Can I ask what you and fellow postrationalists think about Christianity?
I find it odd that post/meta rationality claims to be very open and stance-swithcy, but I almost never see a curiosity or willingness to engage with Christianity in a serious way. Instead, Buddhism is often assumed to be a sort of the obvious best religion, even if as you say in this piece it's a strangely amalgamated and Westernized form of Buddhism.
I think the difficulty with Christianity is that most forms of it make a big deal about policing beliefs and ontology. That said, if Zen wasn't available to me, I'd probably be a Quaker. Buddhism, especial Western Buddhism, is appealing because it's a tradition that let's us engage with the sacred without being captured by an overly strong interpretation of the sacred (though of course there's plenty of Buddhists lineage that are guilty of policing beliefs, but I obviously find those less appealing).
I believe Zen was extremely strict about policing beliefs and ontology, lineage, and so on, before it became watered down in the West, no? I think ultimately when you say "Zen" you do not really mean "Zen Buddhism" but more westernized Zen stripped of its original eastern, monastic context.
I say this as someone who also loves Zen & Buddhism in general, and have gotten a lot out of them.
Now if you are intentionally choosing to go with Buddhism over Christianity because it's exotic to our Western culture and you don't wish to argue with religious doctrinairians, that's fine. However if you assume that Buddhism is somehow More True because people don't make as big a deal of policing beliefs and ontology, I would strongly urge you to reconsider your priors here, and the surrounding context.
I'm just a Zen shaped person. Not looking for anything exotic. Christianity wasn't able to connect with me. In fact, it tried very hard to chase me away for thinking too rationality and not being willing to believe obviously false claims. Zen gave me a path to seeing the truth for myself.
I became aware of the postrat community via Twitter and had absolutely no awareness of this history. With no research and just vibe ingestion, I associate it with acknowledgement of the divine and necessary limitations of rationality (while also agreeing more with the tenants of rationality/LessWrong/etc than 99.99% of humans).
It's a necessary advance and resonates hard with me.
Thanks for sharing and documenting how it came to exist and for your contribution!
This was a wonderful overview. Even having lived it myself (for others, I’m the “Valentine Michael Smith” that Gordon references), there’s a bunch of this that I just didn’t know or put together. The variation of the pre/post problem where pre claim to be post is super obvious now that you point it out, and it explains a lot about eg how un seen I’ve felt about rationalist critiques of postrationalist thought. Thank you for sharing this talk!
Thanks for your kind words! My memory is that at the time the Berkeley postrat circle existed you were pretty deep into trying to fix CFAR, and I think it wasn't until your "Kensho" post that I realized you were one of us (or maybe by writing that post you became one of us, whatever this us is that I'm talking about). :-)
I think even before the Kenshō post, Ethan and I were digging into doing experiments with Kegan’s interview to discern whatever he called what we now call the Kegan levels. Right before my kenshō I was working on an “ontology cracker” sequence on Less Wrong, trying to encourage ontological flexibility so that we could talk more freely about ideas even if they had the wrong branding or vibes. So I think I was solidly one of “us” before that post, just much more loosely connected.
Didn't know any of this! Many communities ending up I think in similar location - spirit tech collective, some consciousness research threads, vervaeke types, uap+psi+telepathytapes people. I like Jefferey Martin's PNSE framework as an academic building point.
Can I ask what you and fellow postrationalists think about Christianity?
I find it odd that post/meta rationality claims to be very open and stance-swithcy, but I almost never see a curiosity or willingness to engage with Christianity in a serious way. Instead, Buddhism is often assumed to be a sort of the obvious best religion, even if as you say in this piece it's a strangely amalgamated and Westernized form of Buddhism.
I think the difficulty with Christianity is that most forms of it make a big deal about policing beliefs and ontology. That said, if Zen wasn't available to me, I'd probably be a Quaker. Buddhism, especial Western Buddhism, is appealing because it's a tradition that let's us engage with the sacred without being captured by an overly strong interpretation of the sacred (though of course there's plenty of Buddhists lineage that are guilty of policing beliefs, but I obviously find those less appealing).
I believe Zen was extremely strict about policing beliefs and ontology, lineage, and so on, before it became watered down in the West, no? I think ultimately when you say "Zen" you do not really mean "Zen Buddhism" but more westernized Zen stripped of its original eastern, monastic context.
I say this as someone who also loves Zen & Buddhism in general, and have gotten a lot out of them.
Now if you are intentionally choosing to go with Buddhism over Christianity because it's exotic to our Western culture and you don't wish to argue with religious doctrinairians, that's fine. However if you assume that Buddhism is somehow More True because people don't make as big a deal of policing beliefs and ontology, I would strongly urge you to reconsider your priors here, and the surrounding context.
I'm just a Zen shaped person. Not looking for anything exotic. Christianity wasn't able to connect with me. In fact, it tried very hard to chase me away for thinking too rationality and not being willing to believe obviously false claims. Zen gave me a path to seeing the truth for myself.
I became aware of the postrat community via Twitter and had absolutely no awareness of this history. With no research and just vibe ingestion, I associate it with acknowledgement of the divine and necessary limitations of rationality (while also agreeing more with the tenants of rationality/LessWrong/etc than 99.99% of humans).
It's a necessary advance and resonates hard with me.
Thanks for sharing and documenting how it came to exist and for your contribution!
This was a wonderful overview. Even having lived it myself (for others, I’m the “Valentine Michael Smith” that Gordon references), there’s a bunch of this that I just didn’t know or put together. The variation of the pre/post problem where pre claim to be post is super obvious now that you point it out, and it explains a lot about eg how un seen I’ve felt about rationalist critiques of postrationalist thought. Thank you for sharing this talk!
Thanks for your kind words! My memory is that at the time the Berkeley postrat circle existed you were pretty deep into trying to fix CFAR, and I think it wasn't until your "Kensho" post that I realized you were one of us (or maybe by writing that post you became one of us, whatever this us is that I'm talking about). :-)
I think even before the Kenshō post, Ethan and I were digging into doing experiments with Kegan’s interview to discern whatever he called what we now call the Kegan levels. Right before my kenshō I was working on an “ontology cracker” sequence on Less Wrong, trying to encourage ontological flexibility so that we could talk more freely about ideas even if they had the wrong branding or vibes. So I think I was solidly one of “us” before that post, just much more loosely connected.
Didn't know any of this! Many communities ending up I think in similar location - spirit tech collective, some consciousness research threads, vervaeke types, uap+psi+telepathytapes people. I like Jefferey Martin's PNSE framework as an academic building point.