ChristianKl comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lisper 09 February 2016 01:42AM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 10 February 2016 11:33:45AM 4 points [-]

Tabooing vague terms is a key rationality technique. If you want to write an article about spirituality on LW, I think you should start with tabooing the term and explaing what you mean. Once you have done so, I'm fine with you continuing to use the word.

Without going through that exercise there a huge danger of being to vague to be wrong.

Heck, lisper acknowledges it's not the perfect term, and is open to suggestions for better ones.

The problem is not that it's the wrong term but that the article doesn't spend effort into trying to clarify what it means with the term.

Given that he says that he means "social cohesion" with the term later in this thread, it seems to me like he's not clear what he means with it himself.

What does it meant to have a feeling of sacredness?

I haven't spoken about a feeling of sacredness but wanted to refer to sacred values. I mean what the decision science literature means with the term. It operationalized the term. See Emerging sacred values: Iran’s nuclear program if you want to know more.

Comment author: Gleb_Tsipursky 10 February 2016 03:46:46PM 2 points [-]

Agreed about tabooing being valuable!

I certainly hear your point about explaining more about what spirituality means, and I'm glad that the discussion here prompted lisper to clarify that more. Also agreed that the article would have been better if it went into definitions of spirituality more than it did just by comparing it to euphoria.

I enjoyed the sacred values piece, thanks for linking it!