Kaj, are you familiar with the idea of a plurality of enlightenments? Both in the sense of a difference in degree (à la the Theravadan 4 path model) and a difference in kind (à la Jack Kornfield's Enlightenments). Wondering what your take on it is and how this series is going to navigate that. I suspect this is one reason I've noticed meditation practitioners trending toward the term awakening rather than enlightenment.
Thanks for this podcast! I'm one of those people that primarily consume audio. Wanted to offer some encouragement, production quality definitely surpassed my expectations. Pleasure to listen to.
I'm not advocating trying for kenshō. You can't try for it in any useful way. That's not how it works. I honestly don't care whether I persuade anyone of its value, because it does not matter whether you try for it. Or rather, if it does matter, it does so by making you obsessed in a way that can actually block the seeing. So, there isn't really any good benefit to fighting with your analysis to try to persuade you of its value.
I understand where you are coming from. Efforting blocks realisation and kenshō doesn’t come from discurs...
Is it easy for you to sketch what the map you're referring to is?
Not OP, but I can describe the map he’s referring too. Jeffery Martin interviewed 1,200 enlightened individuals and found that while their reported experience was different, their descriptions of their new phenomenological experience fell into similar clusters or ‘locations’. There’s around 20-40 locations in all (he is vague about exactly how many there are) but Jeffery only talks about the first 4 because that’s where the vast majority of people spend their time and he believes talking...
The awakened community definitely needs more rationality and the rationality community could probably benefit from some Insight, so thank you for starting this conversation. Hopefully it's just the first step. For anyone interested r/streamentry is a mostly woo-free, friendly community for discussing this sort of thing.
A particularly useful and traditional guideline is to wait a year and a day before claiming an attainment and completely making up your mind. This is slippery stuff sometimes, and many states and stages can easily fool someone into thi...
Great post! Some small formatting fixes that might help people searching this list.
'Exercise' the last section under 'Rest' isn't listed in the contents.
Two of the headings have non obvious renames for anyone doing a really quick skim. 'Expect to actually make progress' becomes 'Expect work to be effective' and 'Actually care about the task you're doing' becomes 'Increase the value of your task'.
I have taken the survey.
The thinking here seems muddled.
Ordinarily locus of control refers to events in the future, explanatory style refers to events in the past. Your last 3 examples refer to past events but you switch back and forth between past and future when you break down each example. Anxiety is uncertainty, you can't feel anxious about events in the past.
Locus of control is about the degree of control you have over an outcome/event. Events are in themselves good or bad. How you feel about a future event is a consequence of whether or not that event is within your con
Can you talk a bit more on this? I'm curious to know how you imagine talking yourself into believing something you don't believe, like some kind of double-think. And it seems avoiding scary thoughts is not a habit a rationalist would want to encourage.
I'd expect mobiles to be under-represented in these results as you can only vote if you are logged in and I'd expect more people are logged in on their desktop rather than their mobile.
Help the lesswrong wiki.
Is any effort to improve the wiki now in danger of disappearing once LW 2.0 comes around?
Mundanification is just another one of these variants that's about being able to peek into those dark "no, I must never look in here!" corners of your mind and trying to actually state the worst-case scenario (which is often black-boxed as a Terrible Thing that is Never Opened).
How does it work specifically? I can't see the technique posted anywhere.
Mundanification is about facing the truth, even when you flinch from it, via Litany of Gendlin-type things.
Can you talk a bit more about this? I'm only familiar with the Litany of Gendlin itself.
Books on leadership. The psychology + social dynamics of leadership and the traits of successful leaders. There are so many books I don't know where to start.
Let's define "stupidity" as "low IQ" where IQ is measured by some standard tests.
That already seems pretty different to what OP is talking about. See -
..."Stupidity," like "depression," is a sloppy "common-sense" word that we apply to different conditions, which may be caused by genetics (for instance, mutations in the M1 or M3 pathways, or two copies of Thr92Ala), deep subconscious conditioning (e.g., religion), general health issues (like not getting enough sleep), environment (ignorance, lack of reward
I've read all of Daniel Ingram's stuff. He's a fantastic resource. If you like his stuff, MCTB v2 is scheduled to come out later this year. The draft is much improved over the original IMO.
Oh, I feel silly, I should have just googled the names, I'm familiar with them. I know Gunaratana by his book and John Yates by his alternate name Culadasa. Thanks anyway, lifelonglearner, they've proven to be an excellent help.
This is a great post helldago. I've found a lot of these useful myself and the others I'm excited to try out because I can relate a lot. A couple of other things I have found useful for resilience.
A Mental Health section in my Anki deck. There's about 170 cards which includes things like cognitive reframes (a bad behaviour doesn't make you a bad person, failure is useful if you use the information gained to update your plan etc.), common depression traps I might be caught in (comparison, labelling, all or nothing), stoic quotes and the like. I've never b
I've chatted a little with Shinzen on one of his retreats but I haven't yet looked into the other two. Thanks lifelonglearner.
