5 ms·

How do you apply this theory to minds that follow Taoism?

mdp2021 5y ago
They are simply using the term "in demotic and in decrepit use" to indicate almost its opposite. It is not always easy to find terms (some in the end use the formula "so-called religions"); a possibility could be 'fideism', but it was "hijacked" (legitimately, this time) to mean something different. Even the expression 'blind faith' would be improper, because "faith" there may mean "grit, persistence" (where a degree and a pre-vetted version of "blindness" is functional). But certainly, if the poster used the almost-oxymoron «religion believed in», of course what was meant was very different from what the terms should have meant. To move to the positive content of that post, the idea could be simply that of "focus": when exposed to mental poison it may work not to re-enforce it by giving it attention (during rational analysis you could treat the poison as an assumption (also in broad outside logic terms: much poison comes not in form of statements), which brings the risk of reinforcing it - it is not easy to "handle with care"), and instead return focussing on the clean and let the subconscious systems at least pre-digest it. De-power ideas (etc.) by refusing attention feed. Which oddly enough, is one of the techniques practitioners had to meet.
- mistermann 5y ago
  This is a much more substantial reply than I expected...and I'm quite sure I don't fully understand it. But I think I have a half decent idea (of what you meant), and believe that it doesn't answer my question (at least in the way I intended it) which is how the statement "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" applies to Taoism specifically. The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion, and its ~definition is....~recursively self-referential and self-"disproving" (of dogma), and all-encompassing: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. Making "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" stick to this would be an extremely impressive feat in my estimation. More likely, I suspect any such attempt would demonstrate the validity of the ideas (although it may not be realized as such, which would also demonstrate the point).
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    You are mixing up completely different things. Why? The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. That has nothing to do with religion - which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. You are playing on an equivoque. Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements).
    - mistermann 5y ago
      > You are mixing up completely different things. Why? What do you mean when you say I am "mixing up" things? What do you mean when you say "completely different"? All things that are different have differences, and in some cases the attributes of two things are a complete mismatch (zero common attributes), would that be an example of "completely different"? Are there other examples? Regardless, there can be (but not necessarily is) ~relationships/associations between things that are completely different, sometimes at the object level, and more often (and sometimes only) at the abstract level. My comments are related to such abstract relationships. > The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. I very much agree with the general premise, but: - I don't necessarily agree that it is necessarily (in all cases) trivial. - Radicated beliefs can also promote/reinforce other beliefs. Now, your statement does not assert the opposite or rule it out, I suspect it is likely a consequence of the natural ambiguity of the English language and standard writing conventions, but I believe it is noteworthy that third parties reading conversations such as this may have their perception of reality distorted by not realizing such things, and generally speaking I believe that this can be harmful in some cases. I also believe that this demonstrates the correctness of the first few lines of the Tao Te Ching. > That has nothing to do with religion... This seems like a bold claim to me. I believe I can and have demonstrated otherwise (above). If you disagree, I would enjoy discussing the relative merits of our individual perspectives (perspectives that a human consciousness "takes" (often without being willed, or our conscious knowledge) upon reality, as opposed reality itself (which we do not have direct access to) is an important part of the ideas I am doing my best to communicate). > ...which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. Here you seem to be suggesting that you have accurate knowledge of the mental state of billions of people on the planet. If so, I believe that this is an illusion projected by human consciousness - it appears to be true, and you believe it is true (I presume?), but whether it is actually true, absolutely, is beyond our ability to know. > You are playing on an equivoque. equivoque: - an expression capable of having more than one meaning; a pun. - the fact of having more than one meaning or possible interpretation; ambiguity. I think this is ~correct. I use "~" because while it is true, it is not necessarily comprehensively true. A third party might read that sentence and form the conclusion that that is all that I am doing. Now, it may be true that that is all I'm doing, but I am now asserting explicitly that it is not. A third party now has the explicit option to decide which one of us has a more accurate description of reality. Note also that I said: "The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion...", and when one is taking an abstract perspective, ambiguity naturally manifests in many cases, does it not? In some ways this is a bug, but in other ways it is simultaneously a feature. > Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements). For starters, this is a false dichotomy (an extremely common mode of thinking, I believe, based on several years of closely observing millions of human beings describe reality to each other on social media platforms). Of course, this doesn't mean