Yes, thank you—this is exactly the pain-point of the LW community I anticipated this would trigger. And I think it’s a dogma—just a really deep one most of us aren’t willing to honestly confront. So thanks for bringing this up to the surface!
> “giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.” - this is “real progress” only according to the materialist and Western value system—not some fundamental “true value.” We’re just so used to this paradigm we can’t imagine stepping outside of it—it’s the water we swim in. I explored this a bit in this post
> “there is less wanting and more enjoyment now” - another assumption take for granted too much, a variant of historian’s fallacy. It’s hard to claim or even study this objectively since we don’t have access to subjective experience, especially of those that lived before us—so we tend to infer their subjective states using our values. Here I like the approach “of whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent” (Wittgenstein)
> “more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI” - nice hope—if this works out, then perhaps this will be an example of “ultimate material success” bringing “unshakable bliss and safety”—sort of materialist enlightenment, restoring the symmetry between materialism and idealism
> “lie down and die” - this is the most common misconception about Buddhism—that having no hope, no pain, no motivation, no need to change anything leads to inaction. Actually in the tradition, and also with specific people I’ve met who are high on the spiritual attainment—people without all these worries end up working more than I could ever imagine possible, and don’t seem to get tired or even sleep much. It seems paradoxical to our Western minds steeped in the idea that the only reason to move is to try to change things.
> “It is time for hope and struggle.” - that is an implicit assumption that hope and struggle are instrumentally effective for reducing chances of apocalypse. Buddhism would argue otherwise—that hope and struggle will be precisely the cause of apocalypse. Looking at the poly-crisis materialism brought us to so far, this seems plausible to me.
> “I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised.” - thanks for the suggestion—will add a TLDR in a moment
Yes, thank you—this is exactly the pain-point of the LW community I anticipated this would trigger. And I think it’s a dogma—just a really deep one most of us aren’t willing to honestly confront. So thanks for bringing this up to the surface!
> “giving up hope gives cessation of suffering—but maintaining hope can produce real progress.”
- this is “real progress” only according to the materialist and Western value system—not some fundamental “true value.” We’re just so used to this paradigm we can’t imagine stepping outside of it—it’s the water we swim in. I explored this a bit in this post
> “there is less wanting and more enjoyment now”
- another assumption take for granted too much, a variant of historian’s fallacy. It’s hard to claim or even study this objectively since we don’t have access to subjective experience, especially of those that lived before us—so we tend to infer their subjective states using our values. Here I like the approach “of whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent” (Wittgenstein)
> “more in the future if we achieve aligned AGI”
- nice hope—if this works out, then perhaps this will be an example of “ultimate material success” bringing “unshakable bliss and safety”—sort of materialist enlightenment, restoring the symmetry between materialism and idealism
> “lie down and die”
- this is the most common misconception about Buddhism—that having no hope, no pain, no motivation, no need to change anything leads to inaction. Actually in the tradition, and also with specific people I’ve met who are high on the spiritual attainment—people without all these worries end up working more than I could ever imagine possible, and don’t seem to get tired or even sleep much. It seems paradoxical to our Western minds steeped in the idea that the only reason to move is to try to change things.
> “It is time for hope and struggle.”
- that is an implicit assumption that hope and struggle are instrumentally effective for reducing chances of apocalypse. Buddhism would argue otherwise—that hope and struggle will be precisely the cause of apocalypse. Looking at the poly-crisis materialism brought us to so far, this seems plausible to me.
> “I’d like to see this better summarized and advertised.”
- thanks for the suggestion—will add a TLDR in a moment