No, actually, I think you know the basics of how to Look. I also think there are several different types of things one can Look at, and I happened to have my head pointed in one direction, and you tend to point your head in another. You made a LOT more sense to me after this.
I would be interested in how you would falsify it regardless. I am confused about what I am meant to be confused about (what does it mean for it to not be okay?) and I suspect the excersise would remedy that.
Apologies, I don’t really follow what you’re saying here. What “it” is being falsified? What exercise are you referring to?
Also, you’re not meant to be confused by anything. It’s just an observation, that pre-kenshō people tend to get confused when someone who has had kenshō tries to describe anything about what they’ve come to see and how they know they’re seeing it.
The exercise in falsification refers to Conor’s last sentence, only no longer applied specific to him.
I’m wondering how you would falsify the claim (that I predict you will make and be justified in making) that I don’t get it.
When I say I am confused about what I am meant to be confused about, I mean that I’m failing to identify as Alex. He at least has a command he knows he cannot do (Look above that! / That’s the top.), whereas I am stuck in the realm of unknown unknowns.
Your paragraph on the “it” from your kenshō is a much closer description of how I currently feel than the inverse is; I don’t understand what it would mean for this claim to be untrue except in the sense that it “not being okay” accurately describes external reality. But that feels like it falls into the same trap that your bullet points are said to, only in the opposite direction.
Your later post about the benefits does this more clearly; with absolute exception of the point about energy, and potential exception of the last, the other points seem oddly accurate representations of the difference between me and the average person. But I don’t think I am enlightened.
So, on a concrete level, this comes through as the question of how would you differentiate someone who was born enlightened from someone who was not, but is perhaps mistakenly labelling a shallow surface immitation?
Hi there. I think I understand Val’s thing. (Specifically, I think I understand Val’s thing enough that I am imagine Val being wryly amused by my saying “I think I understand Val’s thing”.)
Let’s talk about the cellphone analogy for a minute.
Say you see someone who is looking down at their phone, instead of Looking around them. You’re trying to explain Looking to them, and they keep staring at their phone and typing “yeah yeah okay, but how do you know I’m not Looking right now?”
And you type “I’m watching you stare at your phone. If your Looking, your head would be up and your eyes would be pointed at me.”
And they type, “my eyes ARE pointed at you. I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU”, as they look intently at your chat icon on their screen.
And you sigh, stop typing, and gently speak right into their ear, “no. LOOK AT ME.”
They twitch uncomfortably and type, “I don’t know what you did, but that was deeply uncomfortable. Please don’t do that again.”
And then you sigh and shrug, and they type “so anyway, how do you know I’m not Looking?”
And then you shrug and go look for someone else who’s head is up, because trying to raise this person’s head made them uncomfortable and you don’t want to try any further.
And you sigh, stop typing, and gently speak right into their ear, “no. LOOK AT ME.”
They twitch uncomfortably and type, “I don’t know what you did, but that was deeply uncomfortable. Please don’t do that again.”
What is this part an analogy for, in the ‘enlightenment’ case? What can you (or Valentine) do, that would make the un-enlightened twitch uncomfortably and say “I don’t know what you did”?
(Similarly, in the ‘parable’ part of the OP, Valentine alludes to the possibility of reaching over and raising the person’s head, forcing them to look up. He then gives what I consider to be some quite unsatisfying reasons for not doing this—but what actually would that constitute? Can you demonstrate, or could Valentine? Surely we can find a willing subject…)
twitch I really REALLY want to explain why this is a bad idea, but explaining why it is a bad idea is currently a bad idea. Some local sociopolitcal stuff will need to calm down first, and then I can explain.
EDIT: No, wait. I think I can gesture at it, even if I can’t explain fully yet.
There is something about … concepts that I’m going to call “sovereignty” and “agency”, which seem deeply connected with Looking.
