Erfeyah

Towards a More So­phis­ti­cated Un­der­stand­ing of Myth and Reli­gion (?)

Stupid Ques­tions Fe­bru­ary 2017

• Erfeyah 1 Jan 2018 19:14 UTC

  7 points

  on: From Ra­tion­al­ity to Power in 3 Steps

  I am wondering about a trend I see in at least a couple of your posts. Of course I might be completely off the mark here but I will tell you and maybe something interesting will come of it.

  It seems to me that a significant part of the posts are devoted to a kind of self affirming “I know something that other people don’t”. Now, it so happens that I have found myself in that kind of mentality many years ago and I needed a bit of a shock to start getting out of it. It seems to be that when a person really acquires knowledge they get on with applying the knowledge in the world instead of trying to inflate their self image through peer appraisal or other means. When the knowledge is not real or mature on the other hand, paradoxically, a very common behaviour is to try to teach!

  There are many parts in the posts that imply certainty about exceedingly complex things and also, in some cases, seem to disregard moral ramifications. Talking about “how to squeeze power out of them”, “A rationalist would see through the illusory web of words to the essence beyond”, “I found I couldn’t teach them what they needed to know”, “I had this dearth of power that needed resolving”, “It feels awkward trying to alter people’s concepts while acting like words have “true” meanings” etc.

  I am open to the possibility that you have found truth but I am not really sure that this and a couple of other posts do much more than stating confidence.

• Erfeyah 21 Jan 2018 20:37 UTC

  5 points

  on: Kenshō

  Thank you for your very interesting post Valentine.

  I am coming to this topic from a quite different viewpoint than most of the comments I read (did not read them all). That is because I believe I know exactly what you are talking about due to having this experience myself. Nevertheless, I think you are mistaken to call it enlightenment.

  The base of what you are describing as ‘Looking’ is that there is a different way of perceiving the world. Something like a separate perceptual channel or mode. This concept and its various distortions can be indeed found in all the mystical traditions as well as in all kinds of gurus, cults and New Age formulations.

  If you study primary material more in depth you will find a good description of the phase you are (to my estimation) in. You got a glimpse of something existing and you try to teach it. This is analogous to understanding that something called number 1 exists, ignore the rest of mathematics and try to convince others of the existence of the number 1. This is very common when people have what can be called a ‘mystical’ or ‘religious’ experience through drugs or application of certain exercises without prescription. What is called in some systems the ‘commanding’ or ‘lower’ self consumes the experience as a status/​ego inflating mechanism. Jung encapsulates this issue in his warning to “beware of unearned wisdom”.

  My suggestion would be to study the works of Idries Shah. Not skim, study. Start from the more psychological books like Knowing How to Know and Learning How to Learn. Most people will not read his writings because they refuse (for good rational reasons) to entertain the hypothesis of extrasensory perception. But since you are accepting the hypothesis, I guarantee you that you won’t find a more lucid exposition of what the mystics refer to as ‘the science of man’. Just a warning though. You will have to let go of the conviction that you have already achieved something, together with its associated positive feelings. That is the minimum sacrifice you have to make..

  Let me know what you think of all that :)

  P.S: Concerning your attempts to communicate your experience you might be interested in my description of the problem in my post Too Much Effort | Too Little Evidence

• Erfeyah 11 Dec 2017 13:04 UTC

  5 points

  on: The list

  Some, hopefully, constructive criticism. I don’t feel you have developed your idea to the point where it can be argued for or against. You are talking about the nature of the human mind and not of an implementation for A.I so even your assumption that the brain uses data structures akin to the ones found in computers is unfounded. If you are using it more as a metaphor then I am not sure it is a useful one. Why is there a static list and not an action generated anew at the moment of decision? It is more likely (and more in line with current neuroscientific evidence) that the mind is akin to an always online system that can generate internal and external responses on the fly.

• Erfeyah 22 Dec 2016 12:34 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: MrMind’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions De­cem­ber 2016

  Good point. On reflection, I think my question is trying to project a criticism of mine regarding the community. Apologies for trying to sneak it in as a question. I seem to have the impression that the community is projecting an image of effective rationality when I can not see practical applications and sometimes I see mistakes of overconfidence towards conclusions. That is what made me think that the community thinks it has found some methodology that is more robust than the usual ones.

  Actually getting involved and starting commenting is giving me a better view of what is actually going on. I think I will have to take some time to get a feel of the situation before I voice criticisms.

  Thanks!

