“Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief”
I am becoming increasingly fearful of an existential paradigm shift with regards to personal religious beliefs based upon what I always considered to be personal, spiritual experiences. I am beginning to think what was at one time thought of as a ‘Divine Spark‘, which I always considered as part of my essential being, wasn’t Divine at all, but rather just my own intuitive (for the lack of a better concept) intelligence guiding me. If this is true, what then of my ‘personhood’ -- my consciousness surviving death? Will I really cease to exist in just a few more years?
However these ‘spiritual’, maybe even metaphysical events or moments at various times in my life indeed have moved me, enlightened me, and comforted me. In fact, I was beginning to think my ‘belief’ was shifting more towards ‘a knowledge’ that most assuredly some things can be attributed to some sort of real as can be ‘god factor’ pertinent to our existence.
Notwithstanding, I am beset with this persistent, tentative thought that this spark, which never may have been ‘Divine’, hasn’t gone out. Instead, it has ignited a fire to burn over and cleanse my mind of the tangled underbrush and dead growth of my previous notions. Or, in fact, is in the process of obliterating the whole forest so that a new type of more vigorous (rational) growth can commence.
It should be interesting (again, for the lack of a better term) to experience what eventually unfolds as time passes.
"Divine".
Background: I and many other attendees at the CFAR rationality minicamp last weekend learned a lot about applied rationality, and made big personal lists of things we wanted to try out in our everyday lives. I think that a regular (weekly or maybe semi-weekly) post where people mention any new interesting habits, decisions, and actions they have taken recently would be cool as a supplement to this; it ought to be rewarding for people to be able to write a list of the cool things they did, and I expect it'll also be interesting for other people to peek in and see the sorts of goals and self-modifications people are working on. Others at minicamp seemed enthusiastic about the idea, so I hope it takes off. Feel free to meta-discuss whether this is a good idea or if it can be done better.
Addendum 5/15: By the way, non-minicamp people should feel free to post too! I am highly certain that minicamp attendees are not the only ones working on interesting things in their lives.
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of May 14th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Discussion's likely to continue gradually through the week, so try to remember to check back now and then!