that it is necessarily wrong (in this case), but it is surely not great odds, or an optimal perspective to take upon any issue. > ...which would be contradictory with the first stanza... I think I do not understand what you mean by this, could you explain in a different way? > ...and would be mental poison... Also this. > ...or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements). If I understand you correctly....personally, I do "take" Taoism not only ~"as a religion", but also as kind of the foundation of my mental model of reality, and it very much is a radicated belief that exerts a strong influence on my beliefs. An example of this is when I encounter someone whose model of reality disagrees with mine: in such cases it is very common for someone to say things like "[reality] "is(!)" X", but very often the person making that statement does not realize that they are referring to their personal model of reality as a proxy for reality itself, or, they do not consider the distinction between the two to be important (I know this from many hundreds of prior conversations - one thing interesting I have noticed in these conversations: I regularly encounter a phenomenon where if you even inject this simple and academically uncontroversial idea into a conversation (reality vs perception of), people's cognition will often start to behave like it is driven by a script[1]). I think my main point about the value of Taoism as a base methodology for building one's model of reality is that it is a very simple method for moderating the often harmful behaviors of evolved human consciousness, the main one being that consciousness manufactures and projects a synthetic, predictive model of reality into the conscious mind, and the conscious mind considers this to be reality itself[2]. Now it's true that one kind of "has to" "take this as it is", but it is often incorrectly asserted that not taking it as it is will necessarily result in ~cognitive paralysis. That idea itself is yet another subconscious prediction of reality, perceived as reality itself. I'm not sure if you and I are talking about two entirely different things (likely, at least to some degree), but hopefully this helps clarify where it is that I am coming from. To me, these ideas are endlessly fascinating, but they very often seem to have the exact opposite effect on other people, so hopefully that is not the case here. [1] Regarding "common scripts": in response to the types of ideas that I am referring to here, a relatively small set of rhetorical rebuttals/dismissals are most likely to arise in a response: - Solipsism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism - Gish Gallop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop - Sealioning/JAQing off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning - /r/iamverysmart (a person trying very hard to look smart) https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ - Ad Hominem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem - Pedantry/Over-thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant - Lol: https://lindsayannlearning.com/rhetoric-in-social-media/ https://lindsayannlearning.com/rhetoric-in-social-media/ - downvote (or not, it is technically unknown) with no reply (sometimes one will even attract a following of downvoters of every other comment one might make on a platform - this has happened to me on two occasions right here on HN, as confirmed by dang after I reported it after several months in each case). An excellent post on how and why people may make these mistakes: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th... Also relevant are software concepts like Equals() or the [is] operator. For the sake of argument/discussion, if one considers it to be possibly true that what I say here is accurate (I have studied this "extensively", and I propose to you that it is indeed very true, and I not only welcome but encourage disagreement, however "pedantic" it may be (provided it is offered with a desire for epistemic soundness)), it suggests something very interesting about the human mind, as well as reality itself: that many/most people perceive reality (or portions of it at least) according to a common and predictable (simple) algorithm, which is very different than how they perceive they perceive reality. And if people's perception of reality is objectively and significantly ~manufactured and incorrect....then what is reality, really? And if this is true, another interesting question might be: is it (or might it plausibly be) important? If you find this short description to be unconvincing, there is a lot more supporting evidence and ideas where these came from. (For fun: I predict that as you are reading this explicit list of ~invalid rebuttals, your "spider senses" may be going off in some way, perhaps a suspicion that I am "up to something". If that is the case, I would say that sense is accurate - there is indeed more than one reason why I have gone through the trouble of explicitly documenting this list of common human behaviors in this particular conversation. I think it would be interesting to see what would happen on a platform where ideas/phenomena like this were first class ideas/rules, kind of like HN has a set of rules and cultural norms. I think a "No hallucinating reality, except where explicitly allowed" rule, if strictly & competently enforced, could be a game changer in social media. There would obviously be a massive learning curve for new members (overcoming evolution is a tough row to hoe), but some people could surely manage it.) [2] People commonly seem to consider this idea to outright false, I suspect because the natural tendency is to consider it with respect to oneself (which significantly alters the cognitive processing of the idea, as is well known in psychology). But if one considers it with respect to other people (a technique of choosing the members of one's outgroup, like Trump supporters, antivaxxers, etc often makes the mind not only much more accepting of it, but often downright eager), it can be much easier to see the accuracy of it.