Something I’ve learned to do, occasionally, is sit down with someone and say “Hey. You’ve been taught that you’re not allowed to use your sovereignty and agency to Look. I really think you should Look.” And then they flail a bit, like someone who doesn’t know how to wiggle their ears trying to learn, and I sigh and say “hey. If I deliberately fuck with your agency, in a way that causes you to feel your sovereignty being attacked, you’ll actually notice what your sovereignty feels like, and then you can learn to play around in that space. May I do that? It feels kind of scary and violating, so I don’t want to do it without your permission.”
And then they say “umm no?”, and I go away.
But sometimes they look at me suspiciously, then say “okay go for it”, and I do it.
And sometimes they react by saying “oh wow! THAT’S my agency! THAT’S my sovereingty! holy shit!” and then they take off like a rocket, and then I (or someone else) can start showing them how to use it to Look.
But sometimes they freak the fuck out and say “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH THAT I DID NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DO THAT I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU’D BE TOUCHING NEVER DO THAT TO ANYONE EVER AGAIN!!”
But the thing is, people are touching them like that—pulling subliminally on their sovereignty—all the time, constantly. It’s just below the threshold of their conscious noticing; most of the overt attacks on people’s sovereignty in the West happen during childhood, when we’re being trained to get used to the local incentives. So it’s hard for them to notice that the attacks are happening at all, unless you do something pretty overt to knock them out of where their perception has settled.
Concrete description of what you’re talking about. Please avoid vagueness. It doesn’t help at all.
For you to bring in some of these people who reacted in the “oh wow!” fashion, and have them tell us just what you’re talking about, and what is this thing that they were suddenly able to perceive, etc.
#2 may not be trivial, I understand, but it would be very nice to have actual evidence (even of this weak sort) of what you’re saying. #1 would be a good start, and seems like it should be very easy to provide.
I appreciate you trying to explain. Please take my responses/questions as eager attempts to understand. I’d very much like to actually elicit (from anyone, not necessarily you) an actual, specific explanation, which is why I am following up with these requests for specifics, demonstrations, etc.
Unfortunately, the vagueness is to protect him, not to help you.
#1 would be a good start, and seems like it should be very easy to provide.
Why does it seem like it should be very easy to provide? I imagine if you set a 5-minute timer and really tried to come up with a list of reasons a person might be some combination of unable or unwilling to provide a concrete description of something, you would come up with more than one possible reason.
I appreciate you trying to explain. Please take my responses/questions as eager attempts to understand.
Unfortunately, the vagueness is to protect him, not to help you.
This boils down to “I can’t explain this, for reasons I also can’t explain”, right?
I mean, if you can’t explain it because if you do, the Secret Service will break into your house in a midnight raid to arrest you—fair enough. But you do understand, I’m sure, that this counts as “asked for an explanation or evidence, you failed to provide any”—yes?
Can we agree that the situation as it stands is “claims have been made, but not backed up in any meaningful way”?
I imagine if you set a 5-minute timer and really tried to come up with a list of reasons a person might be some combination of unable or unwilling to provide a concrete description of something, you would come up with more than one possible reason.
Unwilling? Yes, easily. (Most of them rather… well, ‘uncharitable’ is the word that’s typically used around here, but one I wouldn’t use myself; ‘disreputable’, perhaps. I can certainly think of some respectable reasons, though.)
Fair enough, I think I misunderstood you and also used a poor choice of words. I meant “unable” as in “unable to provide a concrete description that would actually promote understanding.”
By analogy, suppose a layperson was reading about Fermat’s Last Theorem and asked me for a concrete description of what a modular form is. On some level I could answer by quoting a textbook definition—that’s what would count as concrete to a mathematician. On another level there is basically no answer that I could give short of teaching this layperson complex analysis that would allow me to give a description that would meaningfully qualify as “concrete.”
All I wanted was for ialdabaoth to describe the thing he was talking about—the thing that could be analogized to “whispering in someone’s ear and making them twitch”. Perhaps his account would promote understand, perhaps it would not, but the account itself—being a simple reporting of events that transpired—would surely be perfectly plain.
