hi guys it's been a while there's a
simple reason
uh the two main things i do
are writing and talking
and i've been doing a lot of talking on
youtube so that's why i haven't been
podcasting much
so my youtube channel is kerry42
you can find a lot of stuff there if you
want
so i wanted to talk about rationalism
first thing is what do i mean by
rationalism because the word has more
than one meaning
the papyrian meaning is using reason to
learn about the world and you know it's
a good thing
reason is good
rationalism related to rationality it
can mean something good
however there's a different meaning of
the word
which is sort of like armchair
philosophy not looking at reality just
trying to use your brain separate from
reality
and it often is involved with people
thinking they're really smart and clever
and they have all these great ideas and
they can do better than tradition better
than society better than convention
and they're actually foolish you know
that's a common theme that's how
objectivism uses the word so i want to
talk about that type of rationalism the
armchair philosopher stuff
where people think they have these great
ideas sometimes utopias
and
they're not very practical that kind of
problem
so
i've been interested
in a variety of unconventional ideas
and
some people got the wrong idea and i
haven't been perfect either but
sometimes people get the wrong idea more
than my own misconceptions
about how great an idea
some fancy philosophy theory is
and you really need to be careful with
this stuff which i have been talking
about for years but i think it could use
more emphasis
and more revising of some of the
impressions people have gotten
so let's go through a few different
topics
first one is therapy
so i think psychiatry is really [ __ ]
up and dangerous
but
therapy is pretty different
it varies therapists vary
and styles of therapy vary
some therapists are more on the doctor
and the psychiatry and the medical end
or the um
like pseudoscience end where they're
trying to say that they've read all
these studies about how psychology works
and
blah blah blah and that stuff i think is
generally pretty bad
and the other end of therapy is more
like a life coach who's giving you
advice and he knows some common sense
and he knows some common problems people
have
and he knows how to act like a
reasonable person and you can talk to
him and you can get advice and you can
you can say negative things about your
social group and he's not going to go
gossip about it
like there are advantages to having paid
external help from people
if you're talking your friends all the
time
for some people you have too many
problems you're going to be a burden to
your friends if you're always asking
them for advice and help and whatever
or it's it's hard to tell them
everything
because they'll go tell other people
like if you have problems with your wife
you might not want to tell your friends
so talking to a therapist can be good so
there are some good things about therapy
it's not all good
um
so there's
a few things to keep in mind
first
is would you pay for it yourself with
your own money if the answer to that is
no
it's probably a bad idea even if you're
getting it for free i mean if the answer
is i would pay for it if i had money but
i'm completely broke it's okay but like
you know assuming you had money if you
wouldn't pay for it yourself it's
probably bad
regardless of
how you're getting it
um but if you would pay for it if you're
actually if you actually care enough
that it's something you would value and
pay for
then that is a good sign
um you also want to look into different
types of therapy and find someone that
works for you and if it's not working
don't say therapy sucks don't say this
therapist sucks don't don't blame
yourself
just say you know they're i'm
incompatible with this guy it might be
one of the other things and if you
really care you can investigate but just
move on and try a different therapist if
it's not working you can try different
ones until you find one that works
better
don't just stick with one and say oh
therapy is important
and
i must be doing something wrong and i
have to try harder if it's not working
you can try other therapists until you
find one who makes it easier for you
that is part of their job is to figure
out something that works for you if
they're not doing that very well it
doesn't mean they're a bad therapist but
it's not everyone's a good match um
most therapists don't know how to help
everyone they know some things that help
a lot of people
and
you might not be in the group of people
they know how to help
they're not perfect they don't know
everything um
but a lot of them have some decent ideas
so i'm not super anti-therapy
i think
so there's some other things about it
like self-help books have a lot of the
same knowledge you can get from
therapists
uh you can get some of it on youtube
i think people who do youtube only
without books are at a disadvantage like
you should include books when you're
trying to learn about things but anyways
but some people have trouble learning
from books and videos and stuff and they
need like personal help and someone to
to tell them how it applies to their
life situation
and if you're a really great thinker you
should be able to like read a book and
apply it yourself but
you know for the vast majority of people
uh you know that's kind of hard and
maybe therapy would help
by the way i can do things in the
ballpark of therapy if anyone wants to
hire me
um i can give like personal private
advice kind of in that style
i don't think it's very like generic i
don't have standard training
uh you know but if if someone likes my
way of looking at the world
then that is a service i can do
but i'd only be interested in doing that
with people who
like my world view and are interested in
those type of ideas i'm not gonna just
um
try to try to meet people at whatever
their ideas are
because that's not my that would be
going outside my specialty and my
interests
anyways
i think most therapy is not super great
or clever
but
most people aren't super great or clever
and the therapist deals with a lot of
