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Will_Newsome comments on The Sacred Mundane - Less Wrong
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Comments (103)
Ha, that's my first reaction too, but "He trolls us because He loves us." I think He's sort of a bastard but I can't help but smile at His jokes despite that; He's a lot like reality in that way. (One of my friend's interpretation of the story of Job is roughly 'reality is allowed to fuck with you, but you must still love reality, you're never justified in turning your back on reality, and if you stay faithful to reality then you'll likely be rewarded but being rewarded isn't the point'. In the same vein, "I don't like YHWH, but that's not the point: I love Him and I fear Him.")
Sure, I'm acquainted with the argument. Personally, I've never found it compelling. Even if I assume that there was a deliberate communicator, be it YHWH or Gharlane of Eddore or whatever, I'm content to let it go about its business without my love.
As for fear, well, it doesn't really take much to inspire me to fear. I'm a relatively frail life form.
What does "stay[ing] faithful to reality" mean?
It's similar to staying faithful to someone you love, e.g. a wife or a good king. Caring about the way the world really is even if the world is really painful. Not flinching away from reality because it tells you something you don't want to hear, not rebuking reality because it dares to disagree with you, not resenting reality because it seems unjust. Not replacing reality with a fantasy because you're bored or because you want to escape. Not gerrymandering the definition of what counts as staying faithful to reality. Like Eliezer's "something to protect". It's something that binds you to reality and keeps you from going out and identifying with a lot of stupid hypotheses and having sex with tons of chicks and getting STDs or delusions or whatever. (Note that going on dates with a lot of ideas is great, but you shouldn't have sex with every idea you come across.)
I really like this framework. In particular, the interpretation of Job that goes with it. I may want to use them as part of this year's Less Wrong Solstice gathering, if that's okay with you.
How did it go? It seems like it would create some unsettling ambiguity in the "happy" ending.
I did not end up using it, although I periodically stumble upon this again and still think it's a neat way of thinking