I DID describe that thing! “Physically moving, with intent, to cut off the girl’s hair” is EXACTLY what “whispering in someone’s ear and making them twitch” is! EXACTLY. It’s not a different situation! But you seemed to want something more salacious, so I refused to give it to you. I want you to understand, but I’m not here to amuse you.
I… think there is a misunderstanding here, and perhaps it’s on my end, but it seems at least partly to be on yours.
First of all, I’m really not sure where you’re getting “salacious”, so let’s set that aside right away. Nothing even remotely like that is anywhere in what I wrote.
Secondly, let’s recap.
You said:
Hi there. I think I understand Val’s thing.
You then analogized this to the “whispering in someone’s ear” scenario. I asked what this is supposed to be analogy for; i.e., can you in fact do something to someone, and have them not understand what it is you did, or how? (This, presumably, would suggest to us that you had some capability that this other person did not; and this extra capability would be something-akin-to ‘enlightenment’.)
You also said some things about ‘sovereignty’, ‘agency’, and ‘Looking’. (These, too, it would seem—from your comments—are related somehow to Valentine’s ‘enlightenment’.)
So what I asked you was simple:
What is this unusual thing that you can do to someone, such that they are confused, or don’t know what you did or how; which signals some unusual capability that you possess?
Clearly, your story with the hair-clipper doesn’t qualify. In fact, it so obviously doesn’t qualify as an example of anything like what you implied you could provide an example of, that it did not even occur to me that you were, in fact, giving me what you thought was an example.
I mean—you (jokingly) threatened to cut off a woman’s hair. This showed her that there are some things she cares really viscerally about. Certainly a clever demonstration!
But what on earth has this to do with… well, any of what’s we’ve been discussing?
I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but I don’t see anything like a connection. Spell out your chain of reasoning, please. Even if I’m not convinced, I’d at least like to understand what you’re claiming.
THAT I tried to cut off her hair isn’t the “unusual thing”. HOW I tried to cut of her hair is the “unusual thing”. Specifically, the non-verbal signals of intent, dominance, objectification, and raw power, pointed directly at her, while threatening something she cared about, are the “unusual thing”.
I’m starting to think you were accusing me of believing in something supernatural?
I’m starting to think you were accusing me of believing in something supernatural?
Indeed not; I can’t possibly be accusing you of believing in anything supernatural, since it has been quite unclear to me what, if anything, you are claiming to believe.
Now, as of this last comment, the “if anything” part is withdrawn; clearly, you are saying something. But what? That’s what I’m still unsure of.
HOW I tried to cut of her hair is the “unusual thing”. Specifically, the non-verbal signals of intent, dominance, objectification, and raw power, pointed directly at her, while threatening something she cared about, are the “unusual thing”.
I don’t quite follow. Could you elaborate? What is unusual about these ‘signals’ (and what are they, in particular)?
Following the analogy, it would seem that the young lady in your account should have been confused about what you were doing, or how; and, perhaps, that I, or other unenlightened onlookers / those to whom you relate the story, should also be confused about this.
But nothing in your story seems confusing to me. Should it? What you did seems to me to have been clever, but straightforward (which is not to deny the cleverness!). I don’t have any trouble fitting it into my perfectly ordinary view of the world; nor, I suspect, would any “man in the street”. Should I? What am I missing?
Edit: Or is the claim here simply that ‘enlightenment’ (apologies, I know the term has been objected to—I mean whatever-state-you-have-achieved that is unusual and is the sort of thing being discussed—feel free to provide a better term) helps to generate this sort of cleverness (which, though not itself mysterious or unusual, is nonetheless clever, and thus useful—i.e., constitutes ‘cake’)? That would be a reasonable enough claim. Let me know if this is what you meant.
