I’ve been an aspiring rationalist ever since I read the sequences a few years ago.
I also keep a deck of tarot cards on my desk.
I don’t believe there is an increased chance of drawing certain cards, or that “the universe” is telling me things. Tarot is a memetic randomness generator, a way to “unlock” insights through evocative imagery.
Many tarot practitioners would disagree with my perspective. Tarot is usually part of a package deal that includes belief in the supernatural, unorthodox takes on probability theory and general superstitiousness.
Most rationalists don’t want to be associated with this superstitious package deal. Tarot is seen as an outgroup thing that might erode your rationality or at least get you judged by your peers. This aversion is bolstered by the anti-religious sentiment that runs through the sequences.
One way to conceptualize this aversion is to use the metaphor of an epistemic immune system. An epistemic immune system is a set of habits, knowledge and perspectives that helps you avoid swallowing bullshit. Most rationalists have very strong epistemic immune systems and suffer from “memetic allergies” triggered by the aesthetics of hippiedom.
Three years ago I had severe allergic reactions whenever someone brought up things with hippie connotations. If a hippie told me they “didn’t like my energy”, I started ranting about thermodynamics. Apart from rationalism and autistic tendencies, I trace the strength of these reactions back to my deconversion from Christianity at age 23.
Growing up, I used Christianity as the basis of my morals, what I strived for, and my political ideas. When I deconverted, I realized that I’d been doing a lot of motivated reasoning, embracing a patchwork of compartmentalized religious ideas. I was ashamed of past-me and resolved to never fall back to that way of being.
Then I went to a cuddle party, got a 2-minute long hug, and started down the hippie rabbit hole. Engaging with hippiedom has changed my life, enriching me with perspectives and insights that have led to meaningful changes in how I navigate the world.
Along the way, I’ve encountered rivers of bullshit, people lured into harmful parasitic structures, psychosis-inducing “gurus” and #grindset-esque spiritual bypassing. Dodging these dangers requires a well-calibrated epistemic immune system, agency and integrity. Rationalist training helped me check all these boxes, preparing me to step into hippiedom.
This post will go into my mental models of hippiedom and things I wish I knew before jumping down the rabbit hole. Let me give you a tour.
Nuggets of gold in rivers of bullshit
Hippies tend to have a high openness to experience and willingness to experiment with psychotechnologies. All across the (rich parts?) of the world, hippies gather to experiment with new ways of being. Over time, groups of hippies invent, refine and remix psychotechnologies, iterating and learning by trial and error. Learnings are spread through the “web of hippiedom”, layered atop social media, community groups, and recurring gatherings. Hippies that spread successful psychotechnologies are rewarded with prestige and/or money. This incentivises hippies to generate new approaches and feed them back into the generative process.
This process is similar to general cultural evolution (see meme theory). What sets hippiedom apart from mainstream cultural evolution is the rapid iteration rate and acceptance of novelty, combined with the specialized focus on psychotechnology, an area that’s rather neglected in mainstream society.
The psychotechnologies generated by this empirical trial-and-error process are usually lathered in bullshit. An example would be “gong baths”, where you lie down and listen to the sound of someone beating a giant gong. The gong makes an overwhelming sound that induces a relaxing altered state of consciousness.
I don’t know how it works. There are studies available, but I haven’t taken my time to explore them. I haven’t read any studies on whether it’s relaxing to go to the beach either, but I don’t let that stop me from enjoying the immediately obvious benefits.
Unfortunately, people hosting gong baths usually make quite a few (unsubstantiated) claims about how and why they work. Reading a random sample of Facebook event descriptions, I find claims that the gongs harmonize with chakra vibrations, claims that the gong “heals autistic children”, and general claims of cleaning “toxins”.
These statements might sound something like this: “The vibrations from the Gong align all the cells in your body, which heals and cleanses you”.
I’ve interacted with hippies that talk this way. I still get a bit allergic, but I try to remind myself that these people aren’t rationalists. Hippies tend to mix ontological claims and descriptions of subjective experience without making clear distinctions in how they language things. Getting caught up in these vaguely defined ontological claims is a mistake.
It’s common to reject spiritual descriptions of subjective experience as something faked to bolster ontological claims. While this might be true in some cases, I’d argue that it’s mostly the opposite way around. Hippies aren’t lying about subjective experiences to bolster ontological claims; they are using ontological claims to explain their subjective experiences.
