Theism. Couldn’t keep it. In the end, it wasn’t so much that the evidence was good—it had always been good -- as that I lost the conviction that “holding out” or “staying strong” against atheism was a virtue.
Standard liberal politics, of the sort that involved designing a utopia and giving it to people who didn’t want it. I had to learn, by hearing stories, some of them terrible, that you have no choice but to respect and listen to other people, if you want to avoid hurting them in ways you really don’t want to hurt them.
I just listened to UC Berkeley’s “Physics for Future Presidents” course on iTunes U (highly recommended) and I thought, “Surely no one can take theism seriously after experiencing what it’s like to have real knowledge about the universe.”
Disagreed. My current opinion is that you can be a theist and combine that with pretty much any other knowledge. Eliezer points to Robert Aumann as an example.
For someone that has theism hardcoded into their brain and treats it as a different kind of knowledge than physics there can be virtually no visible difference in everyday life from a normal a-theist.
I think the problem is not so much the theism, but that people use it to base decisions on it.
There seems to be a common thought-pattern among intelligent theists. When they learn a lot about the physics of the Universe, they don’t think “I should only be satisfied with beliefs in things that I understand in this deep way.” Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
[...] Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
“Wonderful” I could believe, but I don’t think John Horton Conway is actually wonderful beyond comprehension. To make an analogy.
could you link some of these stories, please? I am known to entertain utopian ideas from time to time, but if utopias really do hurt people, then I’d rather believe that they hurt people.
Personal stories, from a friend, so no, there’s no place to link them. Well-meaning liberals have either hurt, or failed to help, him and people close to him.
I recommend reading Blank Slate to get a good perspective on the Utopian issues; the examples (I was born in USSR) are trivial to come by, but the book will give you a mental framework to deal with the issues.
I’m no longer a propertarian/Lockean/natural rights libertarian. Learning about rationality essentially made me feel comfortable letting go of a position that I honestly didn’t have a good argument for (and I knew it). The ev-psych stuff scared the living hell out of me (and the libertarianism* apparently).
I stopped being a theist a few years ago. That was due more to what Less Wrong people would call “traditional rationalism” than the sort often advocated here (I actually identify as closer to a traditionalist rationalist than a strict Bayesianism but I suspect that the level of disagreement is smaller than Eliezer makes it out to be). And part of this was certainly also emotional reactions to having the theodicy problem thrown in my face rather than direct logic.
One major update that occurred when I first took intro psych was realizing how profoundly irrational the default human thinking processes were. Before then, my general attitude was very close to humans as the rational animal. I’m not sure how relevant that is, since that’s saying something like “learning about biases taught me that we are biased.” I don’t know if that’s very helpful.
My political views have updated a lot on a variety of different issues. But I suspect that some of those are due to spending time with people who have those views rather than actually getting relevant evidence.
I’ve updated on how dangerous extreme theism is. It may sound strange, but this didn’t arise as much out of things like terrorism, but rather becoming more aware of how many strongly held beliefs about the nature of the world there were out there that were motivated by religion and utterly at odds with reality. This was not about evolution which even in my religious phases I understood and was annoyed at by the failure of religious compatriots to understand. Rather this has included geocentrism among the Abrahamic religions, flat-Earthism among some Islamic extremists, spontaneous generation among ultra-Orthodox Jews (no really. Not a joke. And not even microscopic spontaneous generation but spontaneous generation of mice), belief among some ultra-Orthodox Jews that the kidneys are the source of moral guidance (which they use as an argument against kidney transplants).
My three most recent major updates (last six months or so) are 1) Thinking that cryonics has a substantial success probability (although I still think it is very low). This came not from actually learning more about rationality, but rather after reading some of the stuff here going back and trying to find out more about cryonics. Learning that the ice formation problem is close to completely solved substantially changed my attitude. 2) Deciding that there’s a high chance that we’ll have space elevators before we have practical fusion power. (This is a less trivial observation than one might think since once one has a decent space elevator it becomes pretty cheap to put up solar power satelites). This is to some extent a reevaluation based primarily on time-frames given by relevant experts. 3) Deciding that there’s a substantial chance that P=NP may undecidable in ZFC. This update occurred because I was reading about how complexity results can be connected to provability of certain classes of statements in weakened forms of the Peano axioms. That makes this sound more potentially like it might be in a class of problems that have decent reasons for being undecidable.