P.S. In a sibling thread, I asked you for a similar sort of account, but one that was pertinent to the topic at hand. You said you might provide one “another time”. This implies that there is such an account, and that the one you’ve provided so far isn’t it. But now you’re saying that what you already recounted is ‘it’. Again—what am I missing?
Update: Just yesterday, I did a gentler version of “pulling someone’s head up from their phone” to Eli Tyre. It was mostly wordless, and involved no action on my part that would be really perceivable to an outside observer. He said he would describe his experience here; hopefully he’ll do so while the experience is still fresh in his mind.
Here’s a concrete thing that actually happened once! (More or less. Small details have been modified to extract pith.)
A girl came to me for dance lessons. One of the things that she wanted was to understand how to “push through” things that she knew her body could do, but her mind couldn’t.
We talked a lot about agency, about CARING. About how, when you know you really care, you can always find a way to push through. She wasn’t getting it.
Finally, I looked at her hair. It was strawberry-blonde, down to her knees, and always meticulously brushed, conditioned, and perfumed.
Then I asked her, “what will you let me do, to explain to you what CARING feels like?”
She looked at me and said something like “at this point, do whatever you have to.”
So I said, “watch this. This is what caring feels like.”
And I picked up a hair clipper and turned it on, and with my other hand I grabbed a fistful of her hair...
And she freaked, and screamed at me, and I let go, and she pulled away, and she stormed out. And the next week, she came back and we had a long, intense conversation about CARING.
And I would never, EVER have actually cut her hair. But if I hadn’t aggressively reached for it, and turned on the clippers, she would have seen through it. She had to get, in her gut, what was at stake.
The relationship was pretty strained after that, but she finally understood CARING.
Cool! This is exactly the sort of answer I wanted: one where you literally tell us what actually took place.
Now, could you give exactly that sort of answer—one that involves a literal account of events—but about the thing we were talking about in the first place?
Have you actually experience at explaining this to someone and getting this result?
I don’t see theists going “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH THAT I DID NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DO THAT I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU’D BE TOUCHING NEVER DO THAT TO ANYONE EVER AGAIN!!” after they read a good blog post explaining why God doesn’t exist.
In the same way I wouldn’t expect to get that reaction for anything related to this. I remember sitting for lunch after a lecture on a related subject and other people at the table simply didn’t remember the relevant things that were said in the lecture. They didn’t register the claims at all. Human minds are quite resilient to being changed on a basic level in a short amount of time.
The thing that ialdabaoth is gesturing at with “fuck with your agency” is not an explanation (I don’t know what it is, but it’s not an explanation). An explanation would be a text message sent to someone’s phone in the cell-phone world; ialdaboth is gesturing at the thing where you whisper directly into someone’s ear, which is a very different sort of thing.
Do you feel there’s a concrete thing he’s gesturing at? If so, can you give an additional hint about what you mean that’s not obvious enough that it doesn’t do any damage?
Write an explanation, and post it publicly, in encrypted form. Later, when you feel that it’s acceptable, post the decryption key. (In the meantime, send the key to some people—who will not to disclose it to the general public—so that they may immediately verify that your explanation is legit.) (Edit: Naturally, these should not be people from anywhere near ialdabaoth’s or Valentine’s social circles.)
Sound good?
Edit: I wrote this comment prior to ialdabaoth editing it with a lot more material. Reading now.
Edit 2: Ok, I’ve read the longer version now. Response in sibling. The initial part of my comment stands.
I believe I understood this metaphor. However, it seems to me this isn’t a good place to be, since I predict the metaphor is only useful to ground discussion about the thing that’s actually taking place. It is that second step that hasn’t worked.
Let’s flip this around. How do you know when someone is Looking? Is there a way to do so based on external behaviours? What is your equivalent of the following?
“I’m watching you stare at your phone. If your Looking, your head would be up and your eyes would be pointed at me.”
You give a good example with the hair clipper, but I don’t know how much, if at all, that relates to Looking. If it is closely related I have a few follow-up questions that probably get to the crux of the issue I specifically am stuck on.