If someone says “I am connected to the source”, ask yourself what subjective state this ontological claim is based on, rather than trying to get the hippie to define “the source”. Most hippies in “source-connection mode” feel a deep sense of purpose and embodied flow. Instead of criticising ontology, you can get a better understanding of this flow state; what’s it like, and how to get into it.
Unfortunately, poorly thought-out models of the world stated confidently are better received than honest uncertainty. As such, many event creators spread this kind of bullshit to seem authoritative when marketing their events. Instead of rejecting practices based on the claimed ontology, try it out! Treat the ontological claims like role-playing flavour texts!
Normies going to hippie events might take the efficacy of the practices as evidence for the bullshit explanations, absorbing all manner of ideas into their world model. Given a sufficiently active epistemological immune system, you should be able to steer clear of the bad ontologies while savouring the psychotechnologies on offer.
The nature of the rewards
I want to give a sense of what kind of learnings are on offer. This is very hard since part of the learning is about perspective shifts that reveal unknown unknowns.
One such perspective shift for me is an increased awareness of non-propositional knowledge. I think of non-propositional knowledge as all kinds of insight/experience that is hard to nail down as a series of propositions. This includes things like how to deadlift, the sensation of holding a rock in your hand, the resolve that gets one to finally quit Reddit, and similar.
Non-propositional awareness has made me a better programmer, helped me understand how my emotions impact my reasoning, and given me tools for controlling my future behaviour and mindset through things like ritual and art.
Another change is an increased awareness of my own body. Both my emotional state and my health are much more available to me, helping me catch downward spirals early, and make sure I get my needs met. This increased awareness helps me function more effectively while taking better care of myself.
Via negativa
Most advice out there is about what to do. What specific practice to try, or what you might experience. Each person’s journey is different, with different dangers and different rewards. Harkening to Taleb, I’ll share some general heuristics and advice on what to avoid doing.
Advice 1. Avoid gurus
Avoid gurus. Try to find groups led by down-to-earth people. Once prestige gets connected to “how spiritual you are”, people will push themselves to become more spiritual. Pushing yourself is a great way to mess yourself up, by overstepping your boundaries instead of listening to your needs.
There are egalitarian co-creative contexts that will be happy to embrace you, search for “[my region] burning community”.
Advice 2. Start with things that are unlikely to be harmful
Before building discernment, start with things that are unlikely to be harmful. Do yoga rather than squeeze burning hot eye drops into your eyes. Go to a cuddle party (with consent practices listed in the event description) rather than jumping into a tantra weekend.
What’s dangerous is highly individual. Be mindful of your comfort zone, past history and traumas, and pick something that’s unlikely to damage you. Over time, your comfort zone will expand. You have time, expand gradually.
Advice 3. Be mindful of innovation risks
If something has been tried by thousands of people with little harm, there is a good chance you will gain from it without being harmed. Whenever you try something new, be aware that it might be risky. And if something has a history of harm, be double mindful.
Advice 4. Ignore the ontological claims (with one caveat)
Ignore the bullshit explanations and focus on the practices themselves when evaluating if something is good for you. It’s easy to get angry when people say things that conflict with your worldview. Don’t let this anger get in the way.
One important caveat is that the ontological claims might be a fundamental part of the practice, especially in traditional contexts. Embracing a traditional practice while rejecting its ontology might give you a different result compared to if you engage with “the package deal”. This can be further complicated by engaging in a practice that’s based on another cultural context.
If you try out practices ripped from their cultural context, without sharing the ontological beliefs of the traditional practitioners, you run much of the same risks as when trying out brand new practices.
Hence it might make sense to opt for things that have been done by many people who share your cultural background. If the practice involves ontological aspects (such as keeping attention “on your third eye”, consider playing along rather than skipping out on principle. If you’re uncomfortable with this (slippery slope?) I recommend avoiding these kinds of practices. Instead, pick a practice where the ontological claims are less integrated.
Advice 5. Try different things
Different strokes for different kinds. It’s hard to tell what you personally need. I suggest trying out various things, and exploring until you find something that clicks for you.
Advice 6. Get someone(s) to talk to
Find people you trust to listen to you and give you feedback. Psychologists, mentors, friends, or all of the above. Having external feedback is vital since it allows you to course-correct. If you can’t get peer review, you risk slowly sliding into unhealthy territory.