Mindfulness is a part of it, I'm interested in the end goal. The lasting changes in perception that are meant to come about through mindfulness or other practices.
I'm working on an overview of the science on spiritual enlightenment. I'm also looking into who has credible claims to it, whether it is something worth pursuing and a survey of the methods used to get there.
If anyone knows someone (or is someone) that thinks they might be there or part-way there and who would be willing to chat a bit, that'd be lovely. If you've just dabbled in some mystical practices and had a few strange experiences and want to bounce some ideas around, that could be fun too.
if you claim you are, I am going to show that you are not.
when I am allowed to explain what Ideal Money is then we will all see this
I'd like to bet with you on one or both of those predictions if you are open to it.
I'm silent because I haven't read it. The reason being without an overview I'm not sure if it's something worth investing time in. The non-default font causes some aversion to, albeit minor. n=1
Don't apologise, it's better that it exists without one than not at all. Looking forward to it.
What is the theme of this series Elo? What are you trying to achieve? I don't see an introductory post anywhere.
It's called the CART (Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking) and it's described in this book and (PDF Warning) this paper.
I've been using a backlog though I've never seen Forster's system, and have found it useful. I'm glad to see it made explicit. I also think you are right on the money in trying to run a middle path between the rigidity of a set daily task list in and the lack of priority in GTD's massive list of next actions. There's a lot of insight here, thank you for sharing. My one criticism would be to add some order to it to enhance readability, it's a wall of text right now.
The reason I visit LW is it satisfies a need for community. I'm glad to see the recent efforts at revitalisation, as a large part of the value for me generated by a single conversational locus is the social support it provides. This site has been inactive for a long time - and yet to my puzzlement I still found myself checking it regularly, despite not learning anything. I discovered that it's because I just wanted to keep in touch with what's going on in rationalist circles, and hang out a bit. I see myself as an aspiring rationalist, and that's a hard th...
When pushed on why Anthony Magnabosco is out interviewing people he responds with, "I like talking to people and finding out what they believe." True enough, but disingenuous. He presents himself as a seeker of the truth and his root goal is he is out to change minds. If the obtaining the truth was your primary motivation, street interviews is an incredibly inefficient method. The interviews come off as incredibly patronising. Questions such as, "If I gave you evidence about a biblical contradiction, and I'm not saying I do, but if I did, would you change your mind?" Of course you have a contradiction up your sleeve.
Honesty and effectiveness appear to be conflicting goals in street epistemology.
To balance the criticism with some praise, in addition to some of the great things you have mentioned, there are two worthwhile things about the Jocko podcast that are not explicit in your post that I want to highlight.
1) Jocko embodies growth mindset.
2) Much of Jocko's discipline comes because he has trained to become comfortable experiencing discomfort. Once you've done many painful things your fear of them falls and your sense of self-efficacy rises making it easier complete future painful goals.
So,
Make the decision and strongly commit to being a mentally strong person
Continuously monitor your actions to ensure they are the actions of a mentally strong person
Maintain this (for weeks/months/years?) until a new self-identity is formed.
If I've misrepresented something point it out, but this looks to me like a recipe for failure. It's missing fundamental parts of the human experience. People most often fail at their goals because of conflicting short and long term desires, forgetfulness and existing habits. Jocko doesn't adequately take that ...
...it is valuable to have an example of somebody who reliably executes on his the philosophy of "Decide to do it, then do it." If you find that you didn't do it, then you didn't truly decide to do it. In any case, your own choice or lack thereof is the only factor. "Discipline is freedom." If you adopt this habit as your reality, it become true.
It's possible I'm getting to confused with the language here but I've struggled to apply this advice in my own life. I'll decide that I'm not going to snack at work anymore and then find mysel...
CGP Grey follows a cycle that repeats -> (40 min work - 7 min break - 40 min work - 20 min break). I think he mentions it in here somewhere but I don't know the exact time. It seems probable that the most appropriate length and cycle for an individual should be based on their attention span and recovery.
If you just wanted blogs (i.e. no twitter+tumblr) the following are blogs I personally like that post frequently in rough order of how useful/insightful I have found them,
There are a few that are very infrequent but very good when they do post,
Until LessWrong 2.0 comes out, this is how I've been staying in touch with the Rationalist Diaspora. It took about an hour to set up and I can now see almost everything in the one place.
I've been using an RSS reader (I use feedly) to collate RSS feeds from these lists,
Rationist Blogs,
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/List_of_Blogs
https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalistDiaspora/
Effective Altruist Blogs,
http://www.stafforini.com/blog/effective-altruism-blogs/
Rationalist Tumblers,
http://yxoque.tumblr.com/RationalistMasterlist
And using this twitter to RSS tool for ...
I have taken the survey.
It's unlikely that someone is going to say something that will take away your pain. Death sucks. Losing someone you love sucks, and sadness is a normal reaction to that. There are emotionally healthy ways to deal with grief. Give yourself more self-care than you think you need throughout this process to counter the planning fallacy and better to err on the side of too much than too little.