• Erfeyah 15 Jan 2018 14:32 UTC

  4 points

  on: Prune

  You are using interesting symbols that also happen to be the same symbols used by humanity in mythological structures as found in cultures all around the world. There are some great points but I would like to bring up the possibility that you are exhibiting some biases stemming from your current perception of the world. In your words:

  Imagine that your river of Babble at its source, the subconscious: a foaming, ugly-colored river littered with half-formed concepts, too wild to navigate, too dirty to drink from. A quarter mile across, the bellow of the rapids is deafening.

  Downstream, you build a series of gates to tame the rushing rapids and perhaps extract something beautiful and pure.

  The image of water or ‘the deep’ is universally used in mythology and one of its traditional meanings is the ‘unknown’ which of course coincides here with the subconscious. Notice that you are painting a picture of it being ugly-colored, littered, half-formed etc. A more useful approach would be to see it, for example, as deeper, less differentiated, ancient and thus shaped by evolutionary time, hiding treasures within dangers etc.

  In the same manner you can start understanding in more depth the emerging symbol of the stream. As a rationalist you tend to idealise this part of the metaphor but you need to balance your assessment. Of course it can be seen as a kind of purification but it can also be seen as something that dries out if not kept in connection to the sea or of course littered. There are so many symbolic threads that have been explored deeply in organically evolved mythological structures.

  I am barely scratching the surface here but I hope you will find this comment useful.

• Erfeyah 20 Dec 2017 14:22 UTC

  4 points

  on: Mana

  After reading twice I am still unclear on what you mean by ‘mana’ but I want to keep an open mind.

  You write:

  I once tried to apply mana to get a rental car company to hold to a thing they said earlier over the phone which my plans were counting on. And accidentally got the low-level employee I was applying mana to to offer me a 6-hour car ride in her own car.

  Could you explain in detail exactly what is happening in your mind (to the best of your introspective abilities) when you ‘apply mana’. Is this ‘application’ mediated by language? If yes is the language in your head or verbalised to the other person? Is it just attention? intention? etc.

• Erfeyah 30 Aug 2017 10:19 UTC

  4 points

  on: In­trin­sic prop­er­ties and Eliezer’s metaethics

  It is extremely interesting to see the attempts of the community to justify through or extract values from rationality. I have been pointing to the alternative perspective, based on the work of Jordan Peterson, in which morality is grounded on evolved behavioral patterns. It is rationally coherent and strongly supported by evidence. The only ‘downside’ if you can call it that is that it turns out that morality is not based on rationality and the “ought from an is” problem is an accurate portrayal of our current (and maybe general) situation.

  I am not going to expand on this unless you are interested but I have a question. What does the rationalist community in general, and your article, try to get at? I can think of two possibilities:

  [1] that morality is based on rational thought as expressed through language

  [2] that morality has a computational basis implemented somewhere in the brain and accessed through the conscious mind as an intuition

  I do not see how [1] can be true since we can observe the emergence of moral values in cultures in which rationality is hardly developed. Furthermore, even today as your article shows, we are straggling to extract value from rational argument so, our intuition can not be stemming from something we haven’t even succeeded at. As for [2], it is a very interesting proposal but I haven’t seen any scientific evidence that link it to structures in the human brain.

  I feel the rationalist community is resistant in entertaining the alternative because, if true, it would show that rationality is not the foundation of everything but a tool of assessing and manipulating. Maybe further resistance is caused because (in an slightly embarrassing turn of events) it brings stories, myth and religion into the picture again, albeit in a very different manner. But even if that proves to be the case so what? What is our highest priority here? Rationality or Truth?

• Erfeyah 9 Feb 2017 20:46 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: hodgestar’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions Fe­bru­ary 2017

  Shouldn’t a lack of belief in god imply:

  P(not(“God exists”)) = 0.5

  P(“God exists”) = 0.5

  (I am completely ignoring the very important part of defining God in the sentence as I take the question to be asking of a way to express ‘not knowing’ in probabilistic terms. This can be applied to any subject really.)

• Erfeyah 5 Feb 2017 23:16 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: stephen_s’s comment on: Are we run­ning out of new mu­sic/​movies/​art from a meta­phys­i­cal per­spec­tive?

  I see. It does still feel to me that you are asking a misguided question. I will try to unpack my thought so we can see where we are.

  There are two concepts that are part of your question: genre and newness. Before examining these though, let’s give an (inevitably inadequate) definition of art for the purpose of our discussion. Let’s say that art is “the arranging and reproduction of sensory objects perceivable by humans, with the intention of producing an effect on a human being”. This is as general as I can think of at the moment and it is important to point to the fact that the human being and its current state (instincts, language, culture, knowledge, conditioning, etc.) is part of the definition. I would argue that in this definition the permutations of possible artworks are essentially infinite.

