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.
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.)