Loren ipsum
No, actually, I think you know the basics of how to Look. I also think there are several different types of things one can Look at, and I happened to have my head pointed in one direction, and you tend to point your head in another. You made a LOT more sense to me after this.
I would be interested in how you would falsify it regardless. I am confused about what I am meant to be confused about (what does it mean for it to not be okay?) and I suspect the excersise would remedy that.
Apologies, I don’t really follow what you’re saying here. What “it” is being falsified? What exercise are you referring to?
Also, you’re not meant to be confused by anything. It’s just an observation, that pre-kenshō people tend to get confused when someone who has had kenshō tries to describe anything about what they’ve come to see and how they know they’re seeing it.
The exercise in falsification refers to Conor’s last sentence, only no longer applied specific to him.
When I say I am confused about what I am meant to be confused about, I mean that I’m failing to identify as Alex. He at least has a command he knows he cannot do (Look above that! / That’s the top.), whereas I am stuck in the realm of unknown unknowns.
Your paragraph on the “it” from your kenshō is a much closer description of how I currently feel than the inverse is; I don’t understand what it would mean for this claim to be untrue except in the sense that it “not being okay” accurately describes external reality. But that feels like it falls into the same trap that your bullet points are said to, only in the opposite direction.
Your later post about the benefits does this more clearly; with absolute exception of the point about energy, and potential exception of the last, the other points seem oddly accurate representations of the difference between me and the average person. But I don’t think I am enlightened.
So, on a concrete level, this comes through as the question of how would you differentiate someone who was born enlightened from someone who was not, but is perhaps mistakenly labelling a shallow surface immitation?
Hi there. I think I understand Val’s thing. (Specifically, I think I understand Val’s thing enough that I am imagine Val being wryly amused by my saying “I think I understand Val’s thing”.)
Let’s talk about the cellphone analogy for a minute.
Say you see someone who is looking down at their phone, instead of Looking around them. You’re trying to explain Looking to them, and they keep staring at their phone and typing “yeah yeah okay, but how do you know I’m not Looking right now?”
And you type “I’m watching you stare at your phone. If your Looking, your head would be up and your eyes would be pointed at me.”
And they type, “my eyes ARE pointed at you. I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU”, as they look intently at your chat icon on their screen.
And you sigh, stop typing, and gently speak right into their ear, “no. LOOK AT ME.”
They twitch uncomfortably and type, “I don’t know what you did, but that was deeply uncomfortable. Please don’t do that again.”
And then you sigh and shrug, and they type “so anyway, how do you know I’m not Looking?”
And then you shrug and go look for someone else who’s head is up, because trying to raise this person’s head made them uncomfortable and you don’t want to try any further.
What is this part an analogy for, in the ‘enlightenment’ case? What can you (or Valentine) do, that would make the un-enlightened twitch uncomfortably and say “I don’t know what you did”?
(Similarly, in the ‘parable’ part of the OP, Valentine alludes to the possibility of reaching over and raising the person’s head, forcing them to look up. He then gives what I consider to be some quite unsatisfying reasons for not doing this—but what actually would that constitute? Can you demonstrate, or could Valentine? Surely we can find a willing subject…)
twitch I really REALLY want to explain why this is a bad idea, but explaining why it is a bad idea is currently a bad idea. Some local sociopolitcal stuff will need to calm down first, and then I can explain.
EDIT: No, wait. I think I can gesture at it, even if I can’t explain fully yet.
There is something about … concepts that I’m going to call “sovereignty” and “agency”, which seem deeply connected with Looking.
Something I’ve learned to do, occasionally, is sit down with someone and say “Hey. You’ve been taught that you’re not allowed to use your sovereignty and agency to Look. I really think you should Look.” And then they flail a bit, like someone who doesn’t know how to wiggle their ears trying to learn, and I sigh and say “hey. If I deliberately fuck with your agency, in a way that causes you to feel your sovereignty being attacked, you’ll actually notice what your sovereignty feels like, and then you can learn to play around in that space. May I do that? It feels kind of scary and violating, so I don’t want to do it without your permission.”