problems and he's read books about it
and so on so he often has the advantage
and knows some stuff
that his patient doesn't know
i like the word patient by the way
client client is the right word
it's also important to know that your
therapist is not your friend it's a
different kind of relationship than a
friendship it has some similarities to
friendship but it's significantly
different
okay different topic
social status i have a lot of criticisms
of the social status hierarchy there are
a lot of problems with that it causes
trouble
however
that doesn't mean you just like avoid it
or something it's not that simple you
have to say okay there's this thing it
plays an important large role in life
let's try to understand it better it
seems to be causing some trouble
what might we do about that it's a
process
you study it and then you consider
changes and then you analyze if we make
this change what's going to happen what
will the effects be
how will it work you know you don't just
rush off to be like oh well this is
irrational i won't do it that's not
going to work
and there are various reasons that
making changes in this area is difficult
people are often dishonest or confused
about what the status quo is what is the
current system what are they currently
doing
um so it's really hard to make changes
before you actually understand what
you're doing why you're doing it
what the unwritten rules are
once you understand those you still have
to figure out okay well if i'm going to
make a change how am i going to get
anyone else to make a change or am i
going to make changes which work
unilaterally
if you can figure out a way to change
that doesn't require anyone else to
change you know that's a lot easier but
those are harder to come by you have to
think these things through at some
so yeah view it as a process don't just
be like oh i learned society's bad about
this so now i'm going to do like way
better because i'm smart
it's not that simple it takes a lot of
study and work if you actually want to
understand it well enough to make
significant changes
so on a similar note there's the
monogamy versus polygamy versus uh never
marrying anyone just being alone kind of
issue
when i say polygamy i don't just mean
marrying multiple people it could be
like dating multiple people just the
whole genre
of not doing exclusivity for your
romantic sexual relationships
and the the history here is there is the
ar list autonomy respecting
relationships started by sarah and david
that was
supposed to apply tcs ideas which is
taking children seriously
to relationships how do we take our
non-coercive parenting and our platyrian
rationality
and apply them to relationships and one
of the first things that ar said is
there's a lot of things wrong with
monogamy here are some criticisms of
monogamy
uh we got to do better because a lot of
people are getting hurt and all these
things are going wrong and
a lot of that had good points
however
you know what to actually do instead is
tricky to figure out and people did not
go into enough enough depth on trying to
figure that out and some of them were
then going around having poly
relationships and stuff
and my view which took a few years to
to figure out what i thought more
clearly like at first i was just trying
to learn at a nice like when i first got
there i was like oh you can question
monogamy i never thought of that
but anyways after a few years what i
sort of settled on is my general
perspective
is
there's a lot of things wrong with
monogamy and love and romance and all
that stuff
it's dangerous you have to be really
careful of it and if you're going to
look to do something different you
should probably
be looking in the direction of less of
that stuff not more of it like what is
the point of poly if all this stuff is
dangerous why do you want extra
so i
i find the poly stuff very questionable
like
monogamy is bad because love is
irrational so love multiple people
or like you know sex is not educational
why do people make such a big deal out
of it
therefore sex is not so important so
like sexual exclusivity doesn't make
sense therefore have sex with lots of
people if you're gonna say sex is not
important there's not a good reason to
go around being super promiscuous
that trends more in the direction of
just don't have sex with very many
people
so i think there was a perspective
problem and there's a lot of
um rationalization of people just being
promiscuous or whatever i also think it
makes a big difference sort of what
stage of your life you're in because
if you're like 50 and you're being poly
that's like really unconventional you're
supposed to be sort of settled down by
then
and have like a family and stuff and
like a stable life situation
and not many people are probably at that
age and it's um
you know it's weird and it's hard and
you should probably think it through and
most people who try to think it through
don't don't think enough in order to do
better than convention it's really hard
to use your brain to figure out how many
how am i going to do better than what
almost everyone else is doing
because you don't have to be a little
bit smarter than them to do that you
have to be a lot smarter than them you
have to know way more than them
because they have this huge advantage of
doing the normal thing that so many
other people have thought about and have
ideas about and give advice about and
understand and so on like the support of
society for a lifestyle makes a huge
difference
so let's make a change it's like a lot
of work and then you better be getting a
large benefit
and
if sex is not like super special
important whatever
which is like the main
rational criticism of the standard view
then it's not a super high priority
issue
to put all this effort into
that's what so
but on the other hand if you're age 20
a lot of normal behavior
is
like very short relationships serial
monogamy or maybe just hookups and never
actually formally dating people and
you're dating like a lot of different
people in a short time frame
and
i i don't think that's great i think
the way people look at sex and i think
it's sort of overrated
and people get hurt and blah blah blah
