= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
TimFreeman comments on Meditation, insight, and rationality. (Part 2 of 3) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (186)
The proposition "higher mathematics is useful" can be communicated to people with negligible mathematical training, along with specifics and supporting evidence. Higher math is required to describe the physics that can figure out from first principles how chemistry should work, and somewhat lower higher math can figure out the area under curves and so forth.
In particular, a person who knows no math can observe that people who know higher math are required in order to do chemistry simulations, for example.
Is there a similar easy way to make a claim that enlightenment is useful that is testable by unenlightened people?
(For the record, I'm inclined to believe you, but it would be comforting to have a concrete argument for it.)
I see at least two basic ways that one could approach the issue.
The first is to treat it like a mindhack, and evaluate it by its apparent results in people who have applied it. Ask them what good it's done them, and observe their lives and behavior to confirm. Perhaps tell them what your idea of "useful" is and ask them to constrain their explanation of what it's done to those things.
The second is to examine whether it leads to testable beliefs that turn out to be accurate (cf. this comment). See if there is a topic which enlightenment is claimed to be relevant to which you consider useful, state some beliefs, see if the enlightened person says otherwise, and go from there. (This requires that the enlightened person also be rational and well-informed. An enlightened person who doesn't know anything about the subject you want to talk about, who is uneducated, mentally ill, brain-damaged, or whatever, is probably not going to state accurate beliefs, for reasons unrelated to enlightenment.)
Just, unfortunately, not how to get access to them.
I had to search around a bit to figure out what he meant, but now I think wedrifid is mocking this sentence from the original post:
I thought he was making a joke about the inadequacy of mathematics as a tool of sexual conquest.
Wow, I sound cryptic and deep. Or would if I wasn't casually low brow. (Gabriel nailed it.)