byrnema comments on Open Thread: December 2009 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: CannibalSmith 01 December 2009 04:25PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (263)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: MrHen 31 December 2009 03:54:17PM *  0 points [-]

Maybe I wouldn't. There have been times in my life when I've had to struggle to feel attached to reality, because it didn't feel objectively real. Now if value isn't objectively real, I might find myself again feeling indifferent, like one part of myself is carrying on eating and driving to work, perhaps socially moral, perhaps not, while another part of myself is aware that nothing actually matters. I definitely wouldn't feel integrated.

Yeah, I think I can relate to that. This edges very close to an affective death spiral, however, so watch the feedback loops.

The way I argued myself out of mine was somewhat arbitrary and I don't have it written up yet. The basic idea was taking the concepts that I exist and that at least one other thing exists and, generally speaking, existence is preferred over non-existence. So, given that two things exist and can interact and both would rather be here than not be here, it is Good to learn the interactions between the two so they can both continue to exist. This let me back into accepting general sensory data as useful and it has been a slow road out of the deep.

I have no idea if this is relevant to your questions, but since my original response was a little off maybe this is closer?

Comment author: byrnema 02 January 2010 12:23:53AM 0 points [-]

This edges very close to an affective death spiral,

Agreed. I find that often it isn't so much that I find the thought process intrinsically pleasurable (affective), but that in thinking about it too much, I over-stimulate the trace of the argument so that after a while I can't recall the subtleties and can't locate the support. After about 7 comments back and forth, I feel like a champion for a cause (no objective values RESULTS IN NIHILISM!!) that I can't relate to anymore. Then I need to step back and not care about it for a while, and maybe the cause will spontaneously generate again, or perhaps I'll have learned enough weighting in another direction that the cause never takes off again.