but anyways if you're going to do that
kind of stuff then being poly while
you're being promiscuous is like not
really that different than what you're
going to do anyways it's not that much
of a change so it's like a lot less
dangerous
it's a lot less of a big deal and then
as you get older it becomes further away
from convention
so it's a bigger deal
all right moving on tcs parenting
tcs is unconventional it says hey guys
we should do parenting like a lot
different than how people normally do
parenting
so you gotta be careful with that stuff
and i think tcs did not adequately
emphasize that it talked about it
there's info about it people have
written about it i've written about it
on the fallible idea stuff i had
multiple essays about tradition
for both
tcs and ar
but
you know i think more emphasis is still
merited
that
you need to look at okay so we have some
ideas about problems with conventional
behavior
that's just step one now you have to
look at it more
um
you're not just ready to change things
right away you have to understand what's
going on
what are the reasons for the
conventional stuff what's good about it
why has it lasted over time
um you really need to understand it
better before you try to change it
and work through that and like write a
bunch of things and have a bunch of
discussions and so on don't just go read
some old tcs essays and think ah now i
know how to do this you don't
they're not adequate as written like
they're a starting point they have some
good ideas some food for thought
also some bad ideas mixed in but anyways
there's you know there's
there are useful ideas there you can
take inspiration from it it's a starting
point that you can start analyzing and
thinking about what you want to do
but it's not like here's the complete
picture everything worked out it's
nothing like that it's not just like
ready to go
if you want to use it
you need to there's basically two ways
to use that one
you can be a fairly conventional parent
and you can make some minor changes that
you think are like fairly low risk or
whatever
and you know you can get some ideas from
it and that's that's fine that's not a
big deal
you know everyone takes some ideas and
just changes things with their own
personal spin that they think makes
sense then
you can do that and tcs can help you do
that that's fine on the other hand if
you actually want to do it in like a
thorough way and like use philosophical
principles and stuff
then
you can only do it if you're a top tier
philosopher that's it
you cannot
make huge changes to your life and
actually
learn and understand that stuff well
enough to do something really unusual
unless you have quite a lot of
philosophy skill
you need to be able to do things like
write articles if you don't have a blog
with 100 posts on it you probably
shouldn't try to do tcs in person with
your own kids in like a thorough serious
way
you need to be able to discuss it debate
it
you need to read a lot of books on both
sides like
you need to read like philosophers that
are related to tcs and try to understand
them and study them and discuss them and
so on
and and take that quite far and you also
need to read like conventional parenting
books and compare and analyze and write
criticisms and so on and
if you're not going to do all of that
then
you shouldn't think that you know what
you're doing enough to make major
radical parenting changes
like you can either follow the the
default
where society sort of guides you and you
just do reasonably normal things or if
you want to think for yourself you have
to think like a lot you have to reinvent
a bunch of stuff
if you want to reinvent parenting in
line with certain principles then
you have to redo tons of ideas and that
takes a ton of work and a ton of skill
it's very easy to [ __ ] up and you need
to be way way way ahead of other people
in terms of intelligence and knowledge
and so on
or you're not going to come out ahead
another topic is like jokes and memes
and emojis and being friends with people
and some people
have this rationalist view that like i'm
a robot which isn't true
or
that somehow it's bad to have friends
and everything has to be super rational
all the time and we should only eat
plain white rice because flavor is
irrational and unnecessary and luxury is
irrational and unnecessary and
there's a lot of things and
there are problems with jokes and memes
and stuff um they're bad for clarity a
lot of friendship behaviors are not very
good for clarity so
avoid them in serious philosophy
discussions like you can have some
discussions where you cut out the jokes
um so that you can speak in a more clear
way but those things aren't like huge
disasters either you can do them some of
the time
if you just cut them out while still
liking them you're screwing up your life
if you
want to cut them out you need to first
stop liking them stop seeing the appeal
like you need to be more thorough about
learning why do people do them what are
the upsides if i get rid of them what do
i need to replace them with like what am
i going to lose out on them what do i
need to replace at and if you don't
understand that you're not ready to cut
it out another another related one is
praise
a lot of people don't praise my articles
when they read them and like them and
that's
unconventional weird behavior if you
read it and you like it and you think
it's good you should just say oh i liked
this this was great
this one seemed really useful to me you
know just say stuff like that that is
completely normal if you stop doing it
you're a rationalist unless you know
what you're doing in that in an
extensive way which most people don't
um if you're going to stop doing praise
you need to know what are the purposes
of praise like what roles does it play
in people's lives
and then
you know what alternative actions could
i use to accomplish some similar things
and which ones should and shouldn't be
accomplished and
what is actually wrong with praise and
so on and like a bunch of detail if you
don't know that just keep acting normal
don't don't make significant changes if
you have some concerns about praise you
