it makes you shy away from situations that might disapprove those wrong beliefs
This is another good reason. I was gesturing roughly in that direction when talking about the Christian convert being blocked from learning about new religions.
I think that there’s a general concept of being “truth aligned”, and being truth aligned is the right choice. Truth-seeking things reinforce each other, and things like lying, bullshitting, learning wrong things, avoiding disconfirming evidence etc. also reinforce each other. Being able to convince yourself of arbitrary belief is an anti-truth skill, and Eliezer suggests you should dis-cultivate it by telling yourself you can’t do it.
Your point about spirituality is a major source of conflict about those topics, with non-believers saying “tell us what it is” and the enlightened saying “if I did, you’d misunderstand”. I do think that it’s at least fair to expect that the spiritual teachers understand the minds of beginners, if not vice versa. This is why I’m much more interested in Val’s enlightenment than in Vinay Gupta’s.
Being able to convince yourself of arbitrary belief is an anti-truth skill, and Eliezer suggests you should dis-cultivate it by telling yourself you can’t do it.
That’s an interesting example in this context. You seem to say you want to believe that “you can’t do it” because it’s useful to hold that belief and not necessarily because it’s true.
Practically, I don’t think convincing yourself of a belief because the belief is useful is the same thing as convincing yourself of an arbitrary belief. I don’t think that the people I now who I consider particularly skilled at adopting beliefs because they consider them useful practiced on arbitrary beliefs.
To use an NLP term (given that’s the community where I know most people with the relevant skill set), behavior change is much easier when the belief change is ecological then if it’s random.
This is another good reason. I was gesturing roughly in that direction when talking about the Christian convert being blocked from learning about new religions.
I think that there’s a general concept of being “truth aligned”, and being truth aligned is the right choice. Truth-seeking things reinforce each other, and things like lying, bullshitting, learning wrong things, avoiding disconfirming evidence etc. also reinforce each other. Being able to convince yourself of arbitrary belief is an anti-truth skill, and Eliezer suggests you should dis-cultivate it by telling yourself you can’t do it.
Your point about spirituality is a major source of conflict about those topics, with non-believers saying “tell us what it is” and the enlightened saying “if I did, you’d misunderstand”. I do think that it’s at least fair to expect that the spiritual teachers understand the minds of beginners, if not vice versa. This is why I’m much more interested in Val’s enlightenment than in Vinay Gupta’s.
That’s an interesting example in this context. You seem to say you want to believe that “you can’t do it” because it’s useful to hold that belief and not necessarily because it’s true.
Practically, I don’t think convincing yourself of a belief because the belief is useful is the same thing as convincing yourself of an arbitrary belief. I don’t think that the people I now who I consider particularly skilled at adopting beliefs because they consider them useful practiced on arbitrary beliefs.
To use an NLP term (given that’s the community where I know most people with the relevant skill set), behavior change is much easier when the belief change is ecological then if it’s random.