there are very few people in the world who don’t deeply emotionally hold quite a few important beliefs. having a small identity is difficult in practice, because having an identity is an important part of how nearly everyone navigates this complex and confusing world. I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to have completely eliminated all emotional attachment to all of their important decision-relevant beliefs.
but even assuming that you have somehow achieved perfect small identityness and emotional independence of all of your important beliefs and it all works out great for you, you must surely acknowledge that there are many people out there who have not. and probably they are more likely to achieve rationalist enlightenment if they are surrounded by people who are supportive but nudge gently towards truth seeking, rather than immediately coming in with a wrecking ball and demolishing emotionally load bearing pillars.
having an identity is an important part of how nearly everyone navigates this complex and confusing world
Legible ideas (that are practical to meaningfully argue about) cover a lot of ground, they are not as hazardous as part of identity. And less well-defined but useful/promising/interesting understandings don’t need to become part of identity to be taken seriously and developed. That’s the failure mode at the other extreme, when anything insufficiently scientific/empirical/legible/etc. gets thrown out with the bathwater.
rather than immediately coming in with a wrecking ball and demolishing emotionally load bearing pillars
Probably when something is easy to defeat (admits argument, legible), it’s not that painful to let it go. The pain is the nebulous attachment fighting for influence, that it won’t be fully defeated even when you end up consciously endorsing a change of mind. Thus ideologies are somewhat infeasible to change, they’ll keep their hold even long after the host disavows them. A habit of keeping such things at a distance benefits from other people not feeding their structurally hazardous placement (as emotionally load bearing pillars) with positivity. But that’s distinct from viewing positively the development of even such hazardous things, handling them with appropriate caution.
I think Leo is using a more expansive definition for identity than you have in mind here (if it seemed important I’d suggest he use a different word to clarify, but actually it doesn’t seem important because….).
I also think he’s making descriptive claims about many people’s apparent relationship to changing their beliefs, and you’re challenging him on normative grounds invoking the mechanics (a taxonomy, even) of belief, which I take to be addressing his point at the wrong level of abstraction in at last two ways.
‘Given that x appears to be hard for people some of the time, we should take some cheap steps to make it easier.’ Seems pretty reasonable!
Maybe you’re saying ‘but x seeming hard is a sign of a deeper problem, making x easier in a shallow way gives quarter to that deeper problem, and if only they had my model of, and relationship to, belief, we could not only make x easy for them, but solve much else besides.’
I’m mostly a fan of that ‘go for the root’ approach, but I think this case is much much harder at scale than you’re giving it credit for; your story about the source of pain in having one’s beliefs challenged smells like a typical mind fallacy. It may be a great description of what’s going on with you, but it doesn’t feel like the kind of description that captures most or all people in most or all relevant cases.
I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to have completely eliminated all emotional attachment to all of their important decision-relevant beliefs.
How about someone who never had all this overwrought (as it seems to me) emoting in the first place? I sense typical-minding here.
I also believe that done right, there is no tradeoff between kindness and correction, and that in a serious conversation, to think in terms of kindness (or its opposite) is already to go wrong.
while there may exist people who do not have this emoting in the first place, there are far more people who are too emotionally unaware to even realize the emotional drives behind their beliefs and actions. this is often very obvious to people around them. so I won’t take anyone’s word on this matter, and instead only trust a track record of behavior.
there are very few people in the world who don’t deeply emotionally hold quite a few important beliefs. having a small identity is difficult in practice, because having an identity is an important part of how nearly everyone navigates this complex and confusing world. I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to have completely eliminated all emotional attachment to all of their important decision-relevant beliefs.
but even assuming that you have somehow achieved perfect small identityness and emotional independence of all of your important beliefs and it all works out great for you, you must surely acknowledge that there are many people out there who have not. and probably they are more likely to achieve rationalist enlightenment if they are surrounded by people who are supportive but nudge gently towards truth seeking, rather than immediately coming in with a wrecking ball and demolishing emotionally load bearing pillars.
Legible ideas (that are practical to meaningfully argue about) cover a lot of ground, they are not as hazardous as part of identity. And less well-defined but useful/promising/interesting understandings don’t need to become part of identity to be taken seriously and developed. That’s the failure mode at the other extreme, when anything insufficiently scientific/empirical/legible/etc. gets thrown out with the bathwater.
Probably when something is easy to defeat (admits argument, legible), it’s not that painful to let it go. The pain is the nebulous attachment fighting for influence, that it won’t be fully defeated even when you end up consciously endorsing a change of mind. Thus ideologies are somewhat infeasible to change, they’ll keep their hold even long after the host disavows them. A habit of keeping such things at a distance benefits from other people not feeding their structurally hazardous placement (as emotionally load bearing pillars) with positivity. But that’s distinct from viewing positively the development of even such hazardous things, handling them with appropriate caution.
I think Leo is using a more expansive definition for identity than you have in mind here (if it seemed important I’d suggest he use a different word to clarify, but actually it doesn’t seem important because….).
I also think he’s making descriptive claims about many people’s apparent relationship to changing their beliefs, and you’re challenging him on normative grounds invoking the mechanics (a taxonomy, even) of belief, which I take to be addressing his point at the wrong level of abstraction in at last two ways.
‘Given that x appears to be hard for people some of the time, we should take some cheap steps to make it easier.’ Seems pretty reasonable!
Maybe you’re saying ‘but x seeming hard is a sign of a deeper problem, making x easier in a shallow way gives quarter to that deeper problem, and if only they had my model of, and relationship to, belief, we could not only make x easy for them, but solve much else besides.’
I’m mostly a fan of that ‘go for the root’ approach, but I think this case is much much harder at scale than you’re giving it credit for; your story about the source of pain in having one’s beliefs challenged smells like a typical mind fallacy. It may be a great description of what’s going on with you, but it doesn’t feel like the kind of description that captures most or all people in most or all relevant cases.
How about someone who never had all this overwrought (as it seems to me) emoting in the first place? I sense typical-minding here.
I also believe that done right, there is no tradeoff between kindness and correction, and that in a serious conversation, to think in terms of kindness (or its opposite) is already to go wrong.
while there may exist people who do not have this emoting in the first place, there are far more people who are too emotionally unaware to even realize the emotional drives behind their beliefs and actions. this is often very obvious to people around them. so I won’t take anyone’s word on this matter, and instead only trust a track record of behavior.