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reguru comments on Open Thread, Aug 29. - Sept 5. 2016 - Less Wrong
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Comments (119)
I have not read that.
Virtual reality, as in the movie Matrix.
This is a bit harder to explain, imagine everything said is out of context from the subjective experience. Context can only be found within the subjective experience.
Awareness is the separation of thoughts from awareness. You can be aware of thoughts, that's awareness, and aware of thoughts which you think is you.
It would be better if I could reason for my point without making a mistake, but unfortunately, that's very hard to do. It's also up to the rationalist to consider opening up to the possibility everything they think is true, is wrong. By this I mean, being able to reason properly will spread more truth, meanwhile it might be futile depending how close-minded rationalists can be. But that's on my current data.
The only way to know you have lesser awareness is by having higher awareness. Then, it repeats itself.
I don't understand, you don't have to be afraid of criticising properly.
This is nothing trivial, this is the truth, and if you are serious about it can see for yourself.
How many pages is it, how do you use the information and how, what, should you remember?
Gosh, if only someone associated with LW rationalism had ever thought of that.
Seriously, what you've done here is to come to a group of people whose foundational ideas include "the map is not the territory", "human brains are fallible and you need to pay attention to how your thoughts work", and "you should never be literally 100% sure of anything" and say "Hey, losers! Rationality is overrated because you confuse the map with the territory, you aren't aware of your own thoughts and don't distinguish them from reality, and you're 100% confident you're right and therefore can't change your minds!".
There seems to be quite some denial on LW then regarding the topic. I don't understand why, if what you are saying is true.
That's a straw man argument, as far as I remember, I never said that. Personally, it seems to me as "the map is not the territory" is one of the maps which some, I am not saying you or anyone else, might think is the territory. This is only speculation.
So you do agree with the video, who else?
If for example, you were the person who was attached to the map being the territory, or not aware of it, and the argument was not a straw man.
Of course, you don't have to agree with a certain method of delivery, like the straw man.
I don't think so. What I see is people pointing out that the video is attacking straw men. (Extra-specially strawy, as regards LW in particular; but very strawy even if applied more broadly to people who explicitly aim to be rational.)
Some of it is things the video said, and you've said you agree with it. I don't think there's anything in my (admittedly not especially generous) paraphrase that doesn't closely match things said in the video.
Nope. I agree with some of what the video says. You know the old joke about the book review? "This book was both original and good. Unfortunately the parts that were original were not good, and the parts that were good were not original." In the same way, the video seems to me to combine (1) stating things that I think would be obvious to almost everyone here, (2) making less-obvious claims without any sort of justification, which in many cases I think are entirely false, and (3) gloating about how the maker is so much more advanced than those poor deluded rationalists.
You couldn't respond to my statement that "the map is not the territory"- is one of the maps which you use, regularly, thus fall into the category of which the straw man is targeted towards. In my opinion, and what I think.
I do agree with it, I think everything is arational and within the arational there is irrationality and rationality.
Which is probably not the target audience, do you believe there are those who know nothing of rationality yet think math and language is the territory and be Spock? Although I understand now why you can't agree with all the arguments/fallacies in the video, but a few.
Which less obvious claims without justification and why are they false? That's what I am looking for to learn.
Ok, how does this apply to any of the arguments made?
No, I didn't, which is not the same thing. But yeah, it's hard to respond to because it's not clear what you're saying. Any given thing anyone says can be called a "map", which tells us nothing about the particular thing or the particular person who says it. So if there's a specific criticism you're making, would you care to make it clearer?
Quite likely not. But it's the audience here, to which you brought the video and asked "what do you think?".
I already listed some in an earlier comment. You did reply to that comment but not in a way that gave me much reason to hope for constructive discussion.
I hope you will forgive me for saying that I don't get the impression that you are here to learn at all.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the question. The things I was describing aren't arguments; my comment applies not to the arguments (of which there are actually rather few in the video) but to the maker's repeated comments about how people who consider themselves rational are so far beneath his level of "awareness".
"The map is not the territory" Is a map. You are using maps for your argumentation. That's what you base rationality on. Reality is arational, rationality/irrationality is within it. It's a paradox. I make the same mistake, because it's communication. The arational reality you can experience yourself through subjective experience.
I agree, but I wanted to point it out regardless, even though I understand now why you can't accept the video in its entirety.
How do you have a constructive discussion?
Truthfully no. I think however it's possible?
The arguments made in the video, what does this have to do with that? Seems more like a subjective opinion which you projected upon the world. I think I would have done the same thing, however.
