Look, that’s the question the entire post was attempting to answer, including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words. You can claim that you still haven’t understood but I think it’s uncharitable to claim that there was no attempt to explain.
I do feel the post is not really trying to explain why you should care to achieve enlightenment. It highlights that it is difficult to talk about enlightenment, and that it is difficult to point at the benefits elightenment might provide, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually trying to give me evidence about the benefits of enlightenment, and that’s the part I am actually most skeptical about.
I believe we have many deep epistemic blindspots, and deep ontological frameworks we cannot easily break out off. I expect there are methods to expand your ontology in various ways, and this seems like one of them, but it is competing with hundreds of other ways I could expand my horizon (for example by studying math, or coming to deeply understand poetry, or going through intense social experiences like circling, or participating in intense religious experiences). Mindspace is deep and wide, and while I believe that you’ve had many internal experiences I haven’t, just highlighting that you had them and I have not does not make me want to spend dozens of hours trying to achieve yours. It’s not completely unconvincing, but a pretty weak sell overall.
My disagreement here is similar to the many discussions I’ve had with people about taking LSD. They usually go “the experience of LSD is really hard to describe, and I don’t think you can get it any other way, and it’s a totally novel way of experiencing the world” and my usual response is “cool, but does that now actually help you achieve your goals?”, and sometimes when I dig into it like that, the response is “yes”, but often the response is “not really” and sometimes “in retrospect yes, but I don’t know whether taking it might have changed my values and that past me might not be happy about the changes”.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You’re right, I wasn’t trying to sell enlightenment. It really doesn’t matter if I sell y’all on it. Promise.
I do think there’s something to Looking, though. And I think it’s interwoven into the core of a lot of rationality. And the failure to learn to Look, instead replacing it with a particular kind of intellectual activity that simulates some of the apparent effects of having Looked, seems to me to be one of the hulking reasons why the sense that more is possible is so hard to actualize.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You are in fact doing a beautiful job of being you. That’s very you. You make sense.
Who said there was no attempt to explain…? I think you might be reading things into my comment that aren’t there…
(That said, I don’t actually see where in the post my questions are, in fact, answered. Do you?)
including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words
I’m sure you can see how that might be, shall we say, rather unsatisfying.
Man, alright, so I’m going to be honest here. I feel like you’re being a huge asshole in this conversation, and I’m feeling a strong desire to defend Val from what feels to me like an attack on your part. I expect admitting this will give you plenty of ammunition to continue attacking if that’s what you want to do, but I really wish you wouldn’t.
I don’t want to win this conversation. I think Val is explaining something important and if someone gets something out of his explanation that would make me very happy. It’s looking unlikely that you’re going to be one of those people, and that’s okay, but it also feels to me like you’re implicitly accusing Val of having violated norms—that’s the attack I want to defend against—and if that’s how you’re feeling I wish you’d be more explicit about it.
It does seem like a somewhat common pattern that your comments get interpreted as hostile. I think this is both a reason to extend you more charitability, since I don’t actually think those worries have ever been clearly demonstrated to be true, but is also a sign of something more general going wrong that I don’t really know how to deal with.
(Happy to continue this thread via private chat or in meta. I am hesitant to have even more meta on this post.)
Said, you do not get to decide what people read into your words. What you’ve communicated to others is what they get from your communication, no more and no less. There’s a tight analogy to teaching: you do not get to decide what you teach to your students. What you’ve taught is what they’ve learned, no more and no less.
I believe that you’re trying to get something out of Val’s explanations, but there are other things you’re doing in the course of that trying and they’re really rubbing me the wrong way. That is at least as much a fact about me as about you, but I am a real human having a real experience of being pissed at you, and you don’t get to define that experience away just because you don’t see anything in your comments worth getting pissed about.
Note that at this point the thread doesn’t seem super valuable to continue to me, and that I might lock it down in case it continues in a way that I expect to go badly. Discussion via PM or in Meta is welcome.
Good faith strikes me as a weird descriptor. Do appreciate the sincerity and articulation. (I do think it’s important that Qiaochu doesn’t undeservedly get the label of “good faith”, in particular in a conversation in which he is suggesting someone is lacking exactly that attribute)
edit: replaced “accusing” with “suggesting” for less combatative framing
Look, that’s the question the entire post was attempting to answer, including the part with the metaphor about why it would be hard to explain with words, together with alluding to the existence of many other people who also had a hard time explaining it with words. You can claim that you still haven’t understood but I think it’s uncharitable to claim that there was no attempt to explain.