I’m not sure how relevant that is, since that’s saying something like “learning about biases taught me that we are biased.” I don’t know if that’s very helpful.
It is!
I am repeatedly surprised about a) basic level insights that are not wide spread and b) insights that other people consider basic that I do not have c) applications of an idea i understand in an area I did not think of applying it too
To list a few:
People are biased ⇒ I am biased!
Change is possible
Understanding is possible
I am a brain in a vat.
Real life rocks :-)
Even after learning about cached thought, happy death and many others I still managed to fall into the traps of those.
So i consider it helpful to see where someone applies biases.
My political views have updated a lot on a variety of different issues. But I suspect that some of those are due to spending time with people who have those views rather than actually getting relevant evidence.
That statement in itself looks like a warning sign.
That statement in itself looks like a warning sign.
Yeah, being aware that there are biases at play doesn’t always mean I’m at all sure I’m able to correct for all of them. The problem is made more complicated by the fact that for each of the views in questions, I can point to new information leading to the updates. But I don’t know if in general that’s the actual cause of the updates.
I started to believe in the Big Bang here. I was convinced by the evidence, but as this comment indicates, not by the strongest evidence I was given; rather, it was necessary to contradict the specific reasoning I used to disbelieve the Big Bang in the first place.
Is this typical? I think it would be very helpful if, in addition to stating which opinion you have changed, you stated whether the evidence convinced you because it was strong or because it broke the chain of thought which led to your pre-change opinion.
changed political and economic views (similar to Matt).
changed views on the effects of Nutrition and activity on health (including the actions that follow from that)
changed view on the dangers of GMO (yet again)
I became aware of areas where I am very ignorant of opposing arguments, and try to counterbalance
I finally understand the criticisms about the skeptics movement
I repeatedly underestimated the amount of ignorance in the world, and got shocked when discovering that
And on the funnier side. Last week I found out that i learned a minor physics fact wrong. That was not a strongly held opinion, just a fact i never looked up again till now.
For some reason i always was convinced that the volume increase in freshly frozen water is 10x, while its actually more like 9%
As a result of reading this post, I uninstalled a 10-year old habit—drinking a cup of strong coffee every morning. Now I drink coffee only when I feel that I need a short-term boost.
A few months ago, Barooah began to wean himself from coffee. His method was precise. He made a large cup of coffee and removed 20 milliliters weekly. This went on for more than four months, until barely a sip remained in the cup. He drank it and called himself cured. Unlike his previous attempts to quit, this time there were no headaches, no extreme cravings. Still, he was tempted, and on Oct. 12 last year, while distracted at his desk, he told himself that he could probably concentrate better if he had a cup. Coffee may have been bad for his health, he thought, but perhaps it was good for his concentration.
Barooah wasn’t about to try to answer a question like this with guesswork. He had a good data set that showed how many minutes he spent each day in focused work. With this, he could do an objective analysis. Barooah made a chart with dates on the bottom and his work time along the side. Running down the middle was a big black line labeled “Stopped drinking coffee.” On the left side of the line, low spikes and narrow columns. On the right side, high spikes and thick columns. The data had delivered their verdict, and coffee lost.
This doesn’t mean you don’t get a boost, but it might be worth checking.
My experience is quite similar to what is described in the first article—no coffee leads to better concentration for me. The caffeine ‘boost’ I was talking about reduces my concentration but makes me more inclined to action—I found it useful for breaking through procrastination periods. The effect of Red Bull on me is similar but more pronounced.
The effect seems to be physical, but I don’t rule out placebo (and frankly, it’s fine with me either way.)
Very interesting. If you find time, could you elaborate on these. I am particularly interested in hearing more on the criticism of the skeptics movement.
I think it was mentioned here before.
Skeptics do a decent job of raising the sanity waterline and thats all nice and important.
I watched all of Randis U-tube videos, Penn&Teller Bullshit, Dawkins, Derren Brown and what ever else looked interesting.
But as some keep pointing out. Randi is not a scientist! He talks about stuff that should be obvious to elementary school kids.
P&T get stuff wrong on their show. (I identified 2 topics so far). And they use a style of edutainment that might make you think a bit, or move in-groups. But you dont learn more about reasoning from it.
I am not sure, but you might be able to compare it to any standard theist shoutout show. (To be fair, they generally do a decent job of representing oposing views. But might have learned some Tricks from a certain Michael Moore.)
