45. Times I've changed my mind
A brief intellectual history of my life.
45.
Today I ran into this tweet:
Some people believe this never happens, but I’m certain that I have changed my mind many times as a result of specific encounters with particular arguments or ideas.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s always better to be able to be changed by arguments. Changing one’s mind isn’t always a good thing. Ideas can be very fun and enlightening, but argumentation is often contaminated with manipulation, attempts at social control, and other unpleasantness. People even manipulate and control themselves. As Mencius said: What they dislike about intelligence is that it forces its way.
Nevertheless, I felt inspired to list a few times I’ve changed my mind. This constitutes a partial intellectual history of my life.
Times I’ve changed my mind
Morality
In my early 20s I became a deontologist via Ayn Rand. I deconverted after encountering arguments against deontology/for consequentialist utilitarianism, via LessWrongers I met in Berkeley in 2011.
I am no longer precisely a utilitarian. I believe good outcomes are important but can’t be pursued autistically/in a vacuum, and am doubtful of high rationalism, and so this makes me sort of look like a virtue ethics guy at this point. I think lifeboat/trolley car problems are mostly stupid; life’s moral questions are extremely rooted and embedded in particular situations. To do good, do what a good person would do.
(See also my take on the Golden Mean.)
Politics
I became a Randian after reading Rand, and an ancap after reading a specific argument in Roy Childs’ short letter against minarchism. But after deconverting from deontological moral views, I realized that what I had thought were sociological beliefs leading to a libertarian outlook were actually moral beliefs that weren’t necessarily sufficient to justify or condemn political structures in real life. In other words, I had been way too abstract. As a result, I became much more agnostic about political arrangements, and stopped being a libertarian in most meaningful senses, besides thinking that markets are cool.
Later, after reading a lot of history, I started to have opinions about politics and political philosophy. Rather than thinking that there’s One True System that everybody in all times and places should be making a political reality, I am inclined to Aristotle’s view expressed in the Politics that different peoples can and should have different constitutions (a word Aristotle uses in a special way1), and Polybius’ view (echoing Aristotle) that a people can go through stages of development from structure to structure, and that there are good and bad forms of every government (monarchy vs tyranny, aristocracy vs oligarchy, democracy vs mob rule).
Mostly, I think we should create more excellent people.
Metaphysics
I became a hard materialist via Eliezer’s arguments on LessWrong, and deconverted via a certain argument about qualia. This affected my views on mysticism, described below.
AI
I became a radical transhumanist after encountering the OG transhumanists surrounding an organization called Humanity+. Via Eliezer, I became an AI doomer. I'm still sort of an AI doomer but not confident of short timelines. I remain pro technology, and also pro the understanding and cultivation of social technology, and the development and good and virtuous people. I believe that for the long and foreseeable future, good people should make most important and complicated decisions, not machines.
What’s worth doing
I used to think physical technology was the end-all and be-all of human development, but came to believe that culture is extremely important. I think we can probably make people way better by helping them studying the greatest works ever made, which to me is a long list that starts with the Great Books.
Some of these views led me to founding Hallsong Media.
Religion
By doing a crazy amount of introspection and meditation, I came to believe that mystical practices are real and that prayer does useful things. I had been a hardline Dawkinsian atheist, but came to realize some things that are hard to explain about how the processes or verbs of religion are more interesting than propositional beliefs about it. I believe that a process of radically and thoroughly grappling with and improving one’s orientation towards the big questions of one’s life is sort of indistinguishable from sincere religiosity. I believe in God - at least I believe that I do - but it’s complicated. St. Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, Emerson and Jung have been helpful in this development.
End for now
This partial list covers some important changes. I may update it at some point in the future.
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll subscribe or check out my Patreon. I’m currently launching Hallsong, an experimental media workshop inspired by history, mythology, and philosophy.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “The constitution is not a written document, but an immanent organizing principle, analogous to the soul of an organism. Hence, the constitution is also “the way of life” of the citizens (IV.11.1295a40–b1, VII.8.1328b1–2).”