can raise them or start investigating
rather than changing your behavior in a
significant way some people try to copy
me and you shouldn't do that like just
because i'm not doing something doesn't
mean you shouldn't do it i'm weird don't
just be like well ellie it's weird so
i'll be weird like that's cargo calzine
you don't know all the things i know
and you're just a different person than
me like
um so if you just like copy some of my
superficial traits because you assume i
must have thought it out and they're
good it's like maybe they're good if you
have my entire life and everything fits
together but if you just take a few
things out of my life and stick them in
your life
you know a lot of them aren't going to
work very well
so praise by the way it
praise matters to the author the
audience and yourself all three
and if your assumption is praise makes
no difference to me
um
one i think you're not thinking about it
correctly you don't know what i think
so i would basically in short i would
disagree with that but two
even if praise made no difference to me
it makes a difference to both the
audience and to yourself when you praise
things
that is part of your
way of interacting with it if you praise
a bunch of other stuff
and then you come to fi and you're like
oh fi is rational no praise allowed and
then you don't pray stuff
it skews your perspective it biases you
because pray you praise things you like
and then you don't praise it and then
you like it less basically
so stop suppressing your normal behavior
stop
trying to change when you don't really
know what you're doing especially when
you do partial changes only when
interacting with fi
basically some people sort of make fi
less friendly less the kind of place
they like on purpose trying to copy me
or something
and then they complain or
that fi isn't the kind of place they
like or they don't complain they just
like it less than participate less
just participate your way
um so related to this when you receive
criticism
that is an attempt to help you it's not
an attempt to make you change right now
you are a complex system very similar to
traditional conventional ways of living
life and
and like significant knowledge our
society has um
you're a complicated thing you're hard
to change uh before trying to make
significant changes to yourself you need
to know what you're doing
when in doubt just leave it alone
to change yourself
you know you take a bunch of criticism
and then you look for which ones are
high priority which ones are recurring
patterns like chronic problems
which ones are easy to change and you
only change things if one they're easy
or two they're high priority
and the high priority ones you have to
figure out what you're doing and put
work into it and study it and think if i
make this change
what's going to happen
why will it work what am i getting rid
of and what were the benefits of the
thing i'm getting rid of like you have
to work through all that stuff and if
you don't know how to work through all
that stuff you have to like study
philosophy and learn how to think and
stuff
and like write a blog and like think
through a bunch of issues as practice
and
as far as the easy issues go there's
some things that you can just quickly
make a little change but
most of the time people think something
is easy to change they're just wrong
they haven't noticed how hard it is how
complicated it is
people
frequently think something will be easy
and then it's not so you have to be
careful with that
so the overall point is
and this applies especially to the
archives
when you see criticisms of something
when you see problems that doesn't mean
you're ready to change things
understanding flaws is step one
step two
is further investigation and study and
trying to understand what's going on why
are those flaws there
why is it hard to change why has no one
else changed this before most flaws
are things that a lot of people have
noticed
but there have been reasons people did
not change it or only a few people
changed and the change didn't catch on
you know occasionally there's a flaw
that like no one's noticed before but
the vast majority of them
of the flaws that you've you've noticed
you've read about you've thought of you
understand are things that other people
have thought of too
and they haven't managed to make changes
that worked well enough to spread and
catch on
um there's reasons that society is the
way it is and if you don't understand
the upsides of the current conventional
thing
then you're not ready to change it
so
um a bunch of like theoretical criticism
and
philosophy principles and so on
it has value it gives you some ideas of
places to look at things and
you know it can be interesting and it
can give you
uh it can help you figure out because
you should in your life try to study
something and get good at it and make
some sort of change where you're not
just following along like you know you
should take at least one thing seriously
and try to do really well at it
and you know knowing a bunch of flaws on
society can give you
options it gives you places you can look
you can say maybe parenting will be my
thing i'll look into that a bit and
and see if that is the area of life i
want to put a bunch of effort into
um you know you can look into how bad is
it and
uh you know how big an opportunity is
there to do things better and
how resistant to change are people and
do you just want to um learn a ton about
parenting and then do good parenting
yourself or do you want to learn a ton
about parenting and convince other
people to change their parenting and
show them how and stuff
those are pretty different projects and
anyway you have options and
so somewhere in your life you should
put work into something and don't just
follow convention but for most stuff you
got to pick your battles and
well a convention because you don't have
the time and effort to study it
extensively
now you can try to become like a super
philosopher is really really good at
everything because you learn the most
generic knowledge that helps you with
all the different fields
that is possible but it's quite hard and
most people really aren't close to that
later