gjm: This is not a rationalist origin story, because it is not the story of how you became a rationalist. (It seems fairly clear that in fact you are not a rationalist. This is a description, not a criticism; most people are not rationalists, and manage just fine without being rationalists.) ama: Big thanx for all your thoughts.
Hmmm Am I not also rational and also a rationalist by agreeing with you, who are a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
And aren’t you, to some degree, also not a rationalist by agreeing with me, who you say is not a rationalist, that I am not a rationalist? smile
I consider myself to be both rational and irrational, especially since rationalists believe in irrational numbers.smile
gjm: It is also not about “how we can overcome bias”, but about how we can (allegedly) overcome one particular failing which is not a bias in the sense that OB is meant to be about. ama: I wd appreciate you or anyone explaining in what sense that OB is meant here. Also explaining what is that one particular failing. Thanx in advance.
gjm: As an account of how one can go about eliminating (perhaps unconscious) hatred for oneself and others, and replacing it with love, it has a severe deficiency: it doesn’t actually explain comprehensibly how one can. ama: That was just a teaser. The comprehensive bit was going to be my next post as per Blume!smile
gjm: (Your central idea seems to be that you should love yourself “as” everything, including things you aren’t. ama: I am and you are everything already because all words and their opposites are stored in us as as, and those words are everything in the brain and represent everything outside of the brain, ‘everything’ also being a word. There are even more words than things since we have a word for no thing. smile
So I love myself as gjm so that I auto love and respect gjm as myself. I love myself as known and as unknown too, so that I don’t have to know you to love you but love you to know you and so am loving you before I know you or get to know you. This way, no bad knowledge I happen to know about you after I get to know you, will affect nor be able to affect my Love and Respect for you since my L&R was not and is not based on who you are, good or bad, but on Love of itself: the Love and R being unconditional, having no conditions nor limitations. Neat, eh?smile It is why kids say ‘It takes one to know one’ just based on learning the alphabet, and without any adult teaching them to say so, which teachers in fact discourage them from saying so.
gjm: That seems pretty incoherent to me. ama: I understand why you feel that way: it will tend to discombobulate you initially.
I love myself as coherent and incoherent and so I take your opinion of me with Love and Respect, and thank you for your honesty. However, there is coherence in incoherence, and vice versa.
kjm: You might try to do it by, e.g., imagining yourself in the shoes of everyone you interact with, and that might be an effective way of having a more positive attitude towards them; is that the sort of thing you mean? ama: Sort of, but all inclusive: it covers all words and their opposites and so includes all those who I have NOT interacted with nor yet imagined.
kjm: And you say that by not loving yourself “as” an X, where X is something you aren’t, you’re thereby hating others. I think that’s obviously false.) ama: But I am x, since x is one of the letters stored in me as me. Example: If I hate or love myself as kjm or as any word that describes you, then I auto hate or love you as myself. It’s automatic. The brain works by words, words work by their opposites, and all words and their opposites work most well by the word Love, and don’t work at all well with the word Hate.
kjm: I think your interpolations into the words of William James and Bertrand Russell change their meanings (James’s more than Russell’s). ama: Sorry, my bad. I was trying to be helpful. But what prejudices do you think WJ was referring to?
kjm: Since you appear to be quoting them as authorities, it doesn’t seem to me a good sign that you have to change what they’re saying to do so. ama: Good point: In Love and Respect of myself as right and wrong, as correct and incorrect, as correcting and as corrected, I take this correction from you as correct and as corrector, and so it will make me even more correct.smile
kjm: In general, attempts at proselytism are not likely to find an enthusiastic reception here. Hmmmm This has no proselytistic angle to it al all, even though I see how it might seem so.
Actually, I am also both theist and atheist since I love myself as both, and so love and respect all atheists & all theists as they are. There is actually no reason to not be an atheist, and there are many atheists who are better theists as atheists than theists are at being theists. smile
The only purpose is to share on overcoming bias as in “Self-Haters Donate More” and “Haters Cheat Less.”
Vladimir Nesov: Your presentation is impenetrably chaotic.
ama: How wonderful that I have met with a paradoxical contradiction and contradictory paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.smile
With regards to Niels Bohr, as quoted in L I Ponomarev, The Quantum Dice.
Out of my impenetrable chaos, you did get the penetratingly orderly sense that my presentation was impenetrably chaotic?smile
And, isn’t there order in chaos, and vice versa?smile
So, you should now be able to do the opposite thingy!smile
Thanks too for your all the words in your thought.
And please ask questions, if there are any at all.