Personally, the idea of the crisis of faith seems to me like a symptom of bad thinking. If you hold an idea so tight that you need a crisis of faith, then maybe the real problem is that you have any belief held so strongly that it takes that much effort to overcome it. Aside from human-level stupidity in-the-moment of discussion (e.g. supporting a position despite contrary evidence because it’s the side you picked at the start), a master rationalist shouldn’t need to have a crisis of faith.
I had the last thing that felt like a crisis of faith to me when I was 18. Since then I haven’t been able to hold onto any belief so tightly that any normal amount of rationality effort hasn’t been able to change my mind.
That would be all very well for master rationalists so expert that they have no beliefs that might require a crisis of faith. I don’t happen to know any of those; do you? I would be skeptical about anyone (yourself included; I hope you aren’t offended) who claims to have none: how do you know you aren’t merely failing to notice some tightly-held beliefs?
Fair enough. First, master rationalist is probably pushing it a bit too far in what’s required; rather, you just need to work towards a “mind like water” state, flowing in whichever way the evidence directs it, and once you get close enough to that state the need for a true crisis of faith should disappear.
As for myself and and others who might make a claim to have no crises of faith, it’s a fair question to ask if we’re simply not seeing them. It’s entirely possible that there are some beliefs that I have that I am unaware are so tightly held that I don’t even see them as beliefs, but as truths about the world. However, I have had many experiences which you might identify as a crisis of faith (although I didn’t handle any of them with much in the way of rationality, and it was luck as much as anything else that I was dumped out in the state of mind that I was in), and I have not since encountered anything that has led me to a crisis of faith. Given the huge amount I have learned since that last crisis of faith, I consider the odds of me having another one low.
There is one caveat I should mention, though: this whole issue may come down to a matter of perspective. To me, it’s not a real crisis of faith unless you have to change your entire world view. Up until my last crisis of faith, I spent a lot of time thinking about how everything fit together in the universe. But then I had the realization, which came over me like a wave but soaked in to me very slowly, that all that really mattered was the evidence. So compared to that experience, nothing else has felt worthy of being called a crisis of faith.
That said, the method that Eliezer outlines seems to be a good one to follow. I have applied several of the techniques described with good success. So now that I think of it, maybe it is all just a matter of differences in what we really consider to be a crisis.
Personally, the idea of the crisis of faith seems to me like a symptom of bad thinking. If you hold an idea so tight that you need a crisis of faith, then maybe the real problem is that you have any belief held so strongly that it takes that much effort to overcome it. Aside from human-level stupidity in-the-moment of discussion (e.g. supporting a position despite contrary evidence because it’s the side you picked at the start), a master rationalist shouldn’t need to have a crisis of faith.
I had the last thing that felt like a crisis of faith to me when I was 18. Since then I haven’t been able to hold onto any belief so tightly that any normal amount of rationality effort hasn’t been able to change my mind.
That would be all very well for master rationalists so expert that they have no beliefs that might require a crisis of faith. I don’t happen to know any of those; do you? I would be skeptical about anyone (yourself included; I hope you aren’t offended) who claims to have none: how do you know you aren’t merely failing to notice some tightly-held beliefs?
Fair enough. First, master rationalist is probably pushing it a bit too far in what’s required; rather, you just need to work towards a “mind like water” state, flowing in whichever way the evidence directs it, and once you get close enough to that state the need for a true crisis of faith should disappear.
As for myself and and others who might make a claim to have no crises of faith, it’s a fair question to ask if we’re simply not seeing them. It’s entirely possible that there are some beliefs that I have that I am unaware are so tightly held that I don’t even see them as beliefs, but as truths about the world. However, I have had many experiences which you might identify as a crisis of faith (although I didn’t handle any of them with much in the way of rationality, and it was luck as much as anything else that I was dumped out in the state of mind that I was in), and I have not since encountered anything that has led me to a crisis of faith. Given the huge amount I have learned since that last crisis of faith, I consider the odds of me having another one low.
There is one caveat I should mention, though: this whole issue may come down to a matter of perspective. To me, it’s not a real crisis of faith unless you have to change your entire world view. Up until my last crisis of faith, I spent a lot of time thinking about how everything fit together in the universe. But then I had the realization, which came over me like a wave but soaked in to me very slowly, that all that really mattered was the evidence. So compared to that experience, nothing else has felt worthy of being called a crisis of faith.
That said, the method that Eliezer outlines seems to be a good one to follow. I have applied several of the techniques described with good success. So now that I think of it, maybe it is all just a matter of differences in what we really consider to be a crisis.