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byrnema comments on What big goals do we have? - Less Wrong
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Bravo! We came up with this solution simultaneously -- possibly the most focused solution to theism we have.
My brain is happy with the proposed solution. I'll see if it works...
I'm updating this thread, about a month later.
I found that I wasn't able to make any progress in this direction.
(Recall the problem was the possibility of "true" meaning or purpose without objective value, and the solution proposed was to "stop valuing objective value". That is, find value in values that are self-defined.)
However, I wasn't able to redefine (reparametrize?) my values as independent of objective value. Instead, I found it much easier to just decide I didn't value the problem. So I find myself perched indifferently between continuing to care about my values (stubbornly) and 'knowing' that values are nonsense.
I thought I had to stop caring about value or about objective value .. actually, all I had to do was stop caring about a resolution. I guess that was easier.
I consider myself having 'progressed' to the stage of wry-and-superficially-nihilist. (I don't have the solution, you don't either, and I might as well be amused.)
I don't know what to say except, "that sucks", and "hang in there". :)
Thank you, but honestly I don't feel distressed. I guess I agree it sucks for rationality in some way. I haven't given up on rationality though -- I've just given up on [edited] excelling at it right now. [edited to avoid fanning further discussion]
If my experience is any guide, time will make a difference; there will be some explanation you've already heard that will suddenly click with you, a few months from now, and you'll no longer feel like a nihilist. After all, I very much doubt you are a nihilist in the sense you presently believe you are.
It's very annoying to have people project their experiences and feelings on you. I'm me and you're you.
You are also a non-mysterious human being.
I disagree with this comment.
First, I'm not claiming any magical non-reducibility. I'm just claiming to be human. Humans usually aren't transparently reducible. This is the whole idea behind not being able to reliably other-optimize. I'm generally grateful if people try to optimize me, but only if they give an explanation so that I can understand the context and relevance of their advice. It was Orthonormal that -- I thought was -- claiming an unlikely insider understanding without support, though I understand he meant well.
I also disagree with the implicit claim that I don't have enough status to assert my own narrative. Perhaps this is the wrong reading, but this is an issue I'm unusually sensitive about. In my childhood, understanding that I wasn't transparent, and that other people don't get to define my reality for me, was my biggest rationality hurdle. I used to believe people of any authority when they told me something that contradicted my internal experience, and endlessly questioned my own perception. Now I just try to ask the commonsense question: whose reality should I choose -- their's or mine? (The projected or the experienced?)
Later edit: Now that this comment has been 'out there' for about 15 minutes, I feel like it is a bit shrill and over-reactive. Well... evidence for me that I have this particular 'button'.
Your objection is reasonable. It is often considered impolite to analyze people based on their words, especially in public. It is often taken to be a slight on the recipient's status, as you took it.
As an actual disagreement with Vladimir you are simply mistaken. In the raw literal sense humans are non-mysterious, reducible objects. More importantly, in the more practical sense that Vladimir makes the claim you are, as a human being, predictable in many ways. Your thinking can be predicted with some confidence to operate with known failure modes that are consistently found in repeated investigations of other humans. Self reports in particular are known to differ from reliable indicators of state if taken literally and their predictions of future state are even worse.
If you told me, for example, that you would finish a project two weeks before the due date I would not believe you. If you told me your confidence level in a particular prediction you have made on a topic in which you are an expert then I will not believe you. I would expect that you, like that majority of experts, were systematically overconfident in your predictions.
Orthonormal may be mistaken in his prediction about your nihilist tendencies but Vladimir is absolutely correct that you are a non-mysterious human being, with all that it entails.
It gives me a warm glow inside whenever I hear of someone breaking free from that trap.
You're right. Sorry.
How odd. I remember that one of the key steps for me was realizing that if my drive for objective purpose could be respectable, than so could all of my other terminal values like having fun and protecting people. But I don't think I've ever heard someone else identify that as their key step until now... assuming we are talking about the same mental step.
It seems like there's just a big library of different "key insights" that different people require in order to collapse transcendent morality to morality.
That was totally awesome to watch. Thanks byrnema and Furcas!