No Fire in the Equations
A pointed critique of rationalism
This essay is actually the same essay as the previous one, but targeted at rationalists instead of psychonauts/spiritual seekers.
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? – Stephen Hawking
The mind is a clouded place. So say the rationalists. It has classified so many of these clouds, all swirling in your brain, keeping the truth from you. And it promises, that you can learn to see past these clouds. That you can make them go away. And if you make them go away? Why, you will win. And what does winning look like? Why. It looks like writing powerless diatribes about how AI will kill us all.
What is the truth behind all these clouds? This is one of them:
And this is truth! Of a sort.
But the highest truths compel.
This truth?
It compels nothing.
There is no fire in the equations of rationalism. A space fleet with no fuel, rusting in the spaceport. A rocket with no kerosene. This is why Yudkowsky isn’t winning. Because changing the state of the minds of others doesn’t do anything if you don’t also inspire them to do something with their newfound clarity. So entire possibilities for dealing with AI X-risk are foreclosed, because they wouldn’t be purely intellectual approaches. They wouldn’t be purely equations and reasoning and coding. Because they would also have fire in them.
And how does one breathe fire into these equations?
Well.
That takes metanoia.
Why metanoia? Because the fundamental problematic is not that you are deluded. The fundamental problematic is that you are Darth Vader. The man machine. All logos and no thymos. All reason and no spirit. And spirit is what provides the fire for reason to change reality with its equations. This is an unbalanced state, and trying to bring your spirit online? It’s gonna hurt at first, because there is so much you haven’t been feeling, so much you have instead asked your mind to deal with. And it goes and it takes that energy, and it uses it to produce elaborate mind pictures for you, instead of the heart gestalts that are necessary for useful action in the world, that the highest performers use to succeed in the world.
Don’t believe me? Consider Miyamoto Musashi. At a record of 61 duels, all of them undefeated, and many of them to the death, he is easily the greatest fighter who ever lived. But when he tried to transmit the special knowledge that allowed him to be a kensei, a sword-saint, the result was not something resembling a rationalist sequence, but instead was a philosophical-spiritual tract. The highest performers don’t have to think about cognitive biases, they fly by intuition, a faculty that isn’t purely mental, but also felt. And these people, these athletes and fighters and artists and politicians, they reach the top. Unlike the rationalists.
This may even be true of scientists. Certainly a good chunk of the original quantum physicists, who peered deeper into the nature of the physical than anyone, were outright mystics. And it’s not clear that working scientists nowadays engage with rationalism, or have even heard of it. One would think it would be at least doable to get them into rationalism. But without spirit, no victory is possible.
And don’t get me wrong, the rationalist space fleet really needs to take off and raise the sanity waterline (though it does need a wee-bit of postmodernism and Wittgenstein to temper the totalitarian desire to want to wipe out religion). But it won’t any time soon. Such a lofty goal is not within reach at this time.
There is, however, a way to breathe fire into the equations. I imagine you have heard of Effective Altruism. That is a rationalist adjacent area where the equations do have fire. And if you want the rest of rationalism to have fire, you have to be a part of it. You have to take some of that fire in you so you can spread it elsewhere. Taking the step to start regularly donating to charity is where it begins. And it can end there if that’s where your ambition stops. But it can go further if it doesn’t. So much further that you will see things you never even considered.
And here is where the metanoia kicks in. Because I know some of you do already donate to charity. But I also suspect most of you don’t. So the question to you who don’t give is:
Given you have known all this time about EA, why did you never think of getting involved? Why did you never think to actually help others? You were so concerned with truth. But reason does not contain the whole truth. The heart also has its truths.
Will you learn from them? The world needs your help. Will you give it?
Do it. Do. Good. Breathe fire into the equations. You will be an X-wing pilot in the actual Rebel Alliance. Part of the foreshock of the human utilitronium shockwave that will take us to the Culture and beyond.
It’s a neverending ride. And it starts with one simple step.
And if you resist this? If you don’t want to hear this? Look at your resistance closely. And then tell me why it is good.
I've come to believe that perhaps the biggest problem in the human world is what I call "meme-based" or "meme-grounded" reasoning.
Meme-grounded reasoning is basically doxastic voluntarism—you hear ideas, you like them, so you choose to believe them. I could summarize it as "axiomatic reasoning in which the axioms are numerous and chosen according to taste."
Like Carlos here, a Christian who thinks reason is overrated—not enough metanoia (spiritual conversion) & thymos (heart). "High performers fly by [spiritual] intuition," he says. What does this mean? I was only a Christian for over 20 years, so, damned if I know.
I think this is unavoidable. Some axioms are necessary, and axioms cannot prove themselves.
So why isn't "the spirit guides" a good axiom?
Simple—it can lead anywhere. Different "spiritual expeiences" lead to different destinations, often incompatible ones. For one it leads to Buddhism, another Protestantism, another Mormonism, another Islam, another ISIS, another "agnostic but spiritual".
How then should we choose our axioms? Well, by looking for axioms that produce the exact opposite of this effect—convergence rather than divergence. The correct axioms are those that would lead two unrelated species on two different planets (or at the very least least, isolated tribes on different continents) to believe similar things. These are axioms that don't tell you where to go, but still lead people to the same place.
Interestingly, this is what Mormonism indirectly taught, for it is their belief that a group of Native Americans did believe in Jesus Christ and the Christian God, and that Christ himself appeared among the Nephites of Central America following the death of Jesus. The Native Americans *used* to be Christian; they simply forgot.
I left the church specifically because I came to believe that this and other teachings were in fact untrue. But part of my change in beliefs was the long-term observation over literally decades that I, unlike my peers, was unable to have "spiritual experiences" linked to the Holy Ghost like my peers did, despite countless attempts. For decades I assumed there was something wrong with me which caused God not to desire to communicate with me. [edit: another key element was the possibility that God might be evil, as explained brilliantly by NonStampCollector: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt66kbYmXXk] The truth turned out to be as simple as it was horrifying: God wasn't real.
Awful things can be true, but humans' default meme-grounded reasoning behavior leads people away from believing awful-but-true things unless the awfulness is disguised or masked somehow. For example, one could be an atheist if, like the New Atheists, their atheism seems grounded in a distaste for religion. "Atheism might be awful, sure, but have you seen how much worse *religion* is?" I say it would be better to ignore religion entirely, and just follow the evidence where it leads.