All those skeptics push saner beliefs into the public and make it cool to have those in their respective subculture. As a fellow Rationalist i feel sometimes smug listening to them.
But telling me stuff i already know is not too effective, while i dont have any indicators if they reach a target audience where an opinion shift is really mandated.
And: skeptics are not particularly rational. (I don’t think they are even into the concept of learning more about thought processes or how science works.)
Wenn you spend your time battling idiots you might not remark, when you are wrong yourself.
Find a skeptic that will listen to your criticism of the traditional scientific method, and/or about how awesome baysianism is :-)
On a personal note: there is a distinct line of highly accidental circumstances that lead me to become involved in this particular group here. Each step involved people i learned from, and that knew more than my general surrounding. But each of those people got stuck in their personal level of thought (and field of interest respectively), and didn’t follow me any further.
Becoming an Atheist, and reading sceptics stuff was one of the steps. But i am very glad i didn’t get stuck there.
I gave a few lectures on scepticism and atheism in one of my peer groups, was highly surprised how difficult it is to bring the most basic points across, and now basically gave up on that, and concentrate on my own education.
For some reason i always was convinced that the volume increase in freshly frozen water is 10x, while its actually more like 9%
Not to hit you over the head with this, as I’ve noticed before how common it is that someone learns a random fact or two much later than they should. But, you never, say, made frozen popsicles? I mean a whole lot of havoc would get wreaked… imagine frozen pipes… water in cracks in the road...
Related to this subject, my sister was 14 before someone corrected her belief that “North” on a map corresponded to the sky above her head (which if you think about it is the intuitive interpretation when maps are placed vertically on classroom walls).
Both numbers serve as an explanation for why tubes crack. I never did any visualization about it. (Its not that uncommon that people have inconsistent beliefs.)
Iirc I read that fact in the Mickey Mouse magazine at the appropriate age, but never tried it myself.
Since reading about the memory bias I am deeply afraid to have false or corrupted memories, while also wanting to experience such an effect.
Finding minor mistakes in my knowledge on physics is similarly disturbing. The content of the example itself doesn’t really change anything about my life.
But i am left wondering how many other mistakes I carry around.
Do you have any scientific/engineering training? A habit I note that people with such training tend to develop is to do a little mental arithmetic when confronted with some new numerical ‘fact’ and do some basic sanity checking against their existing beliefs. I often find when I am reading a news story that I notice some inconsistency in the numbers presented (something as simple as percentages for supposedly mutually exclusive things adding up to more than 100 for example) that I am amazed slipped past both the writer and the editor. The fact that most journalists lack any real scientific or engineering training is probably the reason for this. This ice ‘fact’ should have been immediately obviously wrong to someone applying this habit.
It’s perfectly understandable if this is just one of those things you picked up as a child and never had any cause to examine but it is indicative of a common failing and I would suggest that as a rule developing this ‘engineering mindset’ is valuable for any aspiring rationalist regardless of whether their job involves the routine application of such habits.
I am in the finial stages of becoming a computer scientist so: ‘no’.
In school I had physics as one of the depend subjects. I don’t think I saw any actual science training anywhere in my education. But that might be due to my own ignorance.
I still do not do math as often as I should, but sometimes.
What might have contributed to sustaining the mistake is my very early knowledge on the mistakes in intuitive judging of scaling volumes.
I should really milk this mistake for systematic causes....
In school I had physics as one of the depend subjects. I don’t think I saw any actual science training anywhere in my education. But that might be due to my own ignorance.
Unfortunately this is not something that is generally taught well in high school science classes even though it would be of much more practical use to most students than what they are actually being taught. It is conveyed better in university science courses that have a strong experimental component and in engineering courses.
It might not be too surprising that i totally agree.
It CS we dont do that much experimentation. And i have some beef with the lack of teaching good ways to actually make software.
I dont think the word ‘Version control’ was ever uttered somewhere.
Additional side note:
I am deeply troubled by the fact that all of the important things in my life happened by pure accident. I am generally happy with the development of ideas i hold true and dear so far, but wouldn’t have minded some short cuts.
There is no clearcut path that has me ending up in the place I would want to be in, and I do not see anything systematic I can do about that. I don’t ‘choose’ to become a rationalist or not, instead I get sucked in by interesting articles that carry ideas i find pleasant. But it would have been equally likely that i spent the weeks reading OB/LW initially on tvtropes instead.
