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shminux comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (July 2012) - Less Wrong
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Hello!
I actually started an account two years ago, but after a few comments I decided I wasn't emotionally or intellectually ready for active membership. I was confused and hurt for various reasons that weren't Less Wrong's fault, and I backed away to avoid saying something I might regret. I didn't want to put undue pressure on myself to respond to topics I didn't fully understand. Now, after many thousands of hours reading and thinking about neurology, evolutionary psychology, and math, I'm more confident that I won't just be swept up in the half-understood arguments of people much smarter than I am. :)
Like almost everyone here, I started with atheism. I was raised Hindu, and my home has the sort of vague religiosity that is arguably the most common form in the modern world. For the most part, I figured out atheism on my own, when I was around 11 or 12. It was emotionally painful and socially costly, but I'm stronger for the experience. I started reading various mediocre atheist blogs, but I got bored after a couple of years and wanted to do something more than shoot blind fish in tiny barrels. I wanted to build something up, not just tear something down (no matter how much it really should be torn down.)
The actual direct link to Less Wrong came from TV Tropes. I suspect it's one of the best gateway drugs because TV Tropes, while not explicitly atheist or rationalist, does more to communicate the positive ideals and emotional memes of LW-style rationality than most of the atheosphere does. For the first time, I got the sense that "our" way of thinking could be so much more powerful than simply bashing religion and astrology.
One important truth beyond atheism that I have slowly come to accept is inborn IQ differentials, between individuals and groups of individuals. I had to face the fact that P(male| IQ 2 standard deviations above mean) was significantly higher than 50%. I had to deal with the fact that historical oppression probably wasn't the end-all be-all explanation for why women on average hadn't done as much inventing and discovering and brilliant thinking as men. I had to face the fact that mere biology may have systematically biased my half of the population against greatness. And it hurt. I had to fight the urge to redefine intelligence and/or greatness to assuage the pain.
I further learned that my brain was modular, and the bits of me that I choose to call "I" don't constitute everything. My own brain could sabotage the values and ideals and that "I" hold so dearly. For a long time I struggled with the idea that everything I believed in and loved was fake, because I couldn't force my body to actually act accordingly. Did I value human life? Why wasn't I doing everything I possibly could to save lives, all the time? Did I value freedom and autonomy and gender equality? Why could I not help sometimes being attracted to domineering jerks?
It took me a while to accept that the newly-evolved, conscious, abstractly-reasoning, self-reflecting "I" simply did not have the firepower to bully ancient and powerful urges into submission. It took me a while to accept that my values were not lies simply because my monkey brain sometimes contradicted them. The "I" in my brain does not have as much power as she would like; that does not mean she doesn't exist.
Other, non-rationality related information: I love writing, and for a long time I convinced myself that therefore I would love being a novelist. Now, I recognize that I would much rather compose a non-fiction or reflective essay, although ideas for fiction stories still flood in and I rarely do much about it due to laziness and/or fear. I fell in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender for its great storytelling and its combination of intelligence and idealism. I adore Pixar and many Disney movies for the sweetness and heart. I like somewhat traditional-sounding music with easily discernible lyrics that tells a story; I can't get into anything that involves screaming or deliberate disharmony. Show-tunes are great. :)
I don't want to lose the hope/idealism/inner happiness that makes me able to in-ironically enjoy Disney and Pixar and Avatar; I consciously cultivate it and am lucky to have it. If this disposition will be "destroyed by the truth"...well, I have a choice to make then.
Consciously keeping your identity small and thus not identifying with everyone who happens to have the same internal plumbing might be helpful there.
PG is awesome, but his ideas do basically fall into the category of "easier said than done." This doesn't mean "not worth doing," of course, but practical techniques would be way more helpful. It's easier to replace one group with another (arguably better?) group than to hold yourself above groupthink in general.
My approach is to notice when I want to say/write "we", as opposed to "I", and examine why. That's why I don't personally identify as a "LWer" (only as a neutral and factual "forum regular"), despite the potential for warm fuzzies resulting from such an identification.
There is an occasional worthy reason to identify with a specific group, but gender/country/language/race/occupation/sports team are probably not good criteria for such a group.
Thank you! I'll look for that.
Here is a typical LW comment that raises the "excessive group identification" red flag for me.
I always think of that in the context of conflict resolution, and refer to it as "telling someone that what they did was idiotic, not that they are an idiot." Self-identifying is powerful, and people are pretty bad at it because of a confluence of biases.