Given you have known all this time about EA, why did you never think of getting involved?
In my case, it is because I am not much concerned about the problems of the world. I care about my own life, which requires that the rest of the world flourish to some extent, but I can do more for myself by cultivating my own garden than by enslaving myself to a cause that I do not actually feel. My donations to charities have been few, and only to those whose goals have in some way touched my own life.
The only fire for me in the VNM theorem, in the writings of Peter Singer, or in the EA movement, is a conflagration to flee from, a theme I have elaborated upon in this satire.
Why does at-least one reader feel that Ramirez' essay is the most inspiring [life-igniting] one that they've ever read, while others comment that it's not so great?
I read some of the articles in his Substack, which gives some context. He is speaking about Rationality, and giving Practical advice, so I think the tags are accurate, but it is from a background of weird mental/spiritual/psychological/meditative experiences and experiments. I read this as him preaching the faith that he has arrived at, which is not mine.
I figured some people here probably should read this. The principle can be extended.
The mind is a clouded place. So say the rationalists. It has classified so many of these clouds, all swirling in your brain, keeping the truth from you. And it promises, that you can learn to see past these clouds. That you can make them go away. And if you make them go away? Why, you will win. And what does winning look like? Why. It looks like writing powerless diatribes about how AI will kill us all.
What is the truth behind all these clouds? This is one of them:
And this is truth! Of a sort.
But the highest truths compel.
This truth?
It compels nothing.
There is no fire in the equations of rationalism. A space fleet with no fuel, rusting in the spaceport. A rocket with no kerosene. This is why Yudkowsky isn’t winning. Because changing the state of the minds of others doesn’t do anything if you don’t also inspire them to do something with their newfound clarity. So entire possibilities for dealing with AI X-risk are foreclosed, because they wouldn’t be purely intellectual approaches. They wouldn’t be purely equations and reasoning and coding. Because they would also have fire in them.
And how does one breathe fire into these equations?
Well.
That takes metanoia.
Why metanoia? Because the fundamental problematic is not that you are deluded. The fundamental problematic is that you are Darth Vader. The man machine. All logos and no thymos. All reason and no spirit. And spirit is what provides the fire for reason to change reality with its equations. This is an unbalanced state, and trying to bring your spirit online? It’s gonna hurt at first, because there is so much you haven’t been feeling, so much you have instead asked your mind to deal with. And it goes and it takes that energy, and it uses it to produce elaborate mind pictures for you, instead of the heart gestalts that are necessary for useful action in the world, that the highest performers use to succeed in the world.
Don’t believe me? Consider Miyamoto Musashi. At a record of 61 duels, all of them undefeated, and many of them to the death, he is easily the greatest fighter who ever lived. But when he tried to transmit the special knowledge that allowed him to be a kensei, a sword-saint, the result was not something resembling a rationalist sequence, but instead was a philosophical-spiritual tract. The highest performers don’t have to think about cognitive biases, they fly by intuition, a faculty that isn’t purely mental, but also felt. And these people, these athletes and fighters and artists and politicians, they reach the top. Unlike the rationalists.
This may even be true of scientists. Certainly a good chunk of the original quantum physicists, who peered deeper into the nature of the physical than anyone, were outright mystics. And it’s not clear that working scientists nowadays engage with rationalism, or have even heard of it. One would think it would be at least doable to get them into rationalism, but without spirit, no victory is possible.
And don’t get me wrong, the rationalist space fleet really needs to take off and raise the sanity waterline (though it does need a wee-bit of postmodernism and Wittgenstein to temper the totalitarian desire to want to wipe out religion). But it won’t any time soon. Such a lofty goal is not within reach at this time.
There is, however, a way to breathe fire into the equations. I imagine you have heard of Effective Altruism. That is a rationalist adjacent area where the equations do have fire. And if you want the rest of rationalism to have fire, you have to be a part of it. You have to take some of that fire in you so you can spread it elsewhere. Taking the step to start regularly donating to charity is where it begins. And it can end there if that’s where your ambition stops. But it can go further if it doesn’t. So much further that you will see things you never even considered.
And here is where the metanoia kicks in. Because I know some of you do already donate to charity. But I also suspect most of you don’t. So the question to you who don’t give is:
Given you have known all this time about EA, why did you never think of getting involved? Why did you never think to actually help others? You were so concerned with truth. But reason does not contain the whole truth. The heart also has its truths.
Will you learn from them? The world needs your help. Will you give it?
Do it. Do. Good. Breathe fire into the equations. You will be an X-wing pilot in the actual Rebel Alliance. Part of the foreshock of the human utilitronium shockwave that will take us to the Culture and beyond.
It’s a neverending ride. And it starts with one simple step.
And if you resist this? If you don’t want to hear this? Look at your resistance closely. And then tell me why it is good.
Substack