If bouncing between misanthropic feelings and a metta view of humanity was a professional sport, I think I could compete, and this is the idea that keeps me flying back and forth:
First, I thought about my own positionality and luck. I fell into the community I have now by happenstance (counting my contrarian temperament and wordcel nature as happenstance), and this community is deliberate in rewarding rigorous thinking. And after you marinate in this community for a bit, you will just absorb the epistemic norms and wisdom without much effort on your part, so it’s not like I did anything special.
The Sapolsky-an idea that we cannot take credit for our accomplishments any more than we should be held ultimately responsible for our mistakes makes it easier to give leeway to those who have no interest in truth-seeking in conversation, but that same leeway is substantially harder to give when they invariably go and act on their mistaken ideas and views of the world, especially in such a way that is demonstratively harmful to other people.
Admittedly, I find Peter Zappfe’s “Existential Elk” idea that we are burdened with a potency of consciousness that we cannot handle to make it easier to give in to misanthropy because, despite the outcomes, it (for lack of better phrasing) might not have been anyone’s fault that we ended up this way? I’m still stuck on this, personally.
You’ve inspired me to write my first ever comment on a LessWrong post. For my own chance at further enlightenment, I wonder how you’ve thought about and assessed the potential (conversational) and kinetic (real-world actions and consequences) energies of the other Irish Elk in the jungle.
If bouncing between misanthropic feelings and a metta view of humanity was a professional sport, I think I could compete, and this is the idea that keeps me flying back and forth:
The Sapolsky-an idea that we cannot take credit for our accomplishments any more than we should be held ultimately responsible for our mistakes makes it easier to give leeway to those who have no interest in truth-seeking in conversation, but that same leeway is substantially harder to give when they invariably go and act on their mistaken ideas and views of the world, especially in such a way that is demonstratively harmful to other people.
Admittedly, I find Peter Zappfe’s “Existential Elk” idea that we are burdened with a potency of consciousness that we cannot handle to make it easier to give in to misanthropy because, despite the outcomes, it (for lack of better phrasing) might not have been anyone’s fault that we ended up this way? I’m still stuck on this, personally.
You’ve inspired me to write my first ever comment on a LessWrong post. For my own chance at further enlightenment, I wonder how you’ve thought about and assessed the potential (conversational) and kinetic (real-world actions and consequences) energies of the other Irish Elk in the jungle.