TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
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User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Yeah for sure. I get why people don’t talk about conversion experience in modern society, but it is helpful to read them.
Basically I was very into a sort of Westernized Buddhism for a long time, but then had some tough times in my life that led me to a crisis of faith. I slowly approached the Christian church more out of desperation than anything, if I’m being honest. As I started going my perspective on a lot of things shifted. I read the Bible for the first time, started taking Christian thinkers and themes in media more seriously and seeing a vast depth of wisdom there I had missed. Kind of unprompted I had some let’s say convincing experiences both sober and then on a psychedelic trip that made me consider seriously the whole Christ as God thing.
I also had virtuous Christians come into my life, or realized folks I already knew and respected were deeply religious.
From there I tried out the Orthodox Liturgy and had a super intense emotional reaction, I actually started crying in the service. It was quite embarrassing and a part of me hated it. I mean honestly this whole process has been difficult internally, I find materialism and atheism a difficult mindset to shed which is why part of why I write about it on here occasionally.
Anyway all this happened, I started praying and got more ‘confirmation’ so to speak. For me my experience was kind of seeing visions of the Cross or hearing the voice of God, but it’s all pretty messy and confusing when it comes to that sort of thing. I’d rather not go into the gory personal details.
It wasn’t an all at one experience it was more a collection of coincidences and shifts in mindset, combined with persistent direct experiential signs that slowly convinced me. My conversion has not been an easy or easy even willing one to be quite frank, and I’d imagine most conversions from atheism to religious belief are far more messy than typically presented.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Hah yeah that was pretty crappy of me, I apologize. I care very deeply about the topic and it’s easy to let emotions cloud your judgment.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
How far am I supposed to bend over backwards extending charity to all the sorcery that turned out to not actually work? Magical beliefs have been with us since we climbed down from the trees, and after thousands of years we have what? What have you brought us?
All of civilization and the foundation that allowed science to be developed and flourish, perhaps?
Yes materialist science is powerful. It's also flawed, and from my perspective has essentially been burning down our cultural myths and the built up social capital of millenia in order to fuel it's relentless search for reductionist physical truths. That store of fuel is almost gone, and if we don't realize and pay attention to the societal structures which undergird science, it won't matter how much scientific knowledge or power we've accrued. We'll kill ourselves anyway.
To be honest, I'm not sure what non-materialists even want from us materialists. They aren't bringing any experimental insights, they aren't bringing any testable theories, and they don't have any magic that works. Do they just want to get snorted at less when they relate their ESP anecdotes at a party or on an internet forum? I don't know what they expect me to do with what they've given me other than shrug.
Generally I want a revival of religion, I want atheism to be a thing of the past and I want materialists to acknowledge arguments and admit they don't know instead of sneering. It seems that's too much to ask, however.
A psychologist himself, Adam Mastroianni proclaims: I'm sorry for psychology's loss, whatever it is.
I found this post on the slatestarcodex subreddit. The main article discusses how the replication crisis really isn't as bad as most people think, because:
Gino's work has been cited over 33,000 times, and Ariely's work has been cited over 66,000 times. They both got tenured professorships at elite universities. They wrote books, some of which became bestsellers. They gave big TED talks and lots of people watched them. By every conventional metric of success, these folks were killing it.
Now let's imagine every allegation of fraud is true, and everything Ariely and Gino ever did gets removed from the scientific record, It's a Wonderful Life-style. (We are, I can't stress this enough, imagining this. Buzz buzz, I’m bees.) What would change?
Not much.
Basically this idea can be boiled down to 'well most modern psychologists don't do anything that's even remotely important, so why do we care if these studies don't replicate?' I'm very wary of buying this type of argument. One reason is that over $2 billion dollars went into psychology research, in the US alone, way back in 2016. I'm sure it has increased since then.
On top of that, as psychologists themselves have acknowledged, many public policies get based on psychological research. In the light of the replication crisis, this is perhaps the largest and most under-discussed mistake of the 21st century. The majority of our politicians are basing their decisions, and public justifications, on a field of science that has been proven to be mostly fake. To me, that's not something we can just throw up our hands at and say is trivial.
Another interesting point, which I won't go too far into, is that many of the replicable studies in psychology are just completely ignored. Here's a highly-upvoted comment on the SSC subreddit:
Psychology has nothing interesting left because all of the rock-solid empirical results with tremendous real-world consequences were buried due to being politically awkward.