Advice 7. Some words on the different kinds of crowds you can find yourself in
I don’t think this advice is needed, but I want to mention that scams are prevalent in certain hippie circles. Distilled water meets multi-level marketing, buying crystals for purification, engaging in recurring expensive courses to fix things that ain’t broke.
In general, you can divide hippies into two camps. One of the camps is pre-modern, consisting of people with ad-hoc worldviews derived from their peer groups. These people have never prioritized forming a coherent, non-compartmentalized worldview.
The other camp is post-/meta-modern. These people usually have degrees from higher education, are (former) engineers, or have some philosophical inclinations. These people are moving beyond a formalized coherent worldview (rejecting logical positivism). These people tend to be more aware and are less prone to falling into bad situations.
In reality, this dichotomy is more of a spectrum. The groups tend to overlap and intermix. But it’s a nifty mental model for evaluating the social contexts you find yourself in. Please note that I’m not judging or rejecting people with pre-modern worldviews. These people might have exceptional emotional skills, deep intuition for certain psychotechnologies, great embodied awareness, or simply a nice vibe.
A non-exhaustive list of hippie stuff you might want to explore
I want to give you some pointers for things that are out there. This will not be exhaustive, but once you start somewhere you are likely to find other hippie stuff to try out.
Cuddle parties—meet up and cuddle with strangers. A great way to get oxytocin flowing, helping you relax. If you feel repulsed by the idea—great! You have discovered an inhibition that is most likely not rational, seeing how it limits the scope of your agency.
Tantra events—increase your ability to feel pleasure and relate to other people. Social connections and well-being is important for psychological stability and productivity.
Breathwork—calming and energizing at the same time. I’ve mostly tried Wim Hof style. If you find yourself restless, unfocused or anxious; this might do the trick! You can try this out by yourself in your own bed using this video guide:
Impro theatre—Improve your ability to relate socially, come up with quick replies, and increase responsiveness and awareness of other people.
Meditation—it’s like going to the gym, but for your mind. I’ve heard good things about both Zen Meditation and vipassaña, but have tried neither (too much ontology, also vipassaña is a bit hardcore). Can recommend trying out shi-ne meditation
Burns (events akin to Burning Man) - A good place to find engineers, entrepreneurs and other high-powered people who get together to explore new ways of being.
Circling / Authentic relating—increase your social & emotional awareness. Might be triggering to some people. Important to find trauma-aware & humble leaders.
End Notes
I feel a bit like a hypocrite writing this post. I haven’t been overly safety-minded during my trip down the hippie rabbit hole. I’ve had some fairly rough experiences, that I’ve luckily grown from.
I have made sure that I have a mentor, psychologists and friends to give me feedback on my path. A big thank you to all of you for your ongoing support!
I would recommend reconsidering dismissing your intuitions as bullshit.
Care to elaborate, I’m not sure I follow?
I use the term bullshit technically, in the same way it’s presented in “On bullshit”—a statement made without regard for its truth value. I’m not sure if we use the term in the same way, which is why I’m not sure I follow.
Here’s an attempt at elaborating on what I tried to convey in the paragraph you quoted:
My instincts are shaped by my cultural and genetic heritage, amongst other factors, and I tend to put less credence to them in cases where there’s been a distribution shift. The thing you quoted was in the context of cuddling with strangers—an activity unlikely to lead to harm. I think it’s one of the safest ways to explore intimacy, given the held space, initial consent practice, outspoken non-sexual nature, and presence of a group to deter violations.
And yet, many people fear it. They feel uncomfortable, have a sense of aversion etc. I attribute this to lingering religious sentiments in one’s socialization, together with an evolved tendency to fear social repercussions. Most people are way too risk-averse in the social arena—traces from an ancestral environment where exclusion equalled death.
In general, I want to be able to trust my instincts. I actively try to update my instinctual reactions in cases where there’s been a distribution shift—such as the quoted context. De-biasing instinctual reactions seems like high-value work, given the prevalence of system 2 thinking.
Then again, there are reasons you might want to avoid cuddling with strangers—global pandemics, potential ptsd triggers etc. But if you just have an ugh reaction, try to trace it back to where it likely comes from and ask yourself if your instinct is up to date with the actual risk profile of said cuddling.
less credence is very different from ‘most likely not rational.’ We don’t know why we have the priors that we do, but many on close examination have useful things to tell us about what is likely to be harmful. I know people who report emotional harm from engaging with the sorts of communities in which cuddle parties are a thing, in ways that were fairly unsurprising.