Of course. There is no alternative to doing that. So if you're saying that just to inform me: thanks, but I already knew. And if you're saying it as a criticism: you need to explain what the actual criticism is, rather than just saying something that's vacuously true of anyone saying anything.
One of the prerequisites is that the people involved are actually willing to engage with one another's arguments.
Very little, except that one of the reasons why the video contains so few arguments given its length is that its maker wastes a lot of time talking about how much better than us he is.
There is an alternative, which rationalists doesn't understand because it cannot be understood. It is arational, which is the reality, the map is not the territory, neither is "the map is not the territory" and so on. You can notice myself making the same mistake because that's what I have to do to get to you, but you still have to figure it out yourself.
The criticism is that you do not understand the point of the video, the point is that you can sit down, become aware of all the maps, and notice that reality does not disappear because what you call "you" (The I thought) lose attachment to maps.
That is a lack of awareness, because if you had awareness by such an exercise you would immediately notice that the map is not the territory and that there has to be no map which to point this out. If it's still hard, that's fine, but at least by becoming aware you are not aware, you have increased your awareness.
Notice how everything I just said was a map, and every single letter after that, it doesn't have to be, you can view the words for what they are, absolutely nothing, nothing in the word of which the word "nothing" says it is, simply no - thing.
But what if the point is that all arguments are equally untrue, it is a map when the territory is not the map? What if the argument is to come to the truth which you can only figure out for yourself? Our engagement is the problem itself. Not that from the engagement's perspective, but what's actually is tried to be communicated by me, when it cannot be.
It is natural for people to one-up another I think. It is a way to give the point across or to invoke reaction as the person who were afflicted may look into it. It's not actually harsh in the sense that it is a kneejerk reaction or feeling of superiority, ego-wise. Personally, the world is your (mine, and everyone else's) mirror.
Because you think in patterns of being superior, you actually believe others do it too, because how else do people think? (You think) This isn't a straw man, but it is speculation and I think it is applicable to myself.
But what you go on to present is not an alternative.
Do you really imagine that those of us who attempt to be rational think that reality would disappear without our attachment to maps? This is real Strawy McStrawface stuff.
"Maps" are how human beings think about the world. So, are you (1) suggesting that we not think about the world any more, or (2) claiming to have a way of doing it that doesn't rely on maps? If #1 then, well, good luck to you but I don't think it can be done. If #2 then I don't believe you. Like it or not, you think (and feel, and experience "awareness", and everything else) with your brain and all its interactions with the world are mediated by "maps", and if you think you've escaped that then I guarantee all you have actually done is to fool yourself into not noticing the maps you're using. That does not, I'm afraid, count as higher "awareness".
But maybe you're making a more modest claim, namely that we should be aware of our map-using. Yup, we should. What makes you think we aren't?
The world is rational enough that application of rational techniques enables us, e.g., to make machines that can take us from one continent to another in less than a day. So any notion of "arationality" that could possibly describe the actual world needs to be compatible with that.
Then "the point" is bullshit, because some arguments lead to demonstrable real-world benefits and some don't.
Take a look somewhere around 32:00 in the video (I am just going on the times I listed above; I am not going to sit through it again to check the exact time) and see whether you can tell me with a straight face that the reason I think the person making the video is thinking in patterns of being superior is because I do it.
So, what are the available alternatives, then? Is it one of the those things where you sit for nine years gazing at the wall and then enlightenment comes? Are you suggesting koans?
That is highly unlikely -- otherwise you wouldn't be able to operate in reality.
It's possible that would require you to want to learn. It's not up to us to make you want to learn.
I am telling you now then, I want to learn how to learn. I am honest about that, I think.
So how do I learn how to learn? That's still a drive to learn.
Consider distinguishing between "the map is the territory" and "the map is an accurate representation of the territory".
Regardless how accurate or inaccurate a map is, it is still a map. But some maps are more or less accurate over other maps. That's fine. That's human projections.
I argue that the territory is arational, which means any representation in relation to the territory is all the same.
The second sentence contradicts the first.
About a thousand, depends on formatting.
Yeah, that's a lot, and many people complain about it. On the other hand, it provides great insights which can also be found in other books, but reading those other books together would be even more pages. Also, people who read online debates regularly, probably read such amount of text every few weeks, they are just not aware of it, because "following 15 facebook links every day, each on average two pages of text" doesn't feel like "reading 1000 pages of random text every month", even if in reality it actually means that.
I believe reading the book is a time well spent (I wish I had a time machine to send me the book back when I was a teenager; would probably be my favorite one), but that of course is a personal opinion.