Psychometrics, heredity of various personality traits, innate gender differences, etc.
So you're naturally left with irrelevancies (monkey prostitutes) and lies (growth mindset, power posing, priming, multiple intelligences).
It's almost enough to make me empathize with Gino and Ariely. The modern discipline is all about garbing feel-good falsehoods with vestments of science. Their only crime was taking the more direct path to that end, rather than undertaking the standard rituals of plausibly innocent methodological infirmities (p-hacking etc.)
I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not Psychology deserves an equal place among the rest of the sciences.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
My question is why wasn’t this leaked earlier?
A bit of a tangent, but I'd like to point out this is an excellent example of a real conspiracy that wasn't leaked. So many people on here act like conspiracies are impossible because someone will leak it - clearly not!
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
We’re starting to see the contagion of mimetic violence that Girard predicted. Except our myths are so fragmented that it’s difficult for people to even agree on a narrative - the violence for its own sake is becoming naked, stripped of its justifications.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Yes I have! I find life overall it better without it. Besides even while drunk I didn’t usually have much fun. When I did I barely remembered it.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I couldn’t tell you why that worldview exists; I think it’s a side effect of turning African American cultural complaints into mental masturbation, but it really is what it looks like.
Ultimately you can see it as a rejection of the idea of competence and hierarchy. All hierarchies and power differentials are inherently unjust according to a far left view, because they involve one being dominating another. Competence is simply a way to justify the hierarchical subjugation.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
Just adding your weekly reminder that the Motte remains the brightest and best hope for open discourse on the internet. Be proud and relieved you are a Mottizen - we have made it to the shining City on the Hill, the one place online where truth and free speech are protected.
I'm doing all this grandstanding because I'm flabbergasted that right now Tildes, one of the other 'reddit-alternatives' that claims to stand for open and intellectual discourse, is actively and unapologetically censoring anything to do with the UAP hearings.
Many of the users there are rightly pointing out that it's insane that the moderators would block discussion about a literal Congressional hearing... but this is the doublethink that we Mottizens are up against:
Hypothesizing that aliens might well exist based on the vastness of our universe is not a harmful thing.
Believing in conspiracy theories based on zero credible evidence is incredibly harmful. This hearing centers around a man with absolutely zero evidence claiming that there is an arm (or arms) of the government operating above congressional and presidential oversight. The claim is that we are dealing with a massive, top-level coverup. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Anyone want to quess which Qrowd is qoing to eat this shit up?
Giving these conspiracy theories a platform on a forum where discussion is purported to be high quality and based on intellectual curiosity is harmful. Have you ever noticed how people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in multiple conspiracy theories? Worse, they are even likely to believe all conspiracy theories, even those which are completely contradictory to each other.. This is called conspiracist ideation, or conspiracy theory monism.
Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the last 8-ish years knows how harmful this can be. They helped elect a president who built our current supreme court. Check out /r/qanoncasualties if you forgot how it harms us on a more individual level. You could also go back further than Q anon and read accounts of witch trials, rapes, genocides, wars, and all manner of horrible things caused by false beliefs in conspiracy. Not to mention the countless deaths caused by vaccine avoidance - something that started long ago, but with which we are still dealing today.
Politicians having a hearing about this conspiracy theory is news, unfortunately. However, the conspiracy theory itself is not the news. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert openly discussed Replacement Theory, should we give that its own thread and discuss its merits?
The only posts we should have regarding this topic, in my semi-humble opinion, are well-written articles absolutely tearing our politicians apart for even humoring this hearing. Perhaps a good debunking article explaining that this whole testimony is based on hearsay and rumor, and explaining that someone's position in government doesn't mean they're immune to conspiratorial thinking.
Again, luckily there is some actual pushback on the site itself. But please, my fellow Mottizens, let this open display of intolerance remind you to keep your guard strong. Keep your eyes focused directly on the goal, and remember that if we let ourselves be distracted by our petty differences, the Motte may well become the same censored cesspool as the rest of the internet.
Be strong my brothers and sisters, and never forget the incredible and unique nature of this Forum that we have built. Don't take the Motte for granted, and be swift and sure when defending it.
Veritas omnia vincet.
It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.
It's getting unavoidable that we're having far more people complain and add low-effort negative comments than actually take time to flesh out top level posts that are high quality. As @Amadan and others have consistently said, if you don't like the status quo why don't you contribute yourself, or try to organize something else to change it?