Interesting. I’d love to hear more details if you are able to provide them—being involved in such spaces, I am keen on harm reduction. Knowing the dynamics driving the emotional damage would allow me to protect myself and others.
I totally understand if there are integrity concerns blocking you.
I think personal boundaries are useful for the same reason that gatekeeping is useful, and that intolerance is often linked to personal standards.
Why should a country have borders? Why shouldn’t you share deeply personal feelings and thoughts online? I think the reason is the same.
When two things are mixed, the result is something in-between the two. The higher force loses from the transactions, and the lower benefits. Thus, it’s only natural that we’d develop skepticism against the unfamiliar.
Your instincts protect you against parasitism and against people who are touch starved for very good reasons. Some people lack this instinct, and make me out to be a bad guy for it, demanding that I hurt myself by considering everyone to be equal.
That said, I still recommend cuddling with people who fit your personal standards (as opposed to any strangers), and warn you that the stronger your self-protective instincts are, the more you will isolate yourself from what’s enjoyable in life. The trick is finding an environment in which you can be innocent and naive and let your guard down and relax, without being taken advantage of immediately. I believe that such places exist, but I also believe that they’re gatekept or isolated to some degree. Friend-groups are arguably such a thing.
It’s just like if you find a beach which isn’t filled with people or glass and plastic, then it’s likely a private beach. Innocent people and untouched natural resources share the same principles. Finding a lake which hasn’t been overfished is the same as finding a person who hasn’t been scammed to the point that they’re skeptical of marketing.
I just wrote this piece, which is very related to this discussion: Compensating for life biases
Regarding the stuff about ontology, I think a good way to understand it is that most people who are into hippie/woo stuff aren’t especially truth seeking and so don’t have mental models that are oriented towards predicting reality. Instead their models are for effecting desirable outcomes. For example, we know there’s no such thing as qi, but your brain is pretty happy to give you the experience of energy moving around your body if you ask, and you can be taught how to use that sensation of moving energy to do things like relax muscles. And there probably is some real thing happening that explains the perception of qi, like activation of nerves that you can feel if you learn to pay attention to the signals coming into your brain, but that’s not as evocative a model that helps you practice with it to relax muscles.
I tend to think of it like the way we have less and more accurate models of physics, and use different models in different situations as appropriate. Any model can be useful; you just have to not forget the bounds of its utility and the limits of what it can accurately explain.
Thanks for sharing your take—I agree with the core of what you say, and appreciate getting your wording.
One thing I react a bit to is the term “truth seeking”—can you specify what you mean when you use this phrase? Maybe taboo “truth” :)
Asking because I think your answer might touch upon something that is at the edge of my reasoning, and I would be delighted to hear your take. In my question, I am trying to take a middle road between providing too little direction (annoying vagueness) and too much direction (anchoring)
By truth seeking I mean something like trying to make accurate predictions.
Tarot cards are great, as they allow you to bypass some of the biases that you’d have if you were to talk with ourself about that subject.
The self-protection instinct in circles like this is exaggerated. If something helps or works, why does it also have to be objectively correct? By placing too many limitations, you lock yourself out of advantages.
We don’t need to subscribe entirely to anything, it’s fine to cherrypick advantages from all facets of life, and to overload yourself with multiple rulesets so that you can switch to the one which fits the context at hand the best.
Much of the “bullshit” is true from a subjective perspective like you say. They may “lie” to you because mystifying the process makes the placebo stronger, and because they enjoy life better when there’s a sense of mystery in it.
In this text, I feel like there’s a tendency to evaluate external things objectively as good or bad (or correct or wrong), or a felt responsibility to do so. But this very tendency is what makes judgement difficult. If you limit yourself to what you can rationalize to others, then you don’t trust yourself enough. And if somebody can’t differentiate between valuable insights and bullshit, then they likely won’t recognize this post of yours as being more correct than the words of the next guru they meet.
I guess what I don’t like is how bigger and bigger portions of online content are disclaimers, ways of abdicating responsibility, warnings, and explanations aimed at people who are likely to be skeptical of you.
LW posts (this one included) tend to contain more warnings about what to avoid than recommendations of what one should do, and rational people already limit themselves plently with rules as is, which is why they could benefit from these spiritual practices to begin with. But nonetheless, I don’t feel much more free to share my thoughts on LW than I do in Christian communities. Both immune systems will filter me if I don’t use enough buzzwords, or if I don’t apologize and seem humble enough.
