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cousin_it comments on The Fundamental Question - Less Wrong
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PeerInfinity, I don't know you personally and can't tell whether you have True Believer Syndrome. I'm very sorry for provoking so many painful thoughts... Still. Hoffer claims that the syndrome stems from lack of self-esteem. Judging from what you wrote, I'd advise you to value yourself more for yourself, not only for the faraway goals that you may someday help fulfill.
no need to apologise, and thanks for pointing out this potential problem.
(random trivia: I misread your comment three times, thinking it said "I know you personally can't tell whether you have True Believe Syndrome")
as for the painful thoughts... It was a relief to finally get them written down, and posted, and sanity-checked. I made a couple attempts before to write this stuff down, but it sounded way too angry, and I didn't dare post it. And it turns out that the problem was mostly my fault after all.
oh, and yeah, I am already well aware that I have dangerously low self-esteem. but if I try to ignore these faraway goals, then I have trouble seeing myself as anything more valuable than "just another person". Actually I often have trouble even recognizing that I qualify as a person...
also, an obvious question: are we sure that True Believer Syndrome is a bad thing? or that a Saviour Complex is a bad thing?
random trivia: now that I've been using the City of Lights technique for so long, I have trouble remembering not to use a plural first-person pronoun when I'm talking about introspective stuff... I caught myself doing that again as I checked over this comment.
I'm pretty sure of that. Not because of what it does to your goals, but because of what it does to you.
Please forgive my ignorance, or possibly my deliberate forgetfulness, but... can you please remind me what you think it does to me?
Several comments above you wrote that both Christianity and Singularitarianism drained you of the resources you could've spent on having fun. As far as I can understand, neither ideology gave you anything back.
At first I misread what you said and was about to reply with this paragraph:
oh. that's mostly because I was Doing It Wrong. I was pushing myself harder than I could actually sustain in the long term, and that ended up being counterproductive to singularitarianism. ( and also counterproductive to fun, though I still don't consider fun to be of any significant inherent value, compared to the value of the mission)
But then I noticed that when I read your comment, I was automatically adding the words "and this would be bad for the mission", which probably isn't what you meant.
and I might as well admit that as I was thinking about what else to say in reply, everything I thought of was phrased in terms of what mattered to singularitarianism. I was going to resist the suggestion that I should be paying any attention to what the ideology could give back. I was going to resist the suggestion that fun had any use other than helping me stay focused on the mission, if used in moderation.
And I'm still undecided about whether this reaction is a bad thing, because I'm still measuring good and bad according to singularitarian values, not according to selfish values. And I would still resist any attempt to change my values to anything that might conflict with singularitarianism, even in a small way.
ugh... even if everyone from SIAI told me to stop taking this so seriously, I would probably still resist. And I might even consider this as a reason to doubt how seriously they are taking the mission.
ok, so I guess it would be silly of me to claim that I don't have a true believer's complex, or a saviour complex, or just fanaticism in general.
though I still need to taboo the word "fanaticism"... I'm still undecided about whether I'm using it as if it means "so sincerely dedicated that the dedication is counterproductive", or "so sincerely dedicated that anyone who hasn't tried to hack their own mind into being completely selfless would say that I'm taking this way too far".
By the first definition, I would of course consider my fanaticism to be counterproductive and harmful. But I would naturally treat the second definition as an example of other people not taking the mission seriously enough.
And now I'm worrying that all this stuff I'm saying is actually not true, and is really just an attempt to signal how serious and dedicated I am to the mission. Actually, yeah, I would be really surprised if there wasn't any empty signalling going on, and if the signalling wasn't causing my explanations to be inaccurate.
In other news, I'm really tired at the moment, but I'm pushing myself to type this anyway, because it feels really important and urgent.
I think there was more I wanted to say, but whatever it was, I forget it now, and this comment is already long, and I'm tired, so I'll stop writing for now.
Say it was the case that promoting a singularity was a bad idea and that, in particular, SIAI did more harm than good. If someone had compelling evidence of this and presented it to you would you be capable of altering your beliefs and behavior in accordance with this new data? I take it the True Believer would not and that we can all agree with would be a bad thing.
ah, but Singularitarianism is different: a True Singularitarian is supposed to be able to update on this evidence, even if it means abandoning SIAI entirely.
Presented with evidence of the counterproductivity of SIAI, a True Singularitarian would then try to find a better way to help the efforts to achieving a positive Singularity, even if it meant creating an entirely new group for this purpose.
Note that "Singularitarian" is not the same as "SIAI Supporter", or "Eliezer Follower"
actually, I think the same applies to a True Christian. If a True Christian finds out that the church isn't doing its job properly, and the church refuses to correct what's wrong, then the True Christian is supposed to start their own church. And this actually happened many times through history...