CJewell comments on Never Leave Your Room - Less Wrong

66 Post author: Yvain 18 March 2009 12:30AM

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Comment author: Matt_Simpson 18 March 2009 12:55:36PM 4 points [-]

A friend of mine is interested in chaos magic which, from what he has told me, is essentially a collection of psychological tricks to perform on oneself. There even seems to be a tacit awareness that it's not actually magic, though I don't think the awareness ever becomes explicit.

The weirdest thing about it is that there is no single set of symbols or doctrine, chaos magicians create their own or steal bits from other magical or religious traditions.

Comment author: ciphergoth 18 March 2009 01:19:17PM 3 points [-]

There even seems to be a tacit awareness that it's not actually magic, though I don't think the awareness ever becomes explicit.

AFAICT most chaos magicians believe in the supernatural, but at least some have been thoroughgoing materialists who believe only in the psychological power of suspension of disbelief.

Comment author: CJewell 19 March 2009 08:16:18AM *  4 points [-]

It would not be a stretch to say that the Yudkowsky story alluded to in the main article exhibits some of the same psychological tricks that 'chaos magicians' practice. The pure white rationality dojo, the symbolic plaques, the importance invested in each of the rooms, the sort of cleansing ritual and meditation techniques the main character uses. And most importantly to Chaos Magicians:

"Symbols could be made to stand for anything; a flexibility of visual power that even the Bardic Conspiracy would balk at admitting outright."

The power of symbols is super important.

Even the more supernatural aspects of Chaos Magic could be looked upon as a practice in belief annihilation, much like Eliezer's story. By examining the mechanism of belief through practice and meditation, one starts to exhibit more control over one's beliefs. More control, the more likely one will catch irrational beliefs. When one has complete control over beliefs, then rationality can control the monkey brain. When you laugh at something, like Yvain does below, you're exhibiting some control over what you're taking seriously. That's good, so long as what you're laughing at DESERVES to be laughed at.

btw, laughter is a chaos magic dispelling/banishing technique :D Thought that was interesting.