That all said, I do agree with basically everything you’re written!
Hard to tell whether my “keeping at a distance” is a helpful contingency or a lingering baseless aversion. Maybe a bit of both. I also might have exaggerated a bit in order to signal group alignment—with the disclaimers being a kind of honey to make it an easier pill to swallow.
Thanks for your reflections.
As in “a distance from irrationality”? I think that many rationalists go for general correctness, avoiding overfitting into specifics. But I think this merely means that they will never fit into any specific context perfectly well. With compartmentalization, or some sort of try-catch around hippie practices, I think it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too. I think that one can have more than one model of reality, and run experiments every now and then, reverting to the main branch with new knowledge after the experiment is over.
I think you’ve signaled group alignment, but I won’t deny that it feels necessary. My problem is with this necessity, or more exactly the underlying collective mentality which causes it.
Some people reject religion on the fact that Earth is more than 6000 years old, but this would be a poor critique of religion, since the main benefits of religion are different (defense against nihilism and the fear of death, as well as shared values and practices which defend against common pitfalls of human nature). Any proper criticism of religion oughts to be on a higher level than “Fossil records!”.
But if you ask me, highly intelligent people are just as naive in their dismissal of spiritual practices. It means little that the explanation is bullshit when the people doing these practices experience improved mental health as a result.
Objectively speaking, if pure rationalism was the way to go, darwinism would have selected for it a little harder.
Forgive me for ranting a bit!
I mostly agree, especially re shifting ontologies and the try-catch metaphor.
I agree religion provides meaning for many, but I don’t believe it’s necessary to combat nihilism. I don’t know if you intended to convey this, but in case someone is interested, I can heavily recommend the work of David Chapman, especially “meaningness”. It has helped me reorient in regard to nihilism.
Also, our current context is very different from the one we evolved in—Darwinian selection occurred in a different context and is (for a bunch of other reasons) not a good indicator of how to live a good life.
I do agree with your other points and like the direction you are pointing at—pragmatic metaphysics is one of my recent interests that has yet to make an appearance in my writing.
It’s not necessary to combat nihilism, I agree. It was just an example of a common shallow argument, which is often said with confidence despite correlating negatively with competence on the subject.
I personally think that meaninglessness is psychological rather than philosophical, and that it reveals a lack of engagement. In other words, you can feel like your life is meaningful independent of your belief about the objective meaning of life.
I agree that the context is different, but if you ask me, the psychological knowledge of LW is lacking. Highly intelligent people turn more logical, and it almost always results in them identifying with their own intelligence and forgetting that they’re animals. They neglect their needs, feeling like they’re above them, or like they’re too intelligent to have irrational needs. The result is bad mental health in intelligent people, and the world history of philosophy is basically just failed attempts at solving psychological problems through math and logic.
It takes very little to make a human happy, and fighting with oneself is certainly not the best way. Killing desires, killing ones ego, destroying ones biases, killing ones emotions. These are all religious, philosophical and rational methods of being a “more correct person”. Doesn’t this border on self-hatred and self-mutilation? I understand if this is self-sacrifice for scientific advancement, but people often try to solve this problem rationally, not realizing that excess rationality is the cause.
What if the idea that life is a problem to be solved is a symptom of bad mental health in itself? Just like a perfectionist belive that the solution to their problem is becoming more perfect, rather than getting rid of the perfectionism. Then excess rationalism would be a symptom rather than a solution, and effectively trap intelligent people in a life of unhappiness
I like the description of hippies as people who iterate really fast on psychological practices!
So, “move fast and break things”, but with your own mind?
Yeah, it feels like an accurate and succinct description of what hippies are (anecdote: my grandfather was at Woodstock and he’s pretty cool). Not saying I endorse it, but there are certainly some good aspects.
I’m not sure and it would be interesting to find out if being a hippy seriously messes up a fraction of people who try it and we just don’t hear about it due to selection bias. My guess is that this happens, especially with drugs.
I find quite amusing for this post to have been published the same day as this smbc.
Truly shocking. I haven’t been on here since I read the sequences, just a few minutes ago searched for ’how to see most recent posts on LessWrong”, saw this, and read something that very nearly perfectly expresses my experiences navigating woo from a rationalist perspective.
I’ve never tried posting here before, let’s see what happens when I punch the “submit” button.
Happy to hear I capture your experience, makes me curious how many similar experiences are out there. Best of luck!