flowing like water; hard like stone
I noticed in your recent post that you described “rhetorical aikido”, which you called a Daoist technique. I have studied the Tao Te Ching’s text a fair bit over the past few years, and I find its philosophy to be quite useful as a “theme” or “virtue”.
I’ve not had the opportunity to speak with others who seem to understand the Daoist perspective, so I thought this could be an interesting opportunity to expand my understanding a bit.
I am flattered you feel I give the impression of understanding the Daoist perspective. I have read only the first sentence of the Tao Te Ching, yet I too find its philosophy to be useful. I thought this could be an interesting opportunity to expand my understanding a bit.
In that case, I’ll mention some of the things that suggested you understood the perspective to me.
I’ll repeat the first sentence of the “Tao Te Ching” so that anyone who hasn’t read it can see its warning: “Dao called Dao is not Dao.” One of the big concepts repeatedly alluded to is that you can’t write down what the “Way” is, at best you can gesture in its direction.
Some things I noticed in the post:
The process of the rhetorical aikido described immediately felt right to call Daoist, at least according to my intuition
The emphasis on avoiding open assertion of your own perspective aligns with the oft-repeated concept of “the sage does not contend”
Leading the other person into noticing a possible contradiction aligns with tactics the “Art of War” would suggest, where they might not even notice a plan is afoot
The idea that the technique is meant to be used with those who are legitimately curious also matches the principle of “do not contend”
“Welcome to Lsusr’s rationality dojo,” I replied, “Today is not your first day.”
This statement also caught my eye, albeit not for reasons of resembling the Daoist perspective.
Yes. The techniques you point to are indeed Daoist. Not immediately stating your own beliefs follows Laozi’s guidelines in the Tao Te Ching. Not immediately revealing your own intentions follows Sunzi’s guidelines in The Art of War.
You are also correct in noticing that “Today is not your first day” comes from elsewhere. I stole it from qntm’s There is no Antimemetics Division.
I think the fact that you can distinguish Daoist techniques from non-Daoist techniques indicates that we’re pointing to something real when we use the word “Daoist”.
It’s nice to see that we seem to be pointing in a similar direction. I have gleaned much of my knowledge from a large variety of texts and documents over the years, but the sheer breadth of that intake leads to concerns about the standalone qualities of each source. I try to focus on reading “core texts” as primary sources, but there’s always a chance that later documents point out “obvious problems” that I’ll have to identify and correct myself.
I would like to get your thoughts on the “end goal” I aim to get from Daoism.
One of the big things I encountered in college was flow state, and I suspect that you’ll have some familiarity with it. As I began studying it, I found myself wondering if the Daoist “sage” could live in flow state at all times.
This struck my past self as a fascinating ideal to pursue, even if I end up with only a partial replication, and I’m curious what you think of it.
Bhante Gunaratana, author of Mindfulness in Plain English, identified a Daoist monk in an airport just from the way he moved.
Interesting. I’ve spent some time around people who utilize flow state fairly often, and there are noticeable differences you can spot.
As I practiced trying to maximize my time spent in flow state while retaining productivity, I eventually found that I had to break the flow when certain levels of problem appeared, and I shifted my “ideal” to “being in the right mode at any given time”.
Flowing like water. Hard like stone.
That’s the idea. Let things flow by when there’s no need to “contend”, but be ready to work when it’s time.
Flow state is being in the right mode. But the right mode sometimes is to not be in a flow state. The paradox is not intrinsic to reality—just our words. It comes from an ambiguity in an implicit assumption.
There are multiple levels at which we can be in a flow state. It’s like looking at a fractal at different scales. Sometimes a higher-order non-contention involves lower-order contention.
Seems like now might be a good time to introduce the concept of “wuwei” (which you might translate non-contention).
I’d be interested to hear more about it. I’m unable to read the Tao Te Ching in its original language, so I’m forced to extrapolate from whatever English translation I end up looking at.
Wuwei (無為) is an important concept within Daoism. It has two parts: wu (無) and wei (為). Wu is easy to translate. Wu just means “without”. “Wei” (為) is the difficult part. It can be translated as action, intention, proaction, force, deliberateness, non-flow, intervention or—as you do—contention.
One example of wuwei can be found in Daoist political theory. The figurehead Japanese emperor isn’t supposed to really do anything directly except lead by example. Done properly, the emperor can’t be blamed for any disasters. In this way, the Japanese imperial line has survived for well over 2,000 years.
