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Soothsilver comments on Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Being around here has made me think that I know everything interesting about the world and suppressed my excitement and joy from many minor things I could do. I also feel like my sense of wonder diminished. As I write this, I am a little unhappy, and in a period of depression, but I had similar feelings, if less intense, even before this period.
I was wondering whether you have any advice on how to restore this; or even better, how to "forget" as much rationality and transhumanism as possible (if not actually forgetting, then at least "to think and feel as I did before I read the Sequences")?
LessWrong has made me if anything more able to derive excitement and joy from minor things, so if I were you I would check if LW is really to blame or otherwise find out if there are other factors causing this problem.
I keep doing that but it's kind of hard, and I can't easily get a proof of what's causing the problem.
You know everything interesting? Including, say, how to build FAI? Do tell! :P
I can understand how rationality might make you depressed, in fact sometimes I feel that the more I understand about signalling, psychology and so forth the more other people annoy me. I find myself picking apart what other people say for logical fallacies and translating every political statement into 'The outgroup is bad! Fight the outgroup!".
However, I'm surprised that transhumanism would diminish your sense of wonder - a philosophy about how humans could turn into Jupiter-brain gods seems to me like the sort of thing that should increase your sense of wonder. Maybe you have been reading too much analytical stuff and you need to read something more 'far-out'? Maybe read 'the headonic imperitive?'
Thank you ^^
I don't think that's an inherent feature of Lesswrong. The idea that most humans are overconfident and that there much left to be understood seems to me one of the ideas of rationality.
The skepticism of Feymann would be an example of a rational way of looking at the world but that still have it's sense of wonder.
Well, yeah, but it also gives a lot of answers and provides an argument to everything. Also it feels like reading from the community reduces everything to either effective altruism or AI. It may not be true but I've internalized it so much that now I can't listen to, say, any politician's statement on state budget, without EA or AI funding immediately coming to mind. Or even any economics or politics or important decision making without feeling like "this is all wrong and we shouldn't care about it". It's a little disheartening :)
Most people aren't happy when they read political news. If you care about happiness then spending less time reading political news might be good regardles whether you are in this community or not.
Secondly that reaction isn't the result of LW ideology. Eliezer wrote http://lesswrong.com/lw/gz/policy_debates_should_not_appear_onesided/ and having a credence for beliefs instead of categorising them as right/wrong are pillars of LW.
In general "this is all wrong" might not be the best trigger from a rationality perspective. Asking "What's the likelihood that this is right?" is better from a rationality perspective. Thinking about whether that probability is 20% or 30% can be much more interesting intellectually than thinking in right/wrong terms.
Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
If you want to use your sense of wonder again, it might be good to seek out something completely new to you. Learn about something new, develop a new skill, or go to some place that you haven't been before. Then spend some time being quiet and observing or practicing.
Or spend some time in person with people who are enthusiastic about things you are not enthusiastic about, and get curious about why they like it, and listen to what they say.
I'm pretty sure you still have a sense of wonder in there, waiting to be used. It may be something that grows with practice though.
Also, remember that familarity is not the same thing as comprehension! You may very well be familiar with more interesting things about the world than you were before, but that does not me an that you understand them! And Less Wrong is certainly not a comprehensive compendium of all the interesting things in the world. For example, a topic that is rarely discussed on Less Wrong is Fluid Dynamics, which is something that awakes my sense of wonder. Here's a link to a blog about fluid dynamics: http://fuckyeahfluiddynamics.tumblr.com
I'm not sure whether to think up some strategies to help you find joy in the things you used to enjoy, or if what would help is spending time on completely new things, and making bigger changes in your life. Or some mixture, like remixing your past and present to make your future.
If there are still some minor things that you do find joy in, do those more often. Sometimes it is as simple as noticing what you like doing, what makes you feel even a smidgen happier, and doing it more.
I'm a bit confused as to how reading the Sequences could make it harder to find joy and excitement in minor things, or make you feel like you know everything. What happened, if you don't mind sharing?
That's helpful, thank you! Your mention of Fluid Dynamics was particularly nice.
Happy to share.
Part of is what I replied to ChristianKl: that I feel like every important thing should be reduced to thinking about EA or AI. This makes me think that I can't find any new areas interesting because they're not good, or should be eliminated to divert resources into one of those two items.
Another part, I think, is that previously, I could always discover a... greater... area of interest once I grew out of the old one. When I got good at video games, I could move on to try making friends, then to do volunteering, then to attend college, then to try living alone, but, once I started to seriously think through the Sequences, which made read other Yudkowsky's writing, including, sigh, "The Road to Singularity", the next thing then was "saving the world" and it doesn't feel like I can get much further from there.
You should probably start by accepting the fact that you do not know everything interesting about the world, nor does anyone else on Less Wrong, or anyone else in the world.
That does not require forgetting anything or pretending things are other than they are: it is just a simple fact about the world. I agree that LW has a negative tendency to produce the opposite, and mistaken, conviction in people.
