Non-cryptographic religious experiences

[jack]

We all make generalisations. Some generalisations are only true when people are not playing silly buggers.

Cryptography

It's a bit like cryptography. If your database of people will only be used by you, it works (even though it's not a good idea) to not escape the input. The chances of meeting someone with "'; DROP TABLE PEOPLE" actually in their name is infinitesimal. And if you DO meet someone like that, you can write "quote semicolon drop table people" instead. But if anyone can enter data in your database, then someone may choose to say their name is "Robert'; DROP TABLE PEOPLE;--" specifically because they know it will break your database. Suddenly that's not unlikely any more.

Insightfulness

Similarly, we've all ready essays, book, philosophies, etc that make us go "wow, that's so clever". That "feeling clever" feeling may be a good guide to things worth paying attention to, even if the correlation is quite weak. But if someone learns how to evoke that feeling in order to make a book interesting and exciting whether or not it's insightful (eg. Dan Brown), then suddenly the correlation doesn't work any more.

Genuinely insightful essays may also feel insightful. But there may be a lot of 90% crap stuff that's learned to fake it.

I started thinking about this listening to someone describe an introduction to something-or-other on less wrong. The gist seemed to be, it felt very insightful, but they weren't sure whether they actually learned anything, or just always felt on the cusp of learning something.

Philosophy seems prone to this. (IIRC Bertrand Russel was very snarky about it.) It's easy to say, "well, it was hard to understand, and when I understood it, it suddenly clicked inside my head, and it proves all of this good stuff..." without noticing "Is it true? Is it meaningful?"

Religious experience

Somewhat controversially you could say something similar about religious experiences. Some religious (not necessarily spiritual) experiences feel like "wow, that was so great".

But is it great for it's own sake, even if it's an illusion? Often yes, because they help you meditate, community build, enjoy, better yourself, help others, etc. But not always?

Or is it only great because it's bringing you closer to an understanding of the universe? In which case, it's legitimate to ask, is "feeling like it's bringing you closer to an understanding of the universe" a 100% accurate guide to what actually brings you closer to an understanding of the universe?

I had this feeling with Judaism. I was like "wow, a religion based around studying books and then arguing about them, this rocks so much more than the religions I'm used to". And in many ways, it does rock for me, because (a) it's good mental training for thinking about justice, interpretations, etc, in other things and (b) it bonds me to a community I care about (c) it's interesting (d) it's often informative. But I was scared how easy it was to assume that it must be meaningful for me even without #a, #b, #c and #d, just because it was (1) hard and (2) lots of other people got a lot out of it, which may not be true.

Comments

[hilarita]

Quite a lot of Christian theology works like Judaism, in terms of analysing books closely, and arguing about them.

[jack]

Yeah, I've had similar feelings about Christian theologians arguing about details of the theology too, but mostly from fictional descriptions; I didn't happen to encounter it in person.