One technique I use personally is to hint or gesture at ideas I want to communicate, instead of stating them explicitly. If I say ”x is true”, then that provokes “no because…”. But if I ask “what is x”, then the answer is “true”. Sometimes I go even further and say ”x is untrue”, satirically.
That sounds like the concept in my head behind “contention” and its inverse is less astray than expected.
The technique you describe sounds similar to some things I do. A technique I use from the same “skill tree” is to offer people only some guidance towards the “hard part” of a problem, which I’ve found to return the best ratio of investment to growth of the recipient.
It is less effective with people who struggle to improvise during problem solving, but I’ve found that I struggle to efficiently assist that category of person regardless of the techniques I try. I suspect that this stems from my underlying perspectives.
Yes. I originally learned this technique when tutoring physics. If I said “here’s how you do this problem”, then the student won’t learn how to do the next problem.
Some people are indeed simply unteachable. What I’ve gotten better at over time is calibration. I am forever getting better at tailoring the right puzzle for the person I’m interacting with.
To return to the topic of my “Daoist sage” that I envisioned, I think your definition of wuwei seems to align with the form it now takes.
“The sage does not contend” reminds me of the most effective educational system I’ve ever heard of, DARPA’s digital tutor. Here’s a list of instructional tactics and procedures embodied in the Digital Tutor:
These are good guidelines.
I don’t find most of Tao Te Ching to be difficult at all, but you often have to think psychologically rather than logically in order to get it.
If you try to walk while thinking about every step of walking (manually walking) you will likely have difficulties. But if you walk without thinking, using system 1 (concept stolen from the book ‘thinking, fast and slow’), it comes easy to you. This is the first point, “trying” often gets in the way of doing.
In connection with this, there’s a maxim which says “Everything done in desperation fails”. This might not be the most scientific statement, but I will give an example (hoping that other people have seen it too): People who are desperate to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend often fail. But what’s interesting is that, once they give up and stop trying, they suddenly manage!
I think bragging is another good example, because once you stop bragging and start being humble, other people will start giving you the validation that you wanted when bragging.
So what’s the opposite of desperation? Wouldn’t it be wuwei? I don’t think it means “do nothing” but rather “stop fighting system 1″. This also seem to be the point of improv, which I’ve seen discussed in LW-adjacent spaces lately. This discussion is about undoing conditioning and returning to natural spontaneity. We’re basically conditioned into suppressing parts of ourselves, to the point that even speaking in front of crowds is difficult for many. But this conditioning causes us to use system 2 for everything rather than system 1. Wuwei is likely very similar to “letting go”. Carl Jung has also recommended people to deal with their shadow. Common advice is “be yourself” and “believe in yourself”. Jesus said we should “become like little children”. I think all these ideas point at the same things, that this results in good health, and that system 1 can be trusted as long as you’re psychologically healthy. How do you know? Well, if you can decide to wake up at 6 am and then have your body do exactly that, I think your system 1 is working. Waking up 2 minutes before you alarm counts as well.
That’s not to mention the parts about teaching other people. In short, you should aid their growth, rather than trying to control it, and know that teaching is much more than just communicating facts. I’m not a teacher and I haven’t thought very much about this angle, so I’m not the right one to ask about it.
Secondly, I will try explaining “the dao which can be spoken is not the real dao”. If I were to ask you “how do I walk?” it’s unlikely that you could put it into words. “Move your legs”, well, how do I move my legs? It’s easy, but it can’t be put into words gracefully, nor can words gracefully point back at walking. If you read “UNIVERSAL LOVE, SAID THE CACTUS PERSON” by Scott Alexander, you might understand how to “get out of the car”, but also see that the method cannot be put into words. In fact, as long as you’re thinking in words and concepts, you’re limiting yourself to what can be modeled and said by words, but we want to point at the territory, not the map. You can’t model what it looks like to live in reality rather than in a model.
It sure took a lot of text to explain just two lines of Tao Te Ching. If anyone have questions about any parts of the book, or disagreements or questions about my comment, I’ll do my best to answer them!
Models are more meta than isolated facts. Creating models is more meta than memorizing them. (More meta can be an overkill if you just need to do something once, but can be a great investment in long term.)
In pedagogy: associationism vs constructivism. More generally: teaching to the test vs genuine curiosity. The paradox is that teaching to the test is known to produce bad results (even measured by the tests), but understanding how things work sometimes allows you to pass even difficult tests almost magically (from the perspective of those who don’t bother to understand).