Warning: This comment consists mostly of unreliably-remembered anecdotal evidence.
When I read the line “The best example I can think of is religious deconversion: there are a great many things you have to change about how you see the world after deconversion, even deconversion from something like deism. I sometimes wish I could have had such an experience. I can only imagine that it must feel both terrifying and exhilarating.”, my immediate emotional reaction was “No!!! You don’t want this experience!!! It’s terrifying!!! Really terrifying!!!” And I didn’t notice any exhilaration when it happened to me. Ok, there were some things that were a really big relief, but nothing I wouldn’t consider exhilarating. I guess I’ll talk about it some more...
The big, main push of my deconversion happened during exam time, in… what was it? my second year of university? Anyway, I had read Eliezer’s writings a few days (weeks? months?) ago, and had finally gotten around to realizing that yes, seriously, there is no god. At the time, I had long since gotten into the habit of treating my mind’s internal dialogue as a conversation with god. And I had grown dependent on my habit of constantly asking god for help with everything I felt insecure about. And I felt insecure about pretty much everything. Especially those university exams. I still remember the terror of sitting in that room, with the exam paper on the desk, knowing that I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been, and not having a god to ask for help to make things turn out ok anyway. Noticing myself silently mouthing the words of the prayers just out of habit, and then stopping myself when I realize that it’s pointless and probably counterproductive… and then forgetting and unconsciously starting the prayers again, and catching myself again… and that went on for… what was it? days? weeks? months? years?
Anyway, back to the topic… “propagating that belief update through the entire web of beliefs in which it is embedded” isn’t just something that you can do all at once and be done with it. If you’re updating a core belief, then you’re going to constantly find yourself noticing beliefs that need updating. And more often, you’ll find yourself not noticing things that need updating, and not finding out about them until you notice some other problem, spend a lot of time tracing back to the cause of it, and then noticing some particular belief or habit that’s still having a serious effect on your actions, but that doesn’t have any justification in your current belief system, now that the false belief is removed.
And then there’s the false positives, of things that you think are still being caused by the incompletely updated belief, but that really aren’t...
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… don’t envy people who previously took religion seriously, then realized they were wrong, and then had to go through the long, tedious, terrifying process of updating their entire belief system. Personally, I think that I would have been much better off if I had started with a healthy belief system, rather than having the experience of updating from an extremely unhealthy belief system. Or maybe not, I don’t know.
Warning: This comment consists mostly of unreliably-remembered anecdotal evidence.
When I read the line “The best example I can think of is religious deconversion: there are a great many things you have to change about how you see the world after deconversion, even deconversion from something like deism. I sometimes wish I could have had such an experience. I can only imagine that it must feel both terrifying and exhilarating.”, my immediate emotional reaction was “No!!! You don’t want this experience!!! It’s terrifying!!! Really terrifying!!!” And I didn’t notice any exhilaration when it happened to me. Ok, there were some things that were a really big relief, but nothing I wouldn’t consider exhilarating. I guess I’ll talk about it some more...
The big, main push of my deconversion happened during exam time, in… what was it? my second year of university? Anyway, I had read Eliezer’s writings a few days (weeks? months?) ago, and had finally gotten around to realizing that yes, seriously, there is no god. At the time, I had long since gotten into the habit of treating my mind’s internal dialogue as a conversation with god. And I had grown dependent on my habit of constantly asking god for help with everything I felt insecure about. And I felt insecure about pretty much everything. Especially those university exams. I still remember the terror of sitting in that room, with the exam paper on the desk, knowing that I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been, and not having a god to ask for help to make things turn out ok anyway. Noticing myself silently mouthing the words of the prayers just out of habit, and then stopping myself when I realize that it’s pointless and probably counterproductive… and then forgetting and unconsciously starting the prayers again, and catching myself again… and that went on for… what was it? days? weeks? months? years?
Anyway, back to the topic… “propagating that belief update through the entire web of beliefs in which it is embedded” isn’t just something that you can do all at once and be done with it. If you’re updating a core belief, then you’re going to constantly find yourself noticing beliefs that need updating. And more often, you’ll find yourself not noticing things that need updating, and not finding out about them until you notice some other problem, spend a lot of time tracing back to the cause of it, and then noticing some particular belief or habit that’s still having a serious effect on your actions, but that doesn’t have any justification in your current belief system, now that the false belief is removed.
And then there’s the false positives, of things that you think are still being caused by the incompletely updated belief, but that really aren’t...
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… don’t envy people who previously took religion seriously, then realized they were wrong, and then had to go through the long, tedious, terrifying process of updating their entire belief system. Personally, I think that I would have been much better off if I had started with a healthy belief system, rather than having the experience of updating from an extremely unhealthy belief system. Or maybe not, I don’t know.