In looking for another post, I found SSC’s Against Anton-Wilsonism, which I think makes the same point as Vervaeke repeatedly makes, of being against a sort of pick-and-choose autodidactic approach to mysticism, as opposed to taking a package deal from a sapiential and supportive community, and actually putting in the calories.
Wait, isn’t that what Vervaeke himself does? Or does he do it himself because he thinks he’s proficient enough and is putting enough effort into it, and is willing to risk failure for the chance of finding new ground, but thinks in general people should pick up a ready-made bundle and roll with it? Perhaps the ecosystem of practices he’s trying to develop?
I don’t think he’s doing the autodidactic thing. Like, he studies wisdom as a scientist, but I think personally he practices tai chi and meditation in part because they’re tried-and-true with the sort of supportive community that he talks up in many places. Much of this lecture series is, I think, not his material, and is instead other people’s work and other people’s analysis, passed through his filters. [He doesn’t mention this until later, but he’s not trying to be a prophet / start a religion / etc.]
There are certain fields where it’s really obvious to everyone that learning about the field is different from learning the field. There are probably historians of music who have never picked up an instrument, and they don’t fancy themselves musicians. And political scientists don’t delude themselves into thinking they would make great politicians.
Mysticism is not one of these fields (rationality isn’t either, but that’s a different blog article).
Sounds like a good article, only learning about rationality and not actually learning rationality is definitely a core failure mode in learning rationality. Has Scott or anyone wrote about it?
In looking for another post, I found SSC’s Against Anton-Wilsonism, which I think makes the same point as Vervaeke repeatedly makes, of being against a sort of pick-and-choose autodidactic approach to mysticism, as opposed to taking a package deal from a sapiential and supportive community, and actually putting in the calories.
Wait, isn’t that what Vervaeke himself does? Or does he do it himself because he thinks he’s proficient enough and is putting enough effort into it, and is willing to risk failure for the chance of finding new ground, but thinks in general people should pick up a ready-made bundle and roll with it? Perhaps the ecosystem of practices he’s trying to develop?
I don’t think he’s doing the autodidactic thing. Like, he studies wisdom as a scientist, but I think personally he practices tai chi and meditation in part because they’re tried-and-true with the sort of supportive community that he talks up in many places. Much of this lecture series is, I think, not his material, and is instead other people’s work and other people’s analysis, passed through his filters. [He doesn’t mention this until later, but he’s not trying to be a prophet / start a religion / etc.]
From that post:
Sounds like a good article, only learning about rationality and not actually learning rationality is definitely a core failure mode in learning rationality. Has Scott or anyone wrote about it?