mdp2021 5y ago

They are simply using the term "in demotic and in decrepit use" to indicate almost its opposite. It is not always easy to find terms (some in the end use the formula "so-called religions"); a possibility could be 'fideism', but it was "hijacked" (legitimately, this time) to mean something different. Even the expression 'blind faith' would be improper, because "faith" there may mean "grit, persistence" (where a degree and a pre-vetted version of "blindness" is functional). But certainly, if the poster used the almost-oxymoron «religion believed in», of course what was meant was very different from what the terms should have meant. To move to the positive content of that post, the idea could be simply that of "focus": when exposed to mental poison it may work not to re-enforce it by giving it attention (during rational analysis you could treat the poison as an assumption (also in broad outside logic terms: much poison comes not in form of statements), which brings the risk of reinforcing it - it is not easy to "handle with care"), and instead return focussing on the clean and let the subconscious systems at least pre-digest it. De-power ideas (etc.) by refusing attention feed. Which oddly enough, is one of the techniques practitioners had to meet.

mistermann 5y ago
This is a much more substantial reply than I expected...and I'm quite sure I don't fully understand it. But I think I have a half decent idea (of what you meant), and believe that it doesn't answer my question (at least in the way I intended it) which is how the statement "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" applies to Taoism specifically. The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion, and its ~definition is....~recursively self-referential and self-"disproving" (of dogma), and all-encompassing: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. Making "...a religious mind has an excellent firewall against everything except the religion believed in" stick to this would be an extremely impressive feat in my estimation. More likely, I suspect any such attempt would demonstrate the validity of the ideas (although it may not be realized as such, which would also demonstrate the point).
- mdp2021 5y ago
  You are mixing up completely different things. Why? The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. That has nothing to do with religion - which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. You are playing on an equivoque. Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements).
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > You are mixing up completely different things. Why? What do you mean when you say I am "mixing up" things? What do you mean when you say "completely different"? All things that are different have differences, and in some cases the attributes of two things are a complete mismatch (zero common attributes), would that be an example of "completely different"? Are there other examples? Regardless, there can be (but not necessarily is) ~relationships/associations between things that are completely different, sometimes at the object level, and more often (and sometimes only) at the abstract level. My comments are related to such abstract relationships. > The poster seemed to have meant that "radicated beliefs hinder other beliefs". Which is trivial. I very much agree with the general premise, but: - I don't necessarily agree that it is necessarily (in all cases) trivial. - Radicated beliefs can also promote/reinforce other beliefs. Now, your statement does not assert the opposite or rule it out, I suspect it is likely a consequence of the natural ambiguity of the English language and standard writing conventions, but I believe it is noteworthy that third parties reading conversations such as this may have their perception of reality distorted by not realizing such things, and generally speaking I believe that this can be harmful in some cases. I also believe that this demonstrates the correctness of the first few lines of the Tao Te Ching. > That has nothing to do with religion... This seems like a bold claim to me. I believe I can and have demonstrated otherwise (above). If you disagree, I would enjoy discussing the relative merits of our individual perspectives (perspectives that a human consciousness "takes" (often without being willed, or our conscious knowledge) upon reality, as opposed reality itself (which we do not have direct access to) is an important part of the ideas I am doing my best to communicate). > ...which may sometimes use """belief""", but is not belief - if you mixed up the (different and opposite) things, you would be using a very weak terminology. Here you seem to be suggesting that you have accurate knowledge of the mental state of billions of people on the planet. If so, I believe that this is an illusion projected by human consciousness - it appears to be true, and you believe it is true (I presume?), but whether it is actually true, absolutely, is beyond our ability to know. > You are playing on an equivoque. equivoque: - an expression capable of having more than one meaning; a pun. - the fact of having more than one meaning or possible interpretation; ambiguity. I think this is ~correct. I use "~" because while it is true, it is not necessarily comprehensively true. A third party might read that sentence and form the conclusion that that is all that I am doing. Now, it may be true that that is all I'm doing, but I am now asserting explicitly that it is not. A third party now has the explicit option to decide which one of us has a more accurate description of reality. Note also that I said: "The thing that I like about Taoism is that it is an extremely abstract religion...", and when one is taking an abstract perspective, ambiguity naturally manifests in many cases, does it not? In some ways this is a bug, but in other ways it is simultaneously a feature. > Either you are attempting to take that elected subject as a belief system (what?! why?! how?! why?!), which would be contradictory with the first stanza - and would be mental poison, the actual subject ("let one now accept the false in ideas, outside formulas") -, or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements). For starters, this is a false dichotomy (an extremely common mode of thinking, I believe, based on several years of closely observing millions of human beings