High quality, intellectual writing doesn't just drop out of thin air because you complain about it. It comes from intelligent people who are driven to write, and who want to sharpen their minds in an environment that tests their opinions.
Frankly, I'm concerned that the "quality of news an novel information" has gone up here much more than I'd like. In terms of a vision for this site, I'm far more in the camp of having great writers like @ymeskhout and @DaseindustriesLtd write long effortposts about serious issues they've spent a lot of time thinking about, rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.
There are a million places on the internet you can go to keep up with the spectacle of the twenty four hour news cycle. There aren't as many places where you can find in-depth analyses of Straussian themes, or a discussion that weaves together modern internet drama with the age-old idea of sacrifice and meaning and suffering, or the how the relationship between the rich and the poor has changed dramatically in the modern era.
These sorts of well thought out, insightful and useful write-ups are rare and take time to formulate. Expecting brilliant insights on every latest piece of CW gossip is ridiculous. Sure it might drive more engagement, but it would also likely lead us in a race to the bottom.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Thanks for the tag! For what it's worth, I wrote about my conversion experience below, and this was another factor that helped me along the way. I have had many various ideologies I've tried to pin my identity to throughout the years, from communism to anarchy to libertarianism to effective altruism. Ultimately I've found that Christianity has been far more 'stable' for me, in part because it's transcendental, and in part because there is plenty of room for doubt and even periods of lack of belief while still being welcomed back such as with the parable of the prodigal son.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
I would suggest the traumatic transcendence is unlikely because the world is FULL of trauma
Actually, as the post I linked argued, it's likely the modern world has far less trauma than the ancient world. This could explain the relative lack of miracles over time under the traumatic transcendence argument. The Holocaust is a fair point, but then again there are all sorts of strange and occult forces and miraculous accounts from Holocaust times... maybe @SecureSignals would know more.
However the reason humanity embraced the current paradigm was because it was safer, dragons and demons and other monsters (there were those seeking to inflict madness and corruption into the world) were banished by the light of reason, which meant that there were arguments that Mages were trying to wake humanity into a much more dangerous world and that they did not have the right to do so. Even if Bacon is correct, is a world with less predictability actually better? Or have we manifested this world because it is the one where we have the best chance?
It doesn't seem to me that the dragons and demons and other monsters have been banished. It seems that they've moved into different realms in order to torment us, and we've gotten locked into a paradigm where we can't even discuss them seriously because to admit we still have monsters around is seen as 'pseudo-science'. Or we try to add a spiritual bandaid like therapy that barely works above placebo.
The reason why materialism is ascendant is that it can be used every day in the smallest of ways. Christians don't just pray for a church to appear, they build them out of brick and mortar.
Prayer can be used every day, and in the smallest of ways. Christians pray and then build the church. You see we in the modern world, thanks to Descartes, have separated our physical bodies and our minds to the point where we almost can't see it. To many religious types, embodied action is a type of prayer. This is a much deeper topic that I still wade in the waters of, but suffice to say there's more here than meets the eye.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
I think this whole post is confused in very common ways about what it means for something to be material vs scientific vs transcendental.
You're probably right in that I assumed a lot in the post. To clarify, when you say things like:
Neither ESP nor non-materialism would disprove or break science.
I'm more arguing that our culture, and indeed the mainstream scientific apparatus, operates based on a sort of materialist, reductionist Scientism framework. Often when rationalists talk about materialism vs non materialism they get bogged down in these definition games, and to be fair it's for a somewhat good reason.
Regardless, the average scientist doing actual work in the world today, publishing papers that lead to policy interventions, diverting government funds, organizing society, etc, is a materialist by action. Even though a ton of people say they're Christian, in reality they act like materialists. That's what I'm getting at.
So yes you can say okay in an edge case True Science would survive proof that materialism is false, and I'd agree. Sadly our world doesn't run on True Science, it's a motte that never has and never will exist.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Historically science flourishes best when you have motivated scientists that can devote multiple decades to learning everything about a problem.
Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC who talks about how this was his strategy. Just find scientists that seem brilliant and guarantee them 20 years to devote to a project, then sit back and let them do it.
The current scientific establishment is almost the opposite of this - in order to compete you have to publish quick and publish something important. And I don’t blame the scientists, most of them will lose their livelihood if they don’t get grants, and they typically don’t have skills to fall back on. Or much of a backup plan in general.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
I'd argue you can be a figure of authority and discipline for your children, but still be their friend as well. You can go too far in either direction.