I recently checked on an atheist board for good recommendations on rational thought. (Considering that my path down to science started with the reasoned atheism bit) and was shocked by the lack of anything that resembled even a reasonable recommendation.
Just because you weren’t aware of any conscious reasoning behind your choices doesn’t imply that they were fully accidents. The mind manages some very important things subconsciously, especially in emotionally charged domains where explicit awareness of motivations might hurt someone else’s feelings or one’s own self-image.
Question: Which strongly held opinion did you change in a notable way, since learning more about rationality/thinking/biases?
Theism. Couldn’t keep it. In the end, it wasn’t so much that the evidence was good—it had always been good -- as that I lost the conviction that “holding out” or “staying strong” against atheism was a virtue.
Standard liberal politics, of the sort that involved designing a utopia and giving it to people who didn’t want it. I had to learn, by hearing stories, some of them terrible, that you have no choice but to respect and listen to other people, if you want to avoid hurting them in ways you really don’t want to hurt them.
I just listened to UC Berkeley’s “Physics for Future Presidents” course on iTunes U (highly recommended) and I thought, “Surely no one can take theism seriously after experiencing what it’s like to have real knowledge about the universe.”
Disagreed. My current opinion is that you can be a theist and combine that with pretty much any other knowledge. Eliezer points to Robert Aumann as an example. For someone that has theism hardcoded into their brain and treats it as a different kind of knowledge than physics there can be virtually no visible difference in everyday life from a normal a-theist. I think the problem is not so much the theism, but that people use it to base decisions on it.
oh it’s true. I know deeply religious scientists. Some of them are great scientists. Let’s not get unduly snide about this.
There seems to be a common thought-pattern among intelligent theists. When they learn a lot about the physics of the Universe, they don’t think “I should only be satisfied with beliefs in things that I understand in this deep way.” Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
“Wonderful” I could believe, but I don’t think John Horton Conway is actually wonderful beyond comprehension. To make an analogy.
If Conway used the Turing-completeness of Life to create within it a universe like our own, he would be wonderful beyond my comprehension :).
If Flatland would do, he could do it ‘naturally’ given enough scale and time. (:
could you link some of these stories, please? I am known to entertain utopian ideas from time to time, but if utopias really do hurt people, then I’d rather believe that they hurt people.
Personal stories, from a friend, so no, there’s no place to link them. Well-meaning liberals have either hurt, or failed to help, him and people close to him.
Communism is one utopia that ended in disaster, see Rummel’s Death by Government
I recommend reading Blank Slate to get a good perspective on the Utopian issues; the examples (I was born in USSR) are trivial to come by, but the book will give you a mental framework to deal with the issues.
I’m no longer a propertarian/Lockean/natural rights libertarian. Learning about rationality essentially made me feel comfortable letting go of a position that I honestly didn’t have a good argument for (and I knew it). The ev-psych stuff scared the living hell out of me (and the libertarianism* apparently).
*At least that sort of libertarianism
I stopped being a theist a few years ago. That was due more to what Less Wrong people would call “traditional rationalism” than the sort often advocated here (I actually identify as closer to a traditionalist rationalist than a strict Bayesianism but I suspect that the level of disagreement is smaller than Eliezer makes it out to be). And part of this was certainly also emotional reactions to having the theodicy problem thrown in my face rather than direct logic.
One major update that occurred when I first took intro psych was realizing how profoundly irrational the default human thinking processes were. Before then, my general attitude was very close to humans as the rational animal. I’m not sure how relevant that is, since that’s saying something like “learning about biases taught me that we are biased.” I don’t know if that’s very helpful.
My political views have updated a lot on a variety of different issues. But I suspect that some of those are due to spending time with people who have those views rather than actually getting relevant evidence.
I’ve updated on how dangerous extreme theism is. It may sound strange, but this didn’t arise as much out of things like terrorism, but rather becoming more aware of how many strongly held beliefs about the nature of the world there were out there that were motivated by religion and utterly at odds with reality. This was not about evolution which even in my religious phases I understood and was annoyed at by the failure of religious compatriots to understand. Rather this has included geocentrism among the Abrahamic religions, flat-Earthism among some Islamic extremists, spontaneous generation among ultra-Orthodox Jews (no really. Not a joke. And not even microscopic spontaneous generation but spontaneous generation of mice), belief among some ultra-Orthodox Jews that the kidneys are the source of moral guidance (which they use as an argument against kidney transplants).