  But to get a bit closer to what you are trying to explore let’s now carve out a subspace that you call ‘genre’. This is where we are going to find a problem. I was, actually, just having this discussion with a friend of mine that is completing his PhD in Musicology and specifically in Jazz. He came to a point where he got really confused about what ‘Jazz’ means. Is it only trumpet, sax, double bass, piano etc. bebop style jazz? Is it still jazz if you play with electronic or traditional instruments? Is it still Jazz when there is improvisation but no theme melody? What about improvised traditional music of Turkey? You get the point. What is a genre anyway? I offered my opinion on the subject by saying that you are confusing a label with the thing itself. Naming a genre is useful for organising your database and communicating certain characteristics but a genre is not a real thing, it is a communication/​organisation tool.

  This can then clarify our question on ‘newness’. If you can define a genre in a way that is restricted enough to seem limited then yes, it will be. But you should take care to avoid confusing a limited, artificial concept for the universe itself.

• Erfeyah 30 Dec 2016 10:52 UTC

  4 points

  on: Stupid Ques­tions De­cem­ber 2016

  I am seeing an ‘epistemic status’ descriptor used in some posts. If I want to use it does the community have a standard vocabulary described in a post somewhere or is it up to the author to use it as they like?

• Erfeyah 11 Jan 2018 12:16 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: De­mon Threads

  This is such a great suggestion. I have even noticed this dynamic in verbal conversations where I will have a perfectly civil and productive conversation with a person until we are part of a larger group. Another interesting thing is that the reverse can happen. A person that disagrees with me in private will support the same point when I defend it to another person in a group setting! Such a clear indication that the person’s goal was not learning but getting high on the emotion of winning!

  Meta: It is not possible to ‘move to private’ in LW is it?

• Erfeyah 11 Jan 2018 11:44 UTC

  3 points

  on: 1/​5/​2018 Up­date—Com­ment Styling

  Thanks for adding clear outlines and alternate colors to the comments. This is so much better! A couple of other things that need to change in my opinion:

  • When composing a comment the background is the same color as the parent text making it difficult to know where the post we are replying to ends and our comment starts. Once it is posted it is all good.


  • When clicking on a notification the comment it displayed at the top of the page which is very convenient but its background color is the same as the rest of the page. This makes it look wrong as it conflicts with the title being before the main text. The right approach would be to make it clear that this is a type of alert by, for example, changing the background color.


  • I don’t know if it is just me but I do not get spell checking when composing a post or comment.


  Thanks for all the great work!

• Erfeyah 10 Jan 2018 20:39 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Are these ar­gu­ments valid?

  With all due respect, active engagement and feedback is a great way to learn in addition to reading the sequences.

  Hazard above has pointed me to specific articles that I can apply directly to the analysis of arguments that I relate to, accelerating my learning. If Hazard and others are willing to help and I display the correct attitude towards learning I can only think of two problems this may cause:

  • You feel that posts such as this one are claiming your attention and you would prefer to avoid them completely.

  • You feel that they are cluttering the site itself.

  These are valid concerns but I would suggest that if your concerns are shared by a majority of users the problem can be adressed at the level of site design.

  I am also curious if you could specify exactly what you mean with the phrase “the same basic epistemological questions” in relation to this post.

• Erfeyah 28 Jun 2017 18:10 UTC

  3 points

  on: Open thread, June 26 - July 2, 2017

  I find the majority of intellectually leaning people tend towards embracing moral relativism and aesthetic relativism. But even those people act morally and arrive at similar base aesthetic judgements. The pattern indeed seems (to me) to be that, in both morality and aesthetics, there are basic truths and then there is a huge amount of cultural and personal variation. But the existence of variation does not negate the foundational truths. Here are a couple of examples of how this performative contradiction is an indication that these foundational truths are at the very least believed in by humans no matter what they are saying:

  • People in general (including moral relativists) have a good conception of good and evil, believe in its existence and act for the good. There is also an intuition of why that is better which is related to concepts such as creation, destruction, harmony etc. and an underlying choice of moving towards creation and improvement.

  • I am a musician and have had extensive exposure to experimental and avant garde music inside academia. There is a kind of tendency in modern art to say that anything goes but I feel that this is hypocritical. I had discussions with people insisting on everything being subjective and how harmony does not really exist but I believe it is telling that they would never, ever put wrong (for lack of a better word) music on for their enjoyment.

  Would love to hear your thoughts on that especially if you consider yourself a moral relativist.

• Erfeyah 28 Jun 2017 17:25 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: blankcanvas’s comment on: Open thread, June 26 - July 2, 2017

  This is the question isn’t it? Rationality can help you create and implement strategies but the choice of your goal is another matter. Of course as humans we have some build in goals that are common to everyone:

  • Basic Survival (food, water, warmth, selter etc.). In our era that means a job.