For instance, if the only way you ever interact with your children is to discipline or scold them, that's too harsh and likely not good for them. Likewise, if you only ever act as their friend and never discipline them, well, look at America nowadays and you'll see the issue there.
Now I'm not a parent so I don't have the personal insight, but I'd always imagined the goal is to strike a balance.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Hey man, just want to give you some solidarity. I also struggle with chronic anxiety that has awful physical symptoms. The medical world can be harsh, and frankly doesn't know what to do with patients like us. I've made improvements over time though, so I know it's possible. I wish you the best.
Happy to discuss further in a PM if you think it might help.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Or somewhere vs anywhere people.
Yep, I think this hits the nail on the head. One of the defining features of liquid modernity, to me, is a total disregard for place. Physical locations aren't what matters at all. In fact it's seen as uncouth and ridiculous to care about the place you were born and grew up in rather than somewhere else.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
My take is that tragedy is an inescapable part of life. Wallowing in tragedy isn't. Stop wallowing buddy.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Hah, I needed to hear this. The greener grass phenomenon is so real, and this part:
Nevermind that he had gained this confidence because he has a stable, supportive relationship
Hit me like a sack of rocks. It’s very true that for me I’d probably be half the man I am today without the support of my lady. For most of my life before our relationship I was down in the dumps about how I’d be single forever and never find a woman. Then she came along and she was better than any woman I could’ve even imagined.
The problem is I can know all of this intellectually but still have to face the question of why the heck the thought of committing to her for live driving me insane with anxiety and fear??
It’s maddening I tell you, maddening.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
This is why people don’t like game theory and people who use it to justify asshole behavior. You can apply your fancy math stuff all you like, I’ll still think you’re a dick.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Well no, not quite like a lion. They are beings of spirit, fundamentally different from us physical beings. And by many accounts much older and wilier.
Besides, there are plenty of people who have personal evidence of demons active in their lives. There are plenty of recordings of ghosts and strange phenomenon if yo know where to look. Again, the point is that scientific evidence requires reproducibility on demand.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Started rereading Magician by Feist, and it's blowing me away. Such a good story, it has all the classic epic fantasy elements from Tolkien but with much sparser descriptions, and a far more engaging pace. Feist is an excellent storyteller.
I remembered liking it as a kid and wasn't sure I'd like it coming back to it, but if anything it's even better now that I've slogged through hundreds of other fantasy books that were totally mid.
Also reading Christ in our Midst, a book of letters from a Russian Orthodox monk to his spiritual son. It's quite good so far, lots of very basic but solid wisdom.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
You have a backhoe? Nice!!!
Good luck with the project.
Some of you may have read Scott Alexander’s recent post, Book Review: The Geography of Madness. The couple of paragraph summary is:
A culture-bound mental illness is one that only affects people who know about it, and especially people who believe in it. Often it doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (there’s no such thing as witches, and the penis can’t retract into the body). It sometimes spreads contagiously: someone gets a first case, the rest of the village panics, and now everyone knows about it / believes in it / is thinking about it, and so many other people get it too.
Different cultures have their own set of culture-bound illnesses. Sometimes there are commonalities - many cultures have something related to the penis or witches - but the details vary, and a victim almost always gets a case that matches the way their own culture understands it.
THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. I cannot stress this enough. There are plenty of examples of people driving metal objects through their penis to pull it out of their body or prevent the witches from getting it or something like that. There is no amount of commitment to the bit that will make people drive metal objects through their penis. People have died from these conditions - not the illness itself, which is fake, but from wasting away worrying about it, or taking dangerous sham treatments, or getting into fights with people they think caused it. If you think of it as “their unconscious mind must be doing something like making it up, but their conscious mind believes it 100%,” you will be closer to the truth, though there are various reasons I don’t like that framing.
The thrust of Scott’s argument is that humans have an amazing propensity to change their subjective experience based on their beliefs. Here, I'm not talking about rationally held or carefully reasoned beliefs, but deep-seated beliefs that aren’t easy to change, even if you know for a fact they're irrational. Typically, these beliefs seem to be formed through social or cultural channels, and once formed, they can be very difficult to change unless your cultural narrative also changes.
