In my case, I don't run into "not being able to make myself pursue my goals effectively" a whole lot. What I do run into a lot is, "not being able to figure out what goals I actually want to pursue."
I think that what's going on is this in part. When I find resistance within myself to pursuing some goal (which I read into the comedian watching reruns), I take that as evidence that this goal isn't what I'm really after. I don't spend a lot of time in a state of trying to make myself do something, because of my assumption that whatever I r...
To put it another way, ACT basically says we screw up our motivation because we direct our attention to goals that are not directly connected to experiencing our terminal values... which I believe is pretty close to what you're saying here, is it not?
It is pretty close, and even insofar as it's different, I think I agree with it. I'm not particularly a fan of the idea of "we can have values over states of the external world," because it seems to me that most, if not all, of our actual terminal values are mental states. In my opinion, if you th...
I've found that the most helpful thing for me in achieving my goals seems to be picking the right goals to begin with. I try to find goals that I really care about with a large portion of my being, rather than goals that only a small portion of my being cares about. This requires a fair amount of introspection. What do I want? It's not an easy question; counterintuitively, we don't know what we want. But, if I know what I want, then I can get it.
I'll give a couple examples. I used to have the conscious goal, "write music." My real goals, though I...
I have one of these, and I highly value our relationship. My friend and I have very basic disagreements in our worldview: I'm a mystic, and he's a rationalist. We spend our time working through our differences. He's done more than anybody else to make me question and revise my views on things. I think I've become significantly more correct, and a little bit wiser, due to his influence. He's also the reason I'm here on Less Wrong.
It's actually surprisingly hard to get to a point with somebody where you respect them and listen to them, despite having fundame...
I have met multiple people who are capable of telepathically transmitting mystical experiences to people who are capable of receiving them. 90%.
Good point, with the qualifier that many people (including professional philosophers) presently find themselves unable to wrap their heads around the idea that they have no non-material consciousness. The "argument from absurdity" against materialism is alive and kicking.
According to this theory, so far as I can tell, the events of Star Wars literally occurred. Is that correct?
This is an interesting question. I definitely agree that being a contrarian and being a conformist can both be forms of bias. However, I would add one example which suggests that conformity can in some cases be a positive instinct.
I have never studied general relativity in depth. My belief that "general relativity is right" is based on the heuristics, "most scientists believe in general relativity," and "things that most scientists believe are usually right." In part I think it's also based on the fact that I know that evidenc...
I can relate to this. I had a crisis of faith about a month ago (thanks LessWrong!), and while I've "officially" stopped believing "those things," they still sometimes show up in my thinking. I am, as it were, in the midst of a complex re-architecting process. Particularly hard to eliminate are those beliefs which actually serve a functional purpose in my life. For instance, the beliefs that give me emotional support, and the beliefs that I use to decide my actions, are very hard to deal with. In these cases I need to figure out how to build a new structure which serves the same function, or figure out how to live without that function. This has required a significant amount of creativity and deep thinking.
I hope you didn't understand me as asserting this. It's certainly not something I believe.
Good inference! Or, deeply self-deceived. ;-)
The only thing that humans really care about is sex. All of our other values are an elaborate web of neurotic self-deception.
Therefore, asexual people are zombies.
The only thing that humans really care about is sex. All of our other values are an elaborate web of neurotic self-deception.
The only thing that humans really care about is sex. All of our other values are an elaborate web of neurotic self-deception.
Hi, Alicorn!
Yes. They are drawn from the material at http://lawofone.info/ . The philosophy presented there is internally consistent, to the best of my understanding.
There is no physical evidence. All of the "evidence" is in my head. This is a significant point.
There are a variety of points in the source document which could be interpreted as designed to defend its claims against testing. This is a significant point.
I am not aware of any physically testable predictions that these beliefs make. This is a significant point.
The causal hist
I am right now trying to fathom the problem of synthesizing rationality and mysticism. Would you like to correspond on this topic?
For the past three days I have been repeatedly performing the following mental operation:
"Imagine that you never read any documents claimed to be produced by telepathy with extraterrestrials. Now gauge your emotional reaction to this situation. Once calm, ask yourself what you would believe about the world in this situation. Would you accept materialism? Or would you still be seeking mystical answers to the nature of reality?"
I am still asking myself this question. Why? I am struggling to figure out whether or not I am wrong.
I believe things that...
There are several things to ask about beliefs like this:
Do they make internal sense? (e.g. "What is the fourth dimension?")
Do they match the sort of evidence that you would expect to have in the case of non-delusion? (e.g. "Do you have any observable physical traits indicating your extraterrestrial origin? Would someone looking into records of your birth find discrepancies in your records indicating forgery?")
Do they try to defend themselves against testing? (e.g. "Do you expect to illuminate a completely dark room at night
The data I'm working from is that contact with certain people sometimes causes me to have mystical experiences. This has happened somewhere between 20 and 100 times, with less than a dozen people. Sometimes but not always, it happens in both directions; i.e., they also have a mystical experience as a result of the contact.
The simpler hypothesis, from a materialist point of view, is that seeing these people just tripped some switch in my brain, without any direct mind-to-mind interaction being involved. Then we can say that I also tripped such a switch in t... (read more)
If we replaced "mystical experiences" with something of less religious connotations like "raging hard-ons", you wouldn't think that 'souls brushing up against each other' is the most natural explanation -- you'd instead conclude that some aspect of psychology/biochemistry/pheromones is causing you to have a more intense reaction towards certain people and vice-versa.
From a physicalist perspective the brain is as much an organ as the penis, and "mystical experiences" as much a physical event in the brain as erections are a physical event in the penis.