And then they say “umm no?”, and I go away.
But sometimes they look at me suspiciously, then say “okay go for it”, and I do it.
And sometimes they react by saying “oh wow! THAT’S my agency! THAT’S my sovereingty! holy shit!” and then they take off like a rocket, and then I (or someone else) can start showing them how to use it to Look.
But sometimes they freak the fuck out and say “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH THAT I DID NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DO THAT I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU’D BE TOUCHING NEVER DO THAT TO ANYONE EVER AGAIN!!”
But the thing is, people are touching them like that—pulling subliminally on their sovereignty—all the time, constantly. It’s just below the threshold of their conscious noticing; most of the overt attacks on people’s sovereignty in the West happen during childhood, when we’re being trained to get used to the local incentives. So it’s hard for them to notice that the attacks are happening at all, unless you do something pretty overt to knock them out of where their perception has settled.
I dunno, did any of that make sense?
No.
I’d like the following:
Concrete description of what you’re talking about. Please avoid vagueness. It doesn’t help at all.
For you to bring in some of these people who reacted in the “oh wow!” fashion, and have them tell us just what you’re talking about, and what is this thing that they were suddenly able to perceive, etc.
#2 may not be trivial, I understand, but it would be very nice to have actual evidence (even of this weak sort) of what you’re saying. #1 would be a good start, and seems like it should be very easy to provide.
I appreciate you trying to explain. Please take my responses/questions as eager attempts to understand. I’d very much like to actually elicit (from anyone, not necessarily you) an actual, specific explanation, which is why I am following up with these requests for specifics, demonstrations, etc.
Unfortunately, the vagueness is to protect him, not to help you.
Why does it seem like it should be very easy to provide? I imagine if you set a 5-minute timer and really tried to come up with a list of reasons a person might be some combination of unable or unwilling to provide a concrete description of something, you would come up with more than one possible reason.
I appreciate this. Thank you.
This boils down to “I can’t explain this, for reasons I also can’t explain”, right?
I mean, if you can’t explain it because if you do, the Secret Service will break into your house in a midnight raid to arrest you—fair enough. But you do understand, I’m sure, that this counts as “asked for an explanation or evidence, you failed to provide any”—yes?
Can we agree that the situation as it stands is “claims have been made, but not backed up in any meaningful way”?
Unwilling? Yes, easily. (Most of them rather… well, ‘uncharitable’ is the word that’s typically used around here, but one I wouldn’t use myself; ‘disreputable’, perhaps. I can certainly think of some respectable reasons, though.)
Unable, though? No. What are some such reasons?
What would you get, if I agreed with this, that you want? (Try to use Focusing to answer this question.)
In the local dialect, really long inferential distances.
Long inferential distances would make you unable to report events that physically took place in the real world? How?
Fair enough, I think I misunderstood you and also used a poor choice of words. I meant “unable” as in “unable to provide a concrete description that would actually promote understanding.”
By analogy, suppose a layperson was reading about Fermat’s Last Theorem and asked me for a concrete description of what a modular form is. On some level I could answer by quoting a textbook definition—that’s what would count as concrete to a mathematician. On another level there is basically no answer that I could give short of teaching this layperson complex analysis that would allow me to give a description that would meaningfully qualify as “concrete.”
All I wanted was for ialdabaoth to describe the thing he was talking about—the thing that could be analogized to “whispering in someone’s ear and making them twitch”. Perhaps his account would promote understand, perhaps it would not, but the account itself—being a simple reporting of events that transpired—would surely be perfectly plain.
I DID describe that thing! “Physically moving, with intent, to cut off the girl’s hair” is EXACTLY what “whispering in someone’s ear and making them twitch” is! EXACTLY. It’s not a different situation! But you seemed to want something more salacious, so I refused to give it to you. I want you to understand, but I’m not here to amuse you.