If you do find yourself depressed, seeking professional help is not a sign of weakness and I would encourage you to seek it out. Summoning motivation can be an impossible...
The problem isn't simply clarity.
In this case it is. I believe I have been less than clear again.
The frame of mind of treating a conversation with your friends as PR is not useful for getting your friends to trust you and positively respond to what you are saying.
Agreed - but I've never done that. The conversations are ordinary in that I share rationality in the same way I would share a book or movie I've enjoyed. It is "I enjoy X, you should try it I bet you would enjoy it too" as opposed to, "I want to spread X and my friends are go...
What exactly are you doing that you have PR problems?
Something like,
A: I've been reading a lot about rationality in the last year or two. It's pretty great.
B: What's that?
A: Explanation of instrumental + epistemic OR Biases a la Kahneman
B: Sounds dumb. I do that already.
A: I've found it great because X, Y, Z.
B: I think emotion is much more important than rationality. I don't want to be a robot.
Are you simply relabeling normal conversations with friends as PR?
Yes. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Revisiting past conversations I think this is exactly what has been happening. When I mention rationality, reason, logic it becomes a logic v. emotion discussion. I'll taboo in future, thanks!
I have large PR problems when talking about rationality with others unfamiliar with it, with the Straw Vulcan being the most common trap conversation will fall into.
Are there any guides out there in the vein of the EA Pitch Wiki that could help someone avoid these traps and portray rationality in a more positive light? If not, would it be worth creating one?
So far I've found, how rationality can make your life more awesome, rationality for curiosity sake, rationality as winning, PR problems and the contrary rationality isn't all that great.
Problems one and two (hard and imperfect) would suggest that people will get less value out of ScottL's post than a workshop. OK, fine. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Scale ScottL's post up through easy online access and the many, many people getting a smaller somewhat unreliable benefit turns into something very significant. But problem 3,
...Having seen crappy, distorted versions of the CFAR curriculum (or having attempted to absorb it from text, and failed), a typical human would then be much, much less receptive to other, better explanat
Rather than deferring to the judgment of the Smart Altruists and assuming that within their secret backroom discussions they've determined with logic, rigor, and a plethora of academic citations that it's crucial to the mission of raising the sanity waterline to not release a comprehensive exposition of their body of rationality techniques, perhaps we need only consider your second point except in less reverential light.
Given the ease with which CFAR could publish all their material online it seems worth considering why they haven't done so. If spreadin...
I had a very similar thought to this post. So similar in fact that I went ahead and wrote a kind of user guide for each CFAR's techniques (though it has changed a great deal even in the last 4 months since I finished writing). I also have never been to a CFAR workshop and drew on many of the same online sources that you have. It took about a month to compile of working in my spare time. My motivation for doing so was the cost of attending a workshop (financially and time costs) were simply too high for someone in my position overseas.
I've printed it and on...
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
So Bayes update on intellectual arguments, but not on your emotions when you consider them likely to change in the immediate future? That seems like a good virtue if one desires accurate beliefs.
I recently attended a 10 day intensive Vipassana meditation retreat. Would a write-up of the experience be something LWers are interested in as an article for discussion?
I had minimal to moderate experience in meditation before this but now feel much more comfortable with it. I can see potential rationality relevance through,
* Discipline
* Concentration
* Emotion and habit regulation
* Seeing reality as it is
If there is interest then I would appreciate it if someone is willing to look over a draft of the article for me as I haven't written for LW before.
I just attended one too! I am composing a post on this, about halfway done. I'd be interested in a collaboration where we both talk about our experiences, though I would like to see what you think. My post is laden with my own interpretations. Send me a message if you want to discuss once you have your outline down
Are they good quality for listening to?
I listen to audio books regularly and they are at the upper end in terms of quality.
Moreover, is the material they cover comprehensible?
Yes. Articles that don't translate well into audio are not produced e.g. Intuitive Bayes Theorem is unavailable.
have you found the Less Wrong casts to be understandable sufficiently well for a first-time listener?
Yes.
I'd like to know in which order I should provide those articles that are available on Castify.
I don't know what you mean here but you can contact Castify ...
Sumatra PDF 3.0 on Windows 8.1 x64. I believe the problem is the same one this user had with the AI to Zombies ebook.
I'll be reading the epub personally (which works fine in Sumatra) on my Ipad so it doesn't bother me, but I thought I would mention it as Sumatra is a relatively popular reader and if this ebook is produced by the same team as the rationality ebook then it seems to be a recurring problem.
The epub and mobi links both lead to "page not found".
Also having problems with the links within the PDF. They are blacked out though they still function as links. Same problem with the AI to Zombies ebook I think.
Otherwise very excited to read this!
There is value in the techniques taught and there are also serious concerns about the methodology, marketing, and psychological safety of the course. It's messy to talk about because it's simultaneously problematic and can be helpful so participants tend to come out on a particular side. I'd encourage anyone considering purchasing/supporting the course to read this review from an ex-participant or DIY the course with the techniques here.
TLDR of the review
... (read more)