My three most recent major updates (last six months or so) are 1) Thinking that cryonics has a substantial success probability (although I still think it is very low). This came not from actually learning more about rationality, but rather after reading some of the stuff here going back and trying to find out more about cryonics. Learning that the ice formation problem is close to completely solved substantially changed my attitude. 2) Deciding that there’s a high chance that we’ll have space elevators before we have practical fusion power. (This is a less trivial observation than one might think since once one has a decent space elevator it becomes pretty cheap to put up solar power satelites). This is to some extent a reevaluation based primarily on time-frames given by relevant experts. 3) Deciding that there’s a substantial chance that P=NP may undecidable in ZFC. This update occurred because I was reading about how complexity results can be connected to provability of certain classes of statements in weakened forms of the Peano axioms. That makes this sound more potentially like it might be in a class of problems that have decent reasons for being undecidable.
It is! I am repeatedly surprised about a) basic level insights that are not wide spread and b) insights that other people consider basic that I do not have c) applications of an idea i understand in an area I did not think of applying it too
To list a few: People are biased ⇒ I am biased! Change is possible Understanding is possible I am a brain in a vat. Real life rocks :-)
Even after learning about cached thought, happy death and many others I still managed to fall into the traps of those.
So i consider it helpful to see where someone applies biases.
That statement in itself looks like a warning sign.
Yeah, being aware that there are biases at play doesn’t always mean I’m at all sure I’m able to correct for all of them. The problem is made more complicated by the fact that for each of the views in questions, I can point to new information leading to the updates. But I don’t know if in general that’s the actual cause of the updates.
I started to believe in the Big Bang here. I was convinced by the evidence, but as this comment indicates, not by the strongest evidence I was given; rather, it was necessary to contradict the specific reasoning I used to disbelieve the Big Bang in the first place.
Is this typical? I think it would be very helpful if, in addition to stating which opinion you have changed, you stated whether the evidence convinced you because it was strong or because it broke the chain of thought which led to your pre-change opinion.
To answer my own question:
changed political and economic views (similar to Matt).
changed views on the effects of Nutrition and activity on health (including the actions that follow from that)
changed view on the dangers of GMO (yet again)
I became aware of areas where I am very ignorant of opposing arguments, and try to counterbalance
I finally understand the criticisms about the skeptics movement
I repeatedly underestimated the amount of ignorance in the world, and got shocked when discovering that
And on the funnier side. Last week I found out that i learned a minor physics fact wrong. That was not a strongly held opinion, just a fact i never looked up again till now. For some reason i always was convinced that the volume increase in freshly frozen water is 10x, while its actually more like 9%
As a result of reading this post, I uninstalled a 10-year old habit—drinking a cup of strong coffee every morning. Now I drink coffee only when I feel that I need a short-term boost.
Coffee and concentration experiment
Article about self-measurement
This doesn’t mean you don’t get a boost, but it might be worth checking.
My experience is quite similar to what is described in the first article—no coffee leads to better concentration for me. The caffeine ‘boost’ I was talking about reduces my concentration but makes me more inclined to action—I found it useful for breaking through procrastination periods. The effect of Red Bull on me is similar but more pronounced.
The effect seems to be physical, but I don’t rule out placebo (and frankly, it’s fine with me either way.)
Have you never made ice cubes?
Very interesting. If you find time, could you elaborate on these. I am particularly interested in hearing more on the criticism of the skeptics movement.
I think it was mentioned here before. Skeptics do a decent job of raising the sanity waterline and thats all nice and important.
I watched all of Randis U-tube videos, Penn&Teller Bullshit, Dawkins, Derren Brown and what ever else looked interesting. But as some keep pointing out. Randi is not a scientist! He talks about stuff that should be obvious to elementary school kids. P&T get stuff wrong on their show. (I identified 2 topics so far). And they use a style of edutainment that might make you think a bit, or move in-groups. But you dont learn more about reasoning from it. I am not sure, but you might be able to compare it to any standard theist shoutout show. (To be fair, they generally do a decent job of representing oposing views. But might have learned some Tricks from a certain Michael Moore.)
All those skeptics push saner beliefs into the public and make it cool to have those in their respective subculture. As a fellow Rationalist i feel sometimes smug listening to them. But telling me stuff i already know is not too effective, while i dont have any indicators if they reach a target audience where an opinion shift is really mandated.
