It can also make it difficult to be assertive, as every viewpoint cancels out. Everyone is right from their perspective. One becomes a mere observer.
And a therapist or doctor-like relationship to another person allows for quick intimacy, but it’s not personal nor equal. A programmer and a player will experience videogames differently, the latter having a much more magical experience precisely because they lack knowledge. It’s this magic that a lot of rationalists rob from themselves through knowledge, and it applies to relationships as well.
These problem led me to change my approach. One of the changes being intentionally lowering my own self-awareness, letting system 2 do as it pleases despite its irrationality.
If you’ve managed to avoid these problems and/or you live a happy life, there’s likely no issues!
It’s important for me to share these insights though, as they don’t seem to exist anywhere else in the world.
Posts like yours are gold, and contain a lot of obscure/rare knowledge, so you have my full appreciation! For now I will act on my knowledge rather than collecting more of it, but I will be reading your future posts
I get where you’re coming from and appreciate you “rounding off” rather than branching out :)
I wrote a post on “inside-out identity”, here: https://honestliving.substack.com/p/inside-out-identity
Also, I only post some of my writing on lesswrong, so if you’re interested, I can recommend subscribing to my substack :)
That’s a funny coincidence! I came up with the concept independently. I will share a few thoughts here, as I don’t yet have a substack account. If I make one, I will definitely subscribe to you :)
If we generalize the problem of asking “who am i?”, perhaps we can conclude that assertions are valuable. Not discovery and doubt, but creation and affirmation.
Outside-in perspectives aren’t inherently bad, what’s bad is increasing the scale too much. Feel free to include your friends or perhaps family. But if you zoom out to the entire nation, or the entire universe, and you lose yourself. Even your friend and familities are reduced to nothingness. I wouldn’t go beyond Dunbar’s number (~150 people) myself. The more things you compare, the smaller the overlap between them. Regression to the mean means that, as you zoom further out, you destroy the particularities/uniqueness of every individual (and their values, etc). At least that’s my intuition