I… think there is a misunderstanding here, and perhaps it’s on my end, but it seems at least partly to be on yours.
First of all, I’m really not sure where you’re getting “salacious”, so let’s set that aside right away. Nothing even remotely like that is anywhere in what I wrote.
Secondly, let’s recap.
You said:
You then analogized this to the “whispering in someone’s ear” scenario. I asked what this is supposed to be analogy for; i.e., can you in fact do something to someone, and have them not understand what it is you did, or how? (This, presumably, would suggest to us that you had some capability that this other person did not; and this extra capability would be something-akin-to ‘enlightenment’.)
You also said some things about ‘sovereignty’, ‘agency’, and ‘Looking’. (These, too, it would seem—from your comments—are related somehow to Valentine’s ‘enlightenment’.)
So what I asked you was simple:
What is this unusual thing that you can do to someone, such that they are confused, or don’t know what you did or how; which signals some unusual capability that you possess?
Clearly, your story with the hair-clipper doesn’t qualify. In fact, it so obviously doesn’t qualify as an example of anything like what you implied you could provide an example of, that it did not even occur to me that you were, in fact, giving me what you thought was an example.
I mean—you (jokingly) threatened to cut off a woman’s hair. This showed her that there are some things she cares really viscerally about. Certainly a clever demonstration!
But what on earth has this to do with… well, any of what’s we’ve been discussing?
I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but I don’t see anything like a connection. Spell out your chain of reasoning, please. Even if I’m not convinced, I’d at least like to understand what you’re claiming.
Ohhhh. Okay.
THAT I tried to cut off her hair isn’t the “unusual thing”. HOW I tried to cut of her hair is the “unusual thing”. Specifically, the non-verbal signals of intent, dominance, objectification, and raw power, pointed directly at her, while threatening something she cared about, are the “unusual thing”.
I’m starting to think you were accusing me of believing in something supernatural?
Indeed not; I can’t possibly be accusing you of believing in anything supernatural, since it has been quite unclear to me what, if anything, you are claiming to believe.
Now, as of this last comment, the “if anything” part is withdrawn; clearly, you are saying something. But what? That’s what I’m still unsure of.
I don’t quite follow. Could you elaborate? What is unusual about these ‘signals’ (and what are they, in particular)?
Following the analogy, it would seem that the young lady in your account should have been confused about what you were doing, or how; and, perhaps, that I, or other unenlightened onlookers / those to whom you relate the story, should also be confused about this.
But nothing in your story seems confusing to me. Should it? What you did seems to me to have been clever, but straightforward (which is not to deny the cleverness!). I don’t have any trouble fitting it into my perfectly ordinary view of the world; nor, I suspect, would any “man in the street”. Should I? What am I missing?
Edit: Or is the claim here simply that ‘enlightenment’ (apologies, I know the term has been objected to—I mean whatever-state-you-have-achieved that is unusual and is the sort of thing being discussed—feel free to provide a better term) helps to generate this sort of cleverness (which, though not itself mysterious or unusual, is nonetheless clever, and thus useful—i.e., constitutes ‘cake’)? That would be a reasonable enough claim. Let me know if this is what you meant.
P.S. In a sibling thread, I asked you for a similar sort of account, but one that was pertinent to the topic at hand. You said you might provide one “another time”. This implies that there is such an account, and that the one you’ve provided so far isn’t it. But now you’re saying that what you already recounted is ‘it’. Again—what am I missing?
Imagine trying to tell a hunter gatherer about why we build the Large Hadron Collider and tell him about how we discovered the Higgs Boson.
Then he asks you: “So it’s somehow like the ritual our medicine man does to speak with ghosts he otherwise couldn’t see?”
The inferential distance won’t allow you to give the hunter gather a good idea about the event that happens at the Large Hadron Collider.
