4 ms·

> But just as you are not your car or your house, you are not your beliefs. While I get what the author is trying to say here, this doesn't feel like a great a

by _gabe_ 4y ago

> But just as you are not your car or your house, you are not your beliefs. While I get what the author is trying to say here, this doesn't feel like a great analogy to me. If I'm not attached to my beliefs, wouldn't that make me aloof? Most people's beliefs are their identity. And if you detach yourself from your beliefs, it's almost like you're trying to detach yourself from self. It feels like a very relativistic mindset, which is fine, but antithetical to some worldviews.

inkblotuniverse 4y ago
Identifying yourself with your beliefs seems like a surefire way to stop you from changing your mind on things you might be wrong about. I think it's better to identify with something arbitrary and static, like your heritage/nationality/ethnicity/family. Your roots. That way the identity-seeking part of you has a nice, firm rock to hold on to, and you can freely evict ideas and beliefs that aren't effectively predicting your experiences - without destroying your self-identity. Belief-as-identity strikes me as really pernicious. It's a big problem people have with religions with orthodoxy like Christianity or Islam; these systems sustain themselves in part by training people to tie their sense of self to a particular belief about the nature of god/the universe. Identifying as an Atheist, or Liberal, or a Conservative, or anything just lets that thing get its hooks into you. I'd like to be able to drop and change my political beliefs if it turns out I'm wrong about which form of economics leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing, for example. Each individual ideological meme, in contrast, really wants you to build it into your self-identity, to spread its roots so deep that to extricate it would be spiritual suicide. All beliefs 'want' this, and while it's impossible to not be a slave to some meta-meta-meme, you can at least not be a memetic zombie for some object-level one! If a belief stops paying rent in useful predictions, I want it evicted, out on the street! Loyalty to people, not ideas.
- aeneasmackenzie 4y ago
  The idea that object level beliefs are bad is wrong. Meta level arguments are just tricks to try to confuse you into thinking one situation is like another.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  > Loyalty to people, not ideas. Ah, so this is your belief, good to know ;) I purposely didn't mention any religions, because a belief doesn't need to imply religion. You can believe science is the ultimate decider, that heritage is the most important, family, friends, etc. My point is that all these things are still your belief and you need to moor yourself to something, otherwise your bound to drift around and believe in whatever is trending on social media from one moment to the next.

by _gabe_ 4y ago

inkblotuniverse 4y ago

Identifying yourself with your beliefs seems like a surefire way to stop you from changing your mind on things you might be wrong about. I think it's better to identify with something arbitrary and static, like your heritage/nationality/ethnicity/family. Your roots. That way the identity-seeking part of you has a nice, firm rock to hold on to, and you can freely evict ideas and beliefs that aren't effectively predicting your experiences - without destroying your self-identity. Belief-as-identity strikes me as really pernicious. It's a big problem people have with religions with orthodoxy like Christianity or Islam; these systems sustain themselves in part by training people to tie their sense of self to a particular belief about the nature of god/the universe. Identifying as an Atheist, or Liberal, or a Conservative, or anything just lets that thing get its hooks into you. I'd like to be able to drop and change my political beliefs if it turns out I'm wrong about which form of economics leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing, for example. Each individual ideological meme, in contrast, really wants you to build it into your self-identity, to spread its roots so deep that to extricate it would be spiritual suicide. All beliefs 'want' this, and while it's impossible to not be a slave to some meta-meta-meme, you can at least not be a memetic zombie for some object-level one! If a belief stops paying rent in useful predictions, I want it evicted, out on the street! Loyalty to people, not ideas.

aeneasmackenzie 4y ago
The idea that object level beliefs are bad is wrong. Meta level arguments are just tricks to try to confuse you into thinking one situation is like another.
_gabe_ 4y ago
> Loyalty to people, not ideas. Ah, so this is your belief, good to know ;) I purposely didn't mention any religions, because a belief doesn't need to imply religion. You can believe science is the ultimate decider, that heritage is the most important, family, friends, etc. My point is that all these things are still your belief and you need to moor yourself to something, otherwise your bound to drift around and believe in whatever is trending on social media from one moment to the next.