This idea ties into other work on the placebo effect and the ways it shaped our culture, for instance, John Vervaeke’s take on shamanism. The basic idea being that shamanism was highly advantageous from an evolutionary perspective because it allowed groups of humans to harness the placebo effect to overcome illness and manage social problems.
In short, despite the rational pretensions our culture has, our irrational beliefs have extremely strong effects on our perception of pain and other subjective experiences. However, an important nuance is that no cultural disorder is 100% ‘in your head;’ on the contrary, these disorders are very real and can have strong physical effects.
Some of the big examples that Scott gives, and some I think might be (mostly) culturally mediated, are:
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Anorexia
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Post-traumatic stress disorder
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Anxiety
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Depression
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Gender dysphoria
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Chronic pain
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Long Covid
Now, based on the bent of this forum, many people might be tempted to jump on the gender dysphoria issue. While it’s certainly a loud and vibrant battle in the culture war, I’d ask that we instead focus on other problems. In my opinion, if this thesis holds true, then gender dysphoria is a red herring.
The evidence clearly suggests that we are inflicting massive amounts of pain and suffering on ourselves through our cultural beliefs and practices. The fact that so many of our cultural problems - from overdose deaths and suicides to chronic pain and crippling anxiety - are unforced errors is truly shocking.
Think about it - one fourth of the adult U.S. population experiencing chronic pain? That's a staggering number, and it seems largely due to the fact that we have been conditioned to believe that our pain must have an acute physical cause. We've been taught to view pain as something that must be cured with medication or surgery, when in fact many cases of chronic pain can be alleviated by simply changing our beliefs about it.
The truly shocking revelation here is that so many of our cultural problems - massive amounts of overdose deaths, suicides, one fourth of the adult population experiencing chronic pain, crippling anxiety causing young people to retreat from society, and many more issues - are clear unforced errors. We are inflicting this pain on ourselves.
If this theory is true it may very well be one of the most important and impactful frameworks with which to view the issues of post modernity. We wouldn’t need endless medications or miraculous scientific breakthroughs - we could already have the power to end massive amounts of truly pointless suffering.
ETA: is another perfect example of this type of illness.
From a personal perspective, I can attest that this theory confirms my priors. I’ve dealt with chronic pain for a decade and have long suspected that it was mostly psychosomatic. Even with this realization, it is a difficult battle to fight. Ironically, support groups where people confirm and commiserate seem to make the issue worse. In fact, many modern studies on pain recommend not even using the word "pain" and replacing it with something else to trick your mind into understanding that your pain doesn’t have an acute physical cause.
So many of us in the rationalist community focus on object-level reasons as to why our society may be stagnating or why we have so many cultural problems. At the end of the day, it turns out that our beliefs themselves may be throwing us into a twisted, absurd, and horrific self-fulfilling prophecy.
It may be time to stop assuming that the causes of our problems originate directly from the outside world and update to a view that many more major problems could be solved if we simply change our cultural beliefs.
Last week, @ShariaHeap brought up some interesting points on the evolution of religion under the discussion of Bronze Age history that went under-discussed, in my humble opinion.
Specifically they ask:
To me, this question can be boiled down to - are all religions equally good, or are some better than others?
Of course we have to get into the 'objective morality versus subjective/post-modern plurality' debate here, which can be it's own morass. But I am curious about how, if you do take religions as potentially better or worse comparatively, how would they stack up?
I've been writing and thinking about an idea that many religions which are popular today are essentially negative when it comes to divine beings - as in, the popular Vitalism that talks about Mother Earth and the interconnectedness of the universe basically deny any explicit 'being' such as God. Typically the ultimate experience of divinity can be revealed in a sort of non-dualistic merging with the universe, or dissolution of the ego.
Buddhism and Hinduism in some strains, as well as Taoism, have heavily influenced this line of mystical thinking.
On the other end you have the more 'positive' versions of religion or mystical experience, that posit the existence of a God or pantheon of gods. While the two can coexist to some degree, like in Hinduism with Brahman etc, they do seem to have very fundamentally different structures at their core.
In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton takes a stab at more negative conceptions of the divine, fiercely stating:
In this view, the more Eastern or pessimistic or cyclical religions are fundamentally destructive on a larger scale - they argue that nothing means anything, that all will end the same as it began, reality is ultimately an illusion, et cetera.
By contrast, Christianity and other monotheistic religions push us forward to some sort of Progress, which as we have seen... can have its own issues.
I'm curious if this specific topic has been discussed before, and if other folks here have anything to add?
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