I do feel the post is not really trying to explain why you should care to achieve enlightenment. It highlights that it is difficult to talk about enlightenment, and that it is difficult to point at the benefits elightenment might provide, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually trying to give me evidence about the benefits of enlightenment, and that’s the part I am actually most skeptical about.
I believe we have many deep epistemic blindspots, and deep ontological frameworks we cannot easily break out off. I expect there are methods to expand your ontology in various ways, and this seems like one of them, but it is competing with hundreds of other ways I could expand my horizon (for example by studying math, or coming to deeply understand poetry, or going through intense social experiences like circling, or participating in intense religious experiences). Mindspace is deep and wide, and while I believe that you’ve had many internal experiences I haven’t, just highlighting that you had them and I have not does not make me want to spend dozens of hours trying to achieve yours. It’s not completely unconvincing, but a pretty weak sell overall.
My disagreement here is similar to the many discussions I’ve had with people about taking LSD. They usually go “the experience of LSD is really hard to describe, and I don’t think you can get it any other way, and it’s a totally novel way of experiencing the world” and my usual response is “cool, but does that now actually help you achieve your goals?”, and sometimes when I dig into it like that, the response is “yes”, but often the response is “not really” and sometimes “in retrospect yes, but I don’t know whether taking it might have changed my values and that past me might not be happy about the changes”.
Like, Scott Alexander’s latest analysis of Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha seems to have mostly ended with the verdict “enlightenment is real, but also maybe not particularly useful and I don’t think I can particularly recommend people to spend hundreds of hours on it”, which is roughly my current epistemic state as well.
You’re right, I wasn’t trying to sell enlightenment. It really doesn’t matter if I sell y’all on it. Promise.
I do think there’s something to Looking, though. And I think it’s interwoven into the core of a lot of rationality. And the failure to learn to Look, instead replacing it with a particular kind of intellectual activity that simulates some of the apparent effects of having Looked, seems to me to be one of the hulking reasons why the sense that more is possible is so hard to actualize.
You are in fact doing a beautiful job of being you. That’s very you. You make sense.
And also, I’m laughing.
(In good faith. Promise.)
Who said there was no attempt to explain…? I think you might be reading things into my comment that aren’t there…
(That said, I don’t actually see where in the post my questions are, in fact, answered. Do you?)
I’m sure you can see how that might be, shall we say, rather unsatisfying.
Man, alright, so I’m going to be honest here. I feel like you’re being a huge asshole in this conversation, and I’m feeling a strong desire to defend Val from what feels to me like an attack on your part. I expect admitting this will give you plenty of ammunition to continue attacking if that’s what you want to do, but I really wish you wouldn’t.
I don’t want to win this conversation. I think Val is explaining something important and if someone gets something out of his explanation that would make me very happy. It’s looking unlikely that you’re going to be one of those people, and that’s okay, but it also feels to me like you’re implicitly accusing Val of having violated norms—that’s the attack I want to defend against—and if that’s how you’re feeling I wish you’d be more explicit about it.
Now you are definitely reading things into my comments that aren’t there.
I would certainly like to get something out of Valentine’s explanations. It seems to me that I have been trying to do exactly that. That’s all.
It does seem like a somewhat common pattern that your comments get interpreted as hostile. I think this is both a reason to extend you more charitability, since I don’t actually think those worries have ever been clearly demonstrated to be true, but is also a sign of something more general going wrong that I don’t really know how to deal with.
(Happy to continue this thread via private chat or in meta. I am hesitant to have even more meta on this post.)
Said, you do not get to decide what people read into your words. What you’ve communicated to others is what they get from your communication, no more and no less. There’s a tight analogy to teaching: you do not get to decide what you teach to your students. What you’ve taught is what they’ve learned, no more and no less.
I believe that you’re trying to get something out of Val’s explanations, but there are other things you’re doing in the course of that trying and they’re really rubbing me the wrong way. That is at least as much a fact about me as about you, but I am a real human having a real experience of being pissed at you, and you don’t get to define that experience away just because you don’t see anything in your comments worth getting pissed about.
[Moderation Note]
Note that at this point the thread doesn’t seem super valuable to continue to me, and that I might lock it down in case it continues in a way that I expect to go badly. Discussion via PM or in Meta is welcome.
I love Qiaochu’s comment for its sincerity, good faith, and articulation.
Good faith strikes me as a weird descriptor. Do appreciate the sincerity and articulation. (I do think it’s important that Qiaochu doesn’t undeservedly get the label of “good faith”, in particular in a conversation in which he is suggesting someone is lacking exactly that attribute)
edit: replaced “accusing” with “suggesting” for less combatative framing
I also think good faith is a weird descriptor of what I said.