And: skeptics are not particularly rational. (I don’t think they are even into the concept of learning more about thought processes or how science works.)
Wenn you spend your time battling idiots you might not remark, when you are wrong yourself.
Find a skeptic that will listen to your criticism of the traditional scientific method, and/or about how awesome baysianism is :-)
On a personal note: there is a distinct line of highly accidental circumstances that lead me to become involved in this particular group here. Each step involved people i learned from, and that knew more than my general surrounding. But each of those people got stuck in their personal level of thought (and field of interest respectively), and didn’t follow me any further. Becoming an Atheist, and reading sceptics stuff was one of the steps. But i am very glad i didn’t get stuck there. I gave a few lectures on scepticism and atheism in one of my peer groups, was highly surprised how difficult it is to bring the most basic points across, and now basically gave up on that, and concentrate on my own education.
Not to hit you over the head with this, as I’ve noticed before how common it is that someone learns a random fact or two much later than they should. But, you never, say, made frozen popsicles? I mean a whole lot of havoc would get wreaked… imagine frozen pipes… water in cracks in the road...
Related to this subject, my sister was 14 before someone corrected her belief that “North” on a map corresponded to the sky above her head (which if you think about it is the intuitive interpretation when maps are placed vertically on classroom walls).
Both numbers serve as an explanation for why tubes crack. I never did any visualization about it. (Its not that uncommon that people have inconsistent beliefs.) Iirc I read that fact in the Mickey Mouse magazine at the appropriate age, but never tried it myself.
Since reading about the memory bias I am deeply afraid to have false or corrupted memories, while also wanting to experience such an effect. Finding minor mistakes in my knowledge on physics is similarly disturbing. The content of the example itself doesn’t really change anything about my life. But i am left wondering how many other mistakes I carry around.
Do you have any scientific/engineering training? A habit I note that people with such training tend to develop is to do a little mental arithmetic when confronted with some new numerical ‘fact’ and do some basic sanity checking against their existing beliefs. I often find when I am reading a news story that I notice some inconsistency in the numbers presented (something as simple as percentages for supposedly mutually exclusive things adding up to more than 100 for example) that I am amazed slipped past both the writer and the editor. The fact that most journalists lack any real scientific or engineering training is probably the reason for this. This ice ‘fact’ should have been immediately obviously wrong to someone applying this habit.
It’s perfectly understandable if this is just one of those things you picked up as a child and never had any cause to examine but it is indicative of a common failing and I would suggest that as a rule developing this ‘engineering mindset’ is valuable for any aspiring rationalist regardless of whether their job involves the routine application of such habits.
I am in the finial stages of becoming a computer scientist so: ‘no’.
In school I had physics as one of the depend subjects. I don’t think I saw any actual science training anywhere in my education. But that might be due to my own ignorance.
I still do not do math as often as I should, but sometimes.
What might have contributed to sustaining the mistake is my very early knowledge on the mistakes in intuitive judging of scaling volumes.
I should really milk this mistake for systematic causes....
Unfortunately this is not something that is generally taught well in high school science classes even though it would be of much more practical use to most students than what they are actually being taught. It is conveyed better in university science courses that have a strong experimental component and in engineering courses.
It might not be too surprising that i totally agree.
It CS we dont do that much experimentation. And i have some beef with the lack of teaching good ways to actually make software. I dont think the word ‘Version control’ was ever uttered somewhere.
Additional side note: I am deeply troubled by the fact that all of the important things in my life happened by pure accident. I am generally happy with the development of ideas i hold true and dear so far, but wouldn’t have minded some short cuts. There is no clearcut path that has me ending up in the place I would want to be in, and I do not see anything systematic I can do about that. I don’t ‘choose’ to become a rationalist or not, instead I get sucked in by interesting articles that carry ideas i find pleasant. But it would have been equally likely that i spent the weeks reading OB/LW initially on tvtropes instead. I recently checked on an atheist board for good recommendations on rational thought. (Considering that my path down to science started with the reasoned atheism bit) and was shocked by the lack of anything that resembled even a reasonable recommendation.
I don’t like accidental developments.
Just because you weren’t aware of any conscious reasoning behind your choices doesn’t imply that they were fully accidents. The mind manages some very important things subconsciously, especially in emotionally charged domains where explicit awareness of motivations might hurt someone else’s feelings or one’s own self-image.
Other examples