This its very similar to another result: at the beginning, before seeing any draws, you believe that at the end of $n$ draws, every possible number of green draws is equally likely, i.e, $\int_0^1 \binom{n}{k}x^{n-k}(1-x)^{k} dx = \frac{1}{n+1}$. The proof: if you draw $n+1$ IID uniform $[0,1]$ random variables, on the one hand, the first one its equally likely to have any particular rank, so the probability it has rank $k+1$ is $\frac{1}{n+1}$. On the other hand, the probability it has rank $k+1$ is exactly the probability that $k$ of the remaining $n$ uniform random variables take a value greater than it, and $n-k$ of the remaining $n$ take a value lesser than it, which equals the integral.
Grotace
Karma: 4
EDIT: Thanks again for the discussion. It has been very helpful, because I think I can now articulate clearly a fundamental fear I have about meditation: it might lead to a loss of the desire to become better.
This makes sense.
Of course. You are, at the very least, technically right.
However, I think that obtaining enlightenment only makes it harder for you to change your values, because you’re much more likely to be fine with who you are. For example, the man who went through stream entry you linked to seems to have spent several years doing nothing, and didn’t feel particularly bad for it. Is that not scary? Is that likely to be a result of pursuing physical exercise?
On the other hand, if you spent time thinking clearly about your values, the likelihood of them changing for the better is higher, because you still have a desire (craving?) to be a better person.
Thank you for this comment. Even if you don’t remember exactly what happened, at the very least, your story of what happened is likely to be based on the theoretical positions you subscribe to, and it’s helpful to explain these theoretical positions in a concrete example.
I guess what I don’t like about what you’re saying is that it’s entirely amoral. You don’t say how actions can be good. Even if a sense of good were to exist, it would be somehow abstract, entirely third-personal, and have no necessary connection to actual action. All intentions just arise on their own, the brain does something with them, some action is performed, and that’s it. We can only be good people by accident, not by evaluating reasons and making conscious choices.
I also disagree that you can generally draw conclusions about what happens in normal states of consciousness from examining an abnormal state of consciousness.
The person who experienced stream entry whose thoughts you link to says (in the very next line after your quote) that he decided to sit still until he experienced a physiological drive. That seems to be a conscious decision.
EDIT: You can find another example of someone being completely amoral (in a very different way) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38
(I am not at all endorsing anything said in the video.)
To put the point starkly, as far as I can tell, whatever you’re saying (and what that video says) works just as well for a murderer as it does for you. Meditating, and obtaining enlightenment, allows a murderer to suffer less, while continuing to murder.
“I started out skeptical of many claims, dismissing them as pre-scientific folk-psychological speculation, before gradually coming to believe in them—sometimes as a result of meditation which hadn’t even been aimed at investigating those claims in particular, but where I thought I was doing something completely different.”
Did you come to believe in rebirth and remembering past lives?
Yes, I understand this.
You say that “I wasn’t sure of how long this was going to be healthy...”. Was this experienced as a negative valence? If so, why did you do what this valence suggested? I thought you were saying we shouldn’t necessarily make decisions based on negative valences. (From what you’ve been saying, I guess you did not experience the “thought of a cold shower being unhealthy” as a negative valence.)
If it wasn’t experienced as a negative valence, why did you leave the shower? Doesn’t leaving the shower indicate that you have a preference to leave the shower? Is it a self that has this preference? What computes this preference? Why is the result of this computation something worth following? Does the notion of an action being worthy make sense?
Thank you for your reply, which is helpful. I understand it takes time and energy to compose these responses, so please don’t feel too pressured to keep responding.
1. You say that positive/negative valence are not things that the system intrinsically has to pursue/avoid. Then when the system says it values something, why does it say this? A direct question: there exists at least a single case in which the why is not answered by positive/negative valence (or perhaps it is not answered at all). What is this case, and what is the answer to the why?
2. Often in real life, we feel conflicted within ourselves. Maybe different valuations made by different parts of us contradict each other in some particular situation. And then we feel confused. Now one way we resolve this contradiction is to reason about our values. Maybe you sit and write down a series of assumptions, logical deductions, etc. The output of this process is not just another thing some subsystem is shouting about. Reasons are the kind of things that motivate action, in anyone. So it seems the reasoning module is somehow special, and I think there’s a long tradition in Western philosophy of equating this reasoner with the self. This self takes into account all the things parts of it feel and value, and makes a decision. This self computes the tradeoffs involved in keeping/ letting go of craving. What do you think about this?
I think you are saying that the reasoning module is also somehow always under suspicion of producing mere rationalisations (like in the chicken claw story), and that even when we think it is the reasoning module making a decision, we’re often deluded. But if the reasoning module, and every other module, is to be treated as somehow not-final, how do (should) you make a decision when you’re confused? I think you would reject this kind of first-person decision making, and give a sort of third-person explanation of how the brain just does make decisions, somehow accumulating the things various subsystems say. But this provides no practical knowledge about what processes the brains of people who end up making good (or bad) decisions deploy.
