RichardKennaway comments on A Rational Education - Less Wrong

12 Post author: wedrifid 23 June 2010 05:48AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 20 July 2010 04:50:17PM *  2 points [-]

(I only recently saw this comment, hence the tardy response to it.)

My guess is that for instrumental rationality the optimal courses are dance, yoga, and above all acting.

What is the relevance that you see in these? I've done yoga for a long time, and apart from mens sana in corpore sano no particular connection with rationality has ever occurred to me. Given that dance and acting are mentioned in the same breath, I suspect that your reasons for including them are something other than the social aspect of dancing in nightclubs or using acting skills for deception. How would the practice of these things assist in, say, solving a scientific research problem, negotiating a house purchase, negotiating the possibility of an intimate relationship, or raising public support for cryonics?

Comment author: MichaelVassar 21 July 2010 05:31:43AM *  3 points [-]

By making you more aware of and more able to deal with, compensate for, control and use emotions, healthier, more energetic, less gullible, etc. Also, in the case of yoga, a better materialist who would propose better hypotheses in mind related subjects and some mechanics related subjects and would be more likely to use analysis and experiment in the right cases.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 21 July 2010 06:28:54AM 1 point [-]

Is there any evidence that merely pursing yoga causes people to have better materialistic theories of mind? I am very skeptical that it leads to experiment!

I think you are saying that these are all good avenues to know thyself, but people compartmentalize so much that I think you really have to say that explicitly.