  • Social Interaction

  • Intimate Relationship and Family

  If you have these sorted then you can decide what is important for you as a next level goal. Attempts have been made in psychology to organise goals (an example). I personally have found that there are much deeper value systems that can be experientially confirmed. A large part of the LW community seems (to my current personal assessment) to be behind in their understanding due to a kind of undetected prejudice. You see, the most advanced value systems are actually stemming from stories as can be found in stories. Myth, religion, mysticism, drama, literature etc. And there is a growing amount of evidence that they have evolved to accord with reality and not to be socially constructed (and definitely not rationally arrived at).

  If your new age alert was activated due to my last statement consider the possibility of this undetected prejudice I was talking about. Check out the work of Jordan Peterson.

• Erfeyah 18 Apr 2017 12:13 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: tristanm’s comment on: Towards a More So­phis­ti­cated Un­der­stand­ing of Myth and Reli­gion (?)

  I do not see how a directional “meta-narrative” or master plan is needed for an understanding of Peterson’s view. What he is saying is that our mythology preceded rationality and its qualities reflect behavioural patterns and attitudes that allowed adaptation, survival and growth. Morality, for example, did not emerge through rationality but through acting out patterns of behaviours and experiencing the results according to the underlying qualities of nature. The patterns that produced beneficial results were encoded into stories, rituals, myths and religions.

  His view of “truth” as discussed in Sam Harris’ podcast is a separate philosophical point that I am not in alignment with myself. I believe that using the word “wisdom” for this kind of truth is much clearer for the purpose of conversation in our current culture. That is what Peterson in the end chose to do during the second podcast with Harris. It is worth noting that when talking about Peterson (or anyone else for that matter) discussing his points is not an all or nothing affair. As it is usual with thinkers he will get some things right and other things wrong. But the things he is getting right (in my estimation) are really important.

  If I am missing something in your point could you address some of his more specific claims?

• Erfeyah 8 Feb 2017 20:33 UTC

  3 points

  on: Stupid Ques­tions Fe­bru­ary 2017

  I am getting to grips with the basics of Bayesian rationality and there is something I would like to clarify. For this comment please assume that whenever I use the word ‘rationality’ I mean ‘Bayesian rationality’.

  I feel there is too strong a dependency between rationality and available data. If current understanding is close to the truth then using rational assessment will be effective. But in any complex subject the data is so inconclusive that the possibility that we can not even conceive the right hypothesis, to rationally choose it from its alternatives, is quite high. No? I will give a simplified example.

  In this post it is said:

  Suppose you are a doctor, and a patient comes to you, complaining about a headache. Further suppose that there are two reasons for why people get headaches: they might have a brain tumor, or they might have a cold. A brain tumor always causes a headache, but exceedingly few people have a brain tumor. In contrast, a headache is rarely a symptom for cold, but most people manage to catch a cold every single year. Given no other information, do you think it more likely that the headache is caused by a tumor, or by a cold?

  It then goes on to explain how we rationally choose between the options. That is all good. Let’s suppose though that the actual cause of the headache is psychosomatic. And let us also suppose that the culture in which the experiment is taking place does not have a concept of psychosomatic causes. They just always think it is either cancer or a cold. And most of the times it is. Is it not true that a rational assessment of the situation will fail? How would someone with a sound rational mind approach that situation (in the world of the thought experiment)?

  This is dealt with in science by not accepting explanations as truths until they are confirmed experimentally (Well.. in an ideal science cause in reality scientists jump into philosophical speculation all too often). But rationality can only be effective if we assume that we are quite close to an accurate understanding of nature. And I hope you will agree that the evidence does not indicate that at all.

  Am I missing something here?

• Erfeyah 5 Feb 2017 21:33 UTC

  3 points

  on: Are we run­ning out of new mu­sic/​movies/​art from a meta­phys­i­cal per­spec­tive?

  I would argue that you are taking a narrow view of what music is. The fascination with the collection and intellectual understanding of information, as well as an addiction to emotional impact is something that is characteristic of our culture. And of course the music produced by a culture will be a reflection of the mind of its people.

  I recommend that you examine carefully the wide variety of functions that music (and art in general) has in traditional cultures. Emotional, medicinal, social, as an aid to memorisation (see the Australian aborigines or vedic chanting), religious and spiritual, war and discipline and the list goes on. It is an extremely complex, and actually not yet understood, subject. In my opinion what you see in mainstream art is the exaggeration of our cultural characteristics mediated by the ability to record, manipulate and reproduce ‘art’ en mass.