3. This is unrelated to my main point, but the brain showing some behaviour in an ‘abnormal’ situation does not mean the same behaviour exists in the ‘normal’ situation. In particular, the theory that there are multiple subsystems doing their own thing might make sense in the case of the person with anosognosia or the person experiencing a binocular rivalry illusion, but it does not follow that the normal person in a normal situation also has multiple subsystems in the same way. Perhaps it might follow if you have a mechanistic, reductionist account of how the brain works. I’m not being merely pedantic; Merleau-Ponty takes this quite seriously in his analysis of Schneider.
Typically, when we reason about what actions we should or should not perform, at the base of that reasoning is something of the form “X is intrinsically bad.” Now, I’d always associated “X is intrinsically bad” with some sort of statement like “X induces a mental state that feels wrong.” Do I have access to this line of reasoning as a meditator?
Concretely, if someone asked me why I would go to a dentist if my teeth were rotting, I would have to reply that I do so because I care about my health or maybe because unhealthiness is intrinsically bad. And if they asked me why I care about my health, I cannot answer except to point to the fact the that it does not feel good to me, in my head. But from what I understand, the enlightened cannot say this, because they feel that everything is good to them, in their heads.
In fact, the later part of your response makes me feel that the enlightened cannot provide any reasons for their actions at all.
Thank you for your reply, and it does clarify some things for me. If I may summarise in short, I think you are saying:
Craving is a bad sort of motivation because it makes you react badly to obstacles, but other sorts of motivation can be fine.
Self-conscious/ craving-filled states of mind can be unproductive when trying to act on these other sorts of motivations.
I still have some questions though.
You say you may pursue pleasure because you value it for its own sake. But what is the self (or subsystem?) that is doing this valuing? It feels like the valuer is a lot like a “Self 1”, the kind of self which meditation should expose to be some kind of delusion.
Here’s an attempt to put the question another way. Some one suggested in one of the previous comment threads about the topic that non-self was a bit like not identifying with your short term desires, and also your long term desires (and then eventually not identifying with anything). So why is identifying yourself with your values compatible with non-self?
EDIT: I reproduce here part of my response to Isusr, which I think is relevant, and is perhaps yet another way to ask the same question.
Typically, when we reason about what actions we should or should not perform, at the base of that reasoning is something of the form “X is intrinsically bad.” Now, I’d always associated “X is intrinsically bad” with some sort of statement like “X induces a mental state that feels wrong.” Do I have access to this line of reasoning as a perfect meditator?
Concretely, if someone asked me why I would go to a dentist if my teeth were rotting, I would have to reply that I do so because I value my health, or maybe because unhealthiness is intrinsically bad. And if they asked me why I value my health, I cannot answer except to point to the fact the that it does not feel good to me, in my head. But from what I understand, the enlightened cannot say this, because they feel that everything is good to them, in their heads.
I kind of feel that the enlightened cannot provide any reasons for their actions at all.
I am a bit confused by the lines:
″...pursuing pleasure and happiness even if that sacrifices your ability to impact the world. Reducing the influence of the craving makes your motivations less driven by wireheading-like impulses, and more able to see the world clearly even if it is painful.”
Once we have deemed that wanting to pursue pleasure and happiness are wireheading-like impulses, why stop ourselves from saying that wanting to impact the world is a wireheading-like impulse?
You also talk about meditators ignoring pain, and how the desire to avoid pain is craving. Why isn’t a desire to avoid death craving? You clearly speak as if going to a dentist when you have a tooth ache is the right thing to do, but why? Once you distance your ‘self’ from pain, why not distance yourself from your rotting teeth?
All my intuitions about how to act are based on this flawed sense of self. And from what you are outlining, I don’t see how any intuition about the right way to act can possibly remain once we lose this flawed sense of self.
There’s a general discomfort I have with this series of posts that I’m not able to fully articulate, but the above questions seem related.
I think one reason doctors want such highly credible evidence is that they’re defending themself against attacks by snake oil salesmen. Historically, there have been many attempts to sell “treatments” that have absolutely no benefit at all, and for an individual doctor, it is very hard to tell whether they’re being sold something that actually works or not.
Another related reason for wanting highly credible evidence is that doctors tend to be conservative, out of a desire to not prescribe things that might harm their patient (they don’t necessarily believe harm coming from a prescription they make is the same sort of thing as harm coming from a disease they didn’t stop).
Now I don’t know why he actually reasons the way he does, but these are some possibilities. Perhaps you should make more efforts to understand his reasoning before coming up with a strategy to convince him.