Human minds conflate things a lot. Often a person’s beliefs about the world and what they care about are blurred together in a very confused way if they’ve never thought about it before.
Some key questions that come to mind, given people conflate things so much, are:
How does a person start to get clarity on whether they care about what they care about due to their beliefs about the world or their values?
How does a person deal with finding out that they care because of something other than facts or deeply held values? To put it another way, if a person starts thinking, and then they realise that their rationalizations for their feelings don’t add up, how does a person deal with this?
This comment responds to the second set of questions posed above.
How does a person deal with finding out that they care because of something other than facts or deeply held values? To put it another way, if a person starts thinking, and then they realise that their rationalizations for their feelings don’t add up, how does a person deal with this?
Two responses are:
Think harder and try to reconcile this inconsistency that has been found.
Avoid thinking more about this at all costs because it is so unpleasant to have your fundamental beliefs and values shaken up.
The second possible response is why warm, approachable caring community-builders are so valuable. It is also why it is so important for people to feel like they have permission to not act on what they believe to be important to act on.
Changing your mind is hard. Changing your mind is so much harder if you feel like you have to completely change your life and all your future plans every time a new consideration pops into your head that puts your previous conclusion on shaky ground.
This was really insightful: I can definitely envision how creating a warm, cozy atmosphere is crucial as a demonstration that 1) its safe to be vulnerable 2) other people have done this and it’s not so hard 3) that’s what we do here and it’s understood how difficult it is to do 4) you won’t be attacked for being unskilled at it
And it also helps elucidate how having an open but critical atmosphere doesn’t work for first time folks, even very thoughtful, open, truth-seeking ones. They aren’t ready to defend themselves in friendly combat, even as a game / helpful search for truth in such a state of world-instability.
Yeah, I also find it very de-stabilizing and then completely forget my own journey instantly once I’ve reconciled everything and am feeling stable and coherent again.
It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one here who isn’t 99.999 percentile stoically unaffected by this.
I think one way to deal with this is to mainly select for people with these weird dispositions who are unusually good at coping with this.
I think an issue with this is that the other 99% of planet Earth might be good allies to have in this whole “save the world” project and could actually get on board if we do community building exceptionally well. On the other hand, maybe this is too big an ask because community building is just really hard and by optimising for inclusivity, we maybe trade-off against other things that we care about possibly even more.
I personally don’t know what the optimal message for community-builders is but I hope we keep having these sorts of conversations. Even if it turns out that there is no good answer, I think it’s still worth it on expectation to think hard about this.
If we can guide community-builders better to manage these complexities and nuances, I think we’ll be able to create a much stronger ecosystem to help us tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Also, thank you for navigating through my replies! I really appreciate you taking the time to read them.
I will limit myself to just this one comment so I don’t drown this post’s comment thread in any more of my spam. 😅
I have been told by friends that sometimes I talk in their presence but it’s pretty clear that I’m actually really talking to myself: ”...where would I have put my keys when I got home yesterday?” (or “what do I actually care about here?”)
This thinking requires time and patience that most people are too busy for or not curious enough for or too tired to question their current life choices and worldview (it is extremely exhausting to question your fundamental beliefs and values).
This is one key reason why the person who is interested in effective altruism and their relationship to the person who isn’t are such vital components to the equation in my mind.
Human minds conflate things a lot. Often a person’s beliefs about the world and what they care about are blurred together in a very confused way if they’ve never thought about it before.
Some key questions that come to mind, given people conflate things so much, are:
How does a person start to get clarity on whether they care about what they care about due to their beliefs about the world or their values?
How does a person deal with finding out that they care because of something other than facts or deeply held values? To put it another way, if a person starts thinking, and then they realise that their rationalizations for their feelings don’t add up, how does a person deal with this?
This comment responds to the second set of questions posed above.
How does a person deal with finding out that they care because of something other than facts or deeply held values? To put it another way, if a person starts thinking, and then they realise that their rationalizations for their feelings don’t add up, how does a person deal with this?
Two responses are:
Think harder and try to reconcile this inconsistency that has been found.
Avoid thinking more about this at all costs because it is so unpleasant to have your fundamental beliefs and values shaken up.
The second possible response is why warm, approachable caring community-builders are so valuable. It is also why it is so important for people to feel like they have permission to not act on what they believe to be important to act on.
Changing your mind is hard. Changing your mind is so much harder if you feel like you have to completely change your life and all your future plans every time a new consideration pops into your head that puts your previous conclusion on shaky ground.
This was really insightful: I can definitely envision how creating a warm, cozy atmosphere is crucial as a demonstration that 1) its safe to be vulnerable 2) other people have done this and it’s not so hard 3) that’s what we do here and it’s understood how difficult it is to do 4) you won’t be attacked for being unskilled at it
And it also helps elucidate how having an open but critical atmosphere doesn’t work for first time folks, even very thoughtful, open, truth-seeking ones. They aren’t ready to defend themselves in friendly combat, even as a game / helpful search for truth in such a state of world-instability.
Yeah, I also find it very de-stabilizing and then completely forget my own journey instantly once I’ve reconciled everything and am feeling stable and coherent again.
It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one here who isn’t 99.999 percentile stoically unaffected by this.
I think one way to deal with this is to mainly select for people with these weird dispositions who are unusually good at coping with this.
I think an issue with this is that the other 99% of planet Earth might be good allies to have in this whole “save the world” project and could actually get on board if we do community building exceptionally well. On the other hand, maybe this is too big an ask because community building is just really hard and by optimising for inclusivity, we maybe trade-off against other things that we care about possibly even more.
I personally don’t know what the optimal message for community-builders is but I hope we keep having these sorts of conversations. Even if it turns out that there is no good answer, I think it’s still worth it on expectation to think hard about this.
If we can guide community-builders better to manage these complexities and nuances, I think we’ll be able to create a much stronger ecosystem to help us tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Also, thank you for navigating through my replies! I really appreciate you taking the time to read them.
I will limit myself to just this one comment so I don’t drown this post’s comment thread in any more of my spam. 😅
It is also a reason why the level of mutual trust between the person who cares about EA causes and the person who doesn’t can be so vital.
How does a person start to get clarity on whether they care about what they care about due to their beliefs about the world or their values?
This just seems to require a lot of thinking!
I have found that I can get the most clarity when I do a mix of:
exposing myself to various points of view (eg. through books and conversation); and then
either writing or talking myself into clarity (with other people or alone[1]).
I have been told by friends that sometimes I talk in their presence but it’s pretty clear that I’m actually really talking to myself: ”...where would I have put my keys when I got home yesterday?” (or “what do I actually care about here?”)
This thinking requires time and patience that most people are too busy for or not curious enough for or too tired to question their current life choices and worldview (it is extremely exhausting to question your fundamental beliefs and values).
This is one key reason why the person who is interested in effective altruism and their relationship to the person who isn’t are such vital components to the equation in my mind.