Update: Just yesterday, I did a gentler version of “pulling someone’s head up from their phone” to Eli Tyre. It was mostly wordless, and involved no action on my part that would be really perceivable to an outside observer. He said he would describe his experience here; hopefully he’ll do so while the experience is still fresh in his mind.
Here’s a concrete thing that actually happened once! (More or less. Small details have been modified to extract pith.)
A girl came to me for dance lessons. One of the things that she wanted was to understand how to “push through” things that she knew her body could do, but her mind couldn’t.
We talked a lot about agency, about CARING. About how, when you know you really care, you can always find a way to push through. She wasn’t getting it.
Finally, I looked at her hair. It was strawberry-blonde, down to her knees, and always meticulously brushed, conditioned, and perfumed.
Then I asked her, “what will you let me do, to explain to you what CARING feels like?”
She looked at me and said something like “at this point, do whatever you have to.”
So I said, “watch this. This is what caring feels like.”
And I picked up a hair clipper and turned it on, and with my other hand I grabbed a fistful of her hair...
And she freaked, and screamed at me, and I let go, and she pulled away, and she stormed out. And the next week, she came back and we had a long, intense conversation about CARING.
And I would never, EVER have actually cut her hair. But if I hadn’t aggressively reached for it, and turned on the clippers, she would have seen through it. She had to get, in her gut, what was at stake.
The relationship was pretty strained after that, but she finally understood CARING.
Cool! This is exactly the sort of answer I wanted: one where you literally tell us what actually took place.
Now, could you give exactly that sort of answer—one that involves a literal account of events—but about the thing we were talking about in the first place?
Nope! Maybe some other time.
Have you actually experience at explaining this to someone and getting this result?
I don’t see theists going “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH THAT I DID NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DO THAT I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU’D BE TOUCHING NEVER DO THAT TO ANYONE EVER AGAIN!!” after they read a good blog post explaining why God doesn’t exist.
In the same way I wouldn’t expect to get that reaction for anything related to this. I remember sitting for lunch after a lecture on a related subject and other people at the table simply didn’t remember the relevant things that were said in the lecture. They didn’t register the claims at all. Human minds are quite resilient to being changed on a basic level in a short amount of time.
The thing that ialdabaoth is gesturing at with “fuck with your agency” is not an explanation (I don’t know what it is, but it’s not an explanation). An explanation would be a text message sent to someone’s phone in the cell-phone world; ialdaboth is gesturing at the thing where you whisper directly into someone’s ear, which is a very different sort of thing.
Do you feel there’s a concrete thing he’s gesturing at? If so, can you give an additional hint about what you mean that’s not obvious enough that it doesn’t do any damage?
Write an explanation, and post it publicly, in encrypted form. Later, when you feel that it’s acceptable, post the decryption key. (In the meantime, send the key to some people—who will not to disclose it to the general public—so that they may immediately verify that your explanation is legit.) (Edit: Naturally, these should not be people from anywhere near ialdabaoth’s or Valentine’s social circles.)
Sound good?
Edit: I wrote this comment prior to ialdabaoth editing it with a lot more material. Reading now.
Edit 2: Ok, I’ve read the longer version now. Response in sibling. The initial part of my comment stands.
I imagine there might be thorny consent issues around doing this to a person who doesn’t or maybe can’t understand what sort of thing it is.
Brother, you ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.
I believe I understood this metaphor. However, it seems to me this isn’t a good place to be, since I predict the metaphor is only useful to ground discussion about the thing that’s actually taking place. It is that second step that hasn’t worked.
Let’s flip this around. How do you know when someone is Looking? Is there a way to do so based on external behaviours? What is your equivalent of the following?
You give a good example with the hair clipper, but I don’t know how much, if at all, that relates to Looking. If it is closely related I have a few follow-up questions that probably get to the crux of the issue I specifically am stuck on.
What kinds of things are good to Look at? My guesses:
your own thinking (as Val stated earlier), your close relationships, group dynamics, the world. Anything I’ve missed?