Huh, um, okay! ^^ I somewhat suspected that that is the case, but it's still hard to believe it. (thank you)
Why do you think spending time on Less Wrong is the cause of your depression?
Not neccessarily cause of depression.
I mean, I am suspicious and I believe it has something to do with it. At my worst during depressive periods, I keep thinking about death, altruism, rationality, AI etc. Also, there's these surveys that tell me that LessWrong members are unusually likely to have depression.
But I think my depression is mostly innate.
If you are looking for a sense of wonder in particular, I'd recommend pretty much anything by Carl Sagan. Audio-books, Cosmos show, etc. My thought is that the social proof will transfer his positive valence to you. Ideally, when thinking about anything on a grand scale, it would trigger an association with that sense of wonder.
I hesitated to say this though, since it is also likely to make a sense of smallness more salient, if it isn't already salient. Use your best judgement.
So... you don't want to know whether or not there's a diamond in the box?
You're referring to http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/, yes?
It just seems like those situations don't present themselves very often. More often, a situation presents itself like this: A team member makes all the wrong arguments to support a thesis I disagree with. Previously, I would just fight against each of his arguments. Now, I don't do anything much (I'm not good at convincing people) but instead keep thinking "yeah, yeah, arguments, soldiers, written the bottom line, blah, blah" without it actually being useful.
That's not really related to my main problems, but in general, rationality for me poses that problem, that merely thinking in a Sequences-like fashion causes me to feel sad and doesn't bring enough benefit to compensate, I suspect.
No, I was making a reference to the Litany of Tarski.
When you ask "how do I forget rationality?", it seems to me that you're asking how to go back to deceiving yourself. After all, rationality is the adherence of beliefs to reality, and there's nothing that subtracts you joy by changing your beliefs so that they are more in tune with reality: after all, reality was there all along.
Perhaps ponderating on the joy of the merely real could help.
"Reality was there all along." The fact that someone believes something is part of reality, and if it changes, then reality is changing. There is no reason that this cannot take away some joy from someone, even if their beliefs end up less accurate.
As St. Paul said, "For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things." Asserting that conforming your beliefs to reality cannot make you less joyful is itself a form of wishful thinking in which you refuse to conform your beliefs to reality.
If I correctly read what you're saying, you're basically asserting that you can be sad because your belief structure has changed. That implies to have meta-beliefs, which are extremely dangerous from a rationality point of view.
As a rationalist, you should keep your identity very small and do not presuppose anything about the general structure of how your beliefs should be like, because you will be almost certainly wrong (and disappointed).
Consider this extreme example.
On the other hand, I don't understand the Paul quote: we're exactly saying that you shouldn't be judgemental (about reality, that is). Obviously we're talking about ideals to aspire, as with everything in this forum and self-improvement.
No, it does not imply that you have "meta-beliefs", although everyone does. It implies that your beliefs affect the world, as for example by making you say things. If your beliefs affect the world, changing your beliefs will both change the part of the world which is your beliefs, and also other parts of the world. All of that has the possibility of making you sad.
This is all perfectly obvious, and I should not have to bring up examples from real life.
It could be that reality has nasty things in mind for us that we can't yet see and that we cannot affect in any way, and therefore I would be happier if I didn't know of them in advance. Encountering a new idea like this that somebody has discovered is one my constant worries when browsing this site.
The thought that you know everything interesting about the world, is a thought.
In fact, by thinking that you know, you won't ever be able to know. Because you think you already have what you seek, thus you cannot gain what you seek. In the same manner, you won't buy an expensive object when you already have said object.
The unknown is vastly beyond, in fact, if you are familiar with "map not being the territory", you are the territory.
The territory precedes time, space and everything that is a map. Which are, you. The concept of who you think is you is a map.
By practicing daily meditation, you will be able to increase your awareness where the separation of thoughts and awareness occurs, by becoming less oblivious to the maps, all that's left is the territory.
The ego loves to stay in control, and it's a very tricky thing, I can highly recommend starting meditation, every single day, have a timer or follow a guided meditation practice. No matter how you feel or what the day is, get it done, even if you have to do it every time before you go to sleep.
Of course, this isn't medical advice, for emergencies, you should visit a doctor :)
Take care, god bless.
Thank you. I admit I didn't understand most of what you said. Sorry.
I tried meditation once and it was terrible. Emptying my head allows all the negativity to come in :).
Check this out:
https://www.mindandlife.org/remembrance-things-come-predictive-nature-mind-contemplative-practices/
If you're interested in giving meditation a try again, try the headspace website/app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVzTnS_IONU
Meditation for beginners on youtube from actualized is a great start, he also has a guided meditation track and more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmG1x1ih1U
In my opinion by not approaching the meditation for benefit's sake will you paradoxically benefit the most, but I don't know, it's a speculation. Alan Watts have some great videos about this and similar on youtube :)
No problem, wish you the best :)
Peace!