describe reality to each other on social media platforms). Of course, this doesn't mean that it is necessarily wrong (in this case), but it is surely not great odds, or an optimal perspective to take upon any issue. > ...which would be contradictory with the first stanza... I think I do not understand what you mean by this, could you explain in a different way? > ...and would be mental poison... Also this. > ...or you take it as religion (in this case: "[We witness] there is a way, [find it]: mind you, first of all: it cannot be put in statements"), so there is no radicated belief to curb other beliefs (explicitly in the case you chose, as beliefs are things you can put in statements). If I understand you correctly....personally, I do "take" Taoism not only ~"as a religion", but also as kind of the foundation of my mental model of reality, and it very much is a radicated belief that exerts a strong influence on my beliefs. An example of this is when I encounter someone whose model of reality disagrees with mine: in such cases it is very common for someone to say things like "[reality] "is(!)" X", but very often the person making that statement does not realize that they are referring to their personal model of reality as a proxy for reality itself, or, they do not consider the distinction between the two to be important (I know this from many hundreds of prior conversations - one thing interesting I have noticed in these conversations: I regularly encounter a phenomenon where if you even inject this simple and academically uncontroversial idea into a conversation (reality vs perception of), people's cognition will often start to behave like it is driven by a script[1]). I think my main point about the value of Taoism as a base methodology for building one's model of reality is that it is a very simple method for moderating the often harmful behaviors of evolved human consciousness, the main one being that consciousness manufactures and projects a synthetic, predictive model of reality into the conscious mind, and the conscious mind considers this to be reality itself[2]. Now it's true that one kind of "has to" "take this as it is", but it is often incorrectly asserted that not taking it as it is will necessarily result in ~cognitive paralysis. That idea itself is yet another subconscious prediction of reality, perceived as reality itself. I'm not sure if you and I are talking about two entirely different things (likely, at least to some degree), but hopefully this helps clarify where it is that I am coming from. To me, these ideas are endlessly fascinating, but they very often seem to have the exact opposite effect on other people, so hopefully that is not the case here. [1] Regarding "common scripts": in response to the types of ideas that I am referring to here, a relatively small set of rhetorical rebuttals/dismissals are most likely to arise in a response: - Solipsism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism - Gish Gallop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop - Sealioning/JAQing off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning - /r/iamverysmart (a person trying very hard to look smart) https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ - Ad Hominem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem - Pedantry/Over-thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant - Lol: https://lindsayannlearning.com/rhetoric-in-social-media/ https://lindsayannlearning.com/rhetoric-in-social-media/ - downvote (or not, it is technically unknown) with no reply (sometimes one will even attract a following of downvoters of every other comment one might make on a platform - this has happened to me on two occasions right here on HN, as confirmed by dang after I reported it after several months in each case). An excellent post on how and why people may make these mistakes: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-th... Also relevant are software concepts like Equals() or the [is] operator. For the sake of argument/discussion, if one considers it to be possibly true that what I say here is accurate (I have studied this "extensively", and I propose to you that it is indeed very true, and I not only welcome but encourage disagreement, however "pedantic" it may be (provided it is offered with a desire for epistemic soundness)), it suggests something very interesting about the human mind, as well as reality itself: that many/most people perceive reality (or portions of it at least) according to a common and predictable (simple) algorithm, which is very different than how they perceive they perceive reality. And if people's perception of reality is objectively and significantly ~manufactured and incorrect....then what is reality, really? And if this is true, another interesting question might be: is it (or might it plausibly be) important? If you find this short description to be unconvincing, there is a lot more supporting evidence and ideas where these came from. (For fun: I predict that as you are reading this explicit list of ~invalid rebuttals, your "spider senses" may be going off in some way, perhaps a suspicion that I am "up to something". If that is the case, I would say that sense is accurate - there is indeed more than one reason why I have gone through the trouble of explicitly documenting this list of common human behaviors in this particular conversation. I think it would be interesting to see what would happen on a platform where ideas/phenomena like this were first class ideas/rules, kind of like HN has a set of rules and cultural norms. I think a "No hallucinating reality, except where explicitly allowed" rule, if strictly & competently enforced, could be a game changer in social media. There would obviously be a massive learning curve for new members (overcoming evolution is a tough row to hoe), but some people could surely manage it.) [2] People commonly seem to consider this idea to outright false, I suspect because the natural tendency is to consider it with respect to oneself (which significantly alters the cognitive processing of the idea, as is well known in psychology). But if one considers it with respect to other people (a technique of choosing the members of one's outgroup, like Trump supporters, antivaxxers, etc often makes the mind not only much more accepting of it, but often downright eager), it can be much easier to see the accuracy of it.