I’m currently going through Nate’s series on caring. He starts with the issue of listless guilt. First post is about the stamp collector, the second one is about allowing yourself to fight for something. I want to log my thoughts on this, because it seems that there’s enough to chew...
One type of the more common accusations that people throw at me can be described like this: "You're an egoist. You don't think about others." To my teenage self this sounded amusing, and I would respond with a smug "Why yes, I am an egoist, thank you very much!" Here...
WARNING: This is a very personal essay that includes potentially triggering, childish views of an arrogant past!me, a lot of narrative, long literary tangents, and incredibly brash use of the Oxford comma. If you wish to cut straight to the useful parts, scroll down to Big Letter Headings. For a...
Nothing incoherent about the first part with the spaceship.
What's an actual mind? How do you know that a dog has it? Would you care about an alien living creature that has a different mind-design and doesn't feel qualia? Anyway, if you have no reason to think that the element is absent, then you'll believe that it's present. It's precisely because you feel that something is (or will be) missing, you refuse the offer. You do have some priors about what consequences will be produced by your choice, and that's OK. Nothing incoherent in refusing the offer. That is, if you do have reasons to believe that that's the case.
I'm talking consequentialism, not... (read more)
I’m currently going through Nate’s series on caring. He starts with the issue of listless guilt. First post is about the stamp collector, the second one is about allowing yourself to fight for something.
I want to log my thoughts on this, because it seems that there’s enough to chew on here.
First, a bit on the stamp collector.
I agree with the general message. It’s true, people aren’t optimized solely for pleasure-seeking. There are other things. Evolutionary psychology has a sufficient enough explanation, I believe. The heuristic “people are ultimately hedonists” is simply wrong, its predictive power is weak.
Now, about the second post.
Yes, you can care about things in the world. You can only... (read 1945 more words →)
One type of the more common accusations that people throw at me can be described like this: "You're an egoist. You don't think about others." To my teenage self this sounded amusing, and I would respond with a smug "Why yes, I am an egoist, thank you very much!"
Here I have to make a confession: back then I was pretty much obsessed with Ayn Rand's Objectivism. For those who don't know much about her philosophy, it's a flawed attempt to create a consistent philosophical system that covers just about everything, from ontology to aesthetics. It has very stark individualistic, libertarian-ish vibes. Being a naive yet curious kid, I was enamored with what
Oh, absolutely. Whatever your values are, they're valuable on their own. That's why doing the laundry feels meaningful. Winning means maximizing your values, whatever they are. The reframe of "X is actually good for Y" is helpful for transitioning to the state of valuing everything that IS valuable, coming from the point of being obsessed with one arbitrary thing.
WARNING: This is a very personal essay that includes potentially triggering, childish views of an arrogant past!me, a lot of narrative, long literary tangents, and incredibly brash use of the Oxford comma. If you wish to cut straight to the useful parts, scroll down to Big Letter Headings.
For a long time I felt like my life suspiciously lacked any meaning. I looked at the people around me and shuddered with disgust: they were doing regular people things, like going to work, buying groceries, hanging out with their friends, and binging shows on Netflix.
This didn’t mesh well with my idea of what a meaningful-and-thus-enjoyable life looked like: a Sacred Pursuit of... (read 1202 more words →)
I'm pretty late to the party, huh. Despite that, I'm really glad I can take part in this experience. It's the very thing I longed for: concrete instructions, baby steps, daily progress.
Now, my Sapience Spell:
It was kinda hard to think of a thing-that's-always-on-me. I don't really have prominent moles or rings, a bauble would stay on my desk even if I had it. One idea was to use my phone, but then I thought of situations where I didn't have it on me, and I would have really benefited from increased awareness back then.
I made one up. I took a choker that was collecting dust on one of the shelves and wrapped it around my wrist. A ring would work better, since sleeves could cover up a watch or a wristband, as in my case. I think I'll get one eventually.
We're assuming that 'literally nothing [of importance] changes'.
I'm not claiming it follows from what I described earlier in the post, it's an assumption, made in order to make a point, because thought experiment :)
Albeit I concede that it's not clear from what I wrote.