A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse | Hacker News Reader

A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

metarationality.com

29 pointsb3morales22 comments

Quote from the link: Kegan describes three stages of adult development (numbered 3, 4, and 5). We could call them pre-rational, rational, and meta-rational. These stages are distinctive, internally consistent, relatively-well-functioning modes for organizing one’s thinking, one’s self, and one’s relationships. They might be described as “islands of psychological stability.” To progress from one island to the next, you must cross a heaving sea of psychological confusion, in which the previous mode no longer seems functional, but you cannot yet operate in the next mode reliably. These stage transitions are emotionally and cognitively difficult, and typically take several years, during which one may think, feel, and act inconsistently.

These ideas are not discussed enough, do you know any schools that teach it and give people a hope to achive meta-dationality? It is there a risk of people faking meta-rationality?

Traditionally, the bridge between stage 4 and 5 was reserved for "spiritual" seekers. And this is still a path to folow. While stage 4 people could consider spirituality a level 3 activity, hostory shows enough level 5 people that bridged over "duality" for example and that used "wisdom" as a proxy for metarationality. Having stronger "rationality based results" and call these result as "science results" makes the brdiging both easier and harder. It is easier because you get a stronger indicaton (lets say data) that rationality is an ilusion. However, you can also get lost in details: " became unable to see the forest because of the trees" ;)

Can it even be taught directly? All of the information needed to transition through the various stages is readily out there, the strength of intellectual curiosity necessary to push through the less than comfortable transitions is something that people seem to either have or not.

> It is there a risk of people faking meta-rationality?

I think that intentionally faking a level of psychological development is only possible in the opposite direction.

In my personal experience (take it with a grain of salt), the thing with "rationality" is, if you're looking for it, you'll find it, schools or not.

People want to learn about the world around them, STEM or not. What stops that learning from happening is mostly internal: a fear of looking dumb, a fear of being proven wrong before peers, etc.

If we can teach people to be humble, change their mind when faced with new evidence, etc, I think the rest comes naturally.

> do you know any schools that teach it

I think one of the article's premises is that they don't exist in our culture. That said, from what I've seen, this author's ideas seem to connect up well with the Brights group: http://www.the-brights.net/vision/essays/dennett_nyt_article... Those people do work in this vein and have published books. (I'm not sure how active that group is; I include it only as a pointer to dig up authors.)

> We could call them pre-rational, rational, and meta-rational. These stages are distinctive, internally consistent, relatively-well-functioning modes for organizing one’s thinking, one’s self, and one’s relationships. They might be described as “islands of psychological stability.” To progress from one island to the next, you must cross a heaving sea of psychological confusion, in which the previous mode no longer seems functional, but you cannot yet operate in the next mode reliably. These stage transitions are emotionally and cognitively difficult, and typically take several years, during which one may think, feel, and act inconsistently.

I might be an outlier, but that doesn't resonate with me at all?

I'm pretty sure I've been at something that looked like those stages at multiple points in my life, but AFAICT I've never had any "oh god, everything I thought I knew is a lie, reality is subjective, I need to reinvent logic from the ground up" phase.

More like, I've had different philosophies in life, and when I've been confronted with bits of these philosophies being wrong (usually by arguing on the internet) or with other people with similar beliefs to mine being wrong (usually by arguing on the internet), I just... changed my mind?

There's doesn't need to be anything mind-shattering about any of this. You can systematize the way you think without reinventing thinking from first principles.

>> "It’s common to declare that you are “beyond good and evil,” to adopt ethical nihilism"

This may have been in a related article on the site, but, if this is a reference to Nietzsche, as it seems to be, he was not a nihilist, ethical or otherwise. The book was called Beyond Good and Evil, and he points out this is not the same as Beyond Good and Bad. He advocated the opposite of nihilism: value creation as the basis for meaning.

Just pointing this out as I find Nietzsche is often misunderstood to be a nihilist.

Basicaly, for rational people this "beyound good and evil" is like preaching sociopathy. Nietszche communication style was adressed somehow to level 4 but using means used by level 3. And as article says, preaching level 5 to level 3 people is basicaly futile or even dangerous...

How is it like sociopathy?

I think you got it but for clarity: for a mind at level 4, "beyond" rely means "beyond"... and this could be sociopathic. For level 5 minds, beyond means partial beyond while still incorporating the lessons from not being relay beyond... Again and again, I can see that meta-rationality is just a modern name for wisdom, And obviously, the whole idea of wisdom is not cool because too many "wise" people preached "sociopathic ideas" to level 3 or level 4 minds.

It's funny, because while I was digesting this essay I found myself comparing the hierarchy in a perennial favorite, The Gervais Principle[0] and I was thinking that "Stage 3" seems to correspond to "Clueless" pretty well; "Stage 4" to "Losers"; and therefore "Stage 5" to "Sociopaths"*. The key to that last stage in both seems to be that you have, for lack of a better word, transcended the rules. You understand that they are mostly situational and, if not subjective, at least not pre-existing. And you therefore start to understand how to work with them as material, rather than just within them.

*: The choice of naming there is a bit tongue-in-cheek. But not totally off the mark.

[0]:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/05/16/the-gervais-principle-...

Good stuff ;) An alternarive theory competing meta-rationality. And also complementing it a bit :) I found this part quite insightfull:

"Some freely emulate other Sociopaths. Others carve out more imaginative paths. Morality becomes a matter of expressing fundamental dispositions rather than respecting social values. Kindness or cruelty, freely expressed. Those who are amused by suffering use their powers to cause it. Those who enjoy watching happiness theaters, create them through detached benevolence."

I think I understand your meaning actually

Wow, so in my mind it sounds like people in Stage 5 are trying to dismantle the bridge to Stage 4 because some 5's hate the fact they had to grow through their self-proclaimed inferior Stage 4 mindset. This "I hate my dum younger self so I must prevent younger people from being themselves" form of self-hate projection is a well-known problem for abusive parents/teachers, but damn I never knew it was a problem for adults. Thanks for keeping me up at night on a Sunday!

I don't see such a hate there, can you pinpoint it? Perhaps you mistook the drive for self-improvement for a self-hate.

Self hate is a very common result of childhood trauma/neglect. Childhood trauma/neglect is very common in every part of the world. Self-hate leads to projection, especially surrounding things experienced in youth (e.g. sex drive, education levels). (For Your Own Good by Alice Miller talks about this in detail)

I'm assuming this background doesn't prevent an adult from reaching Stage 5 and that a person with a drive for self improvement doesn't prevent them from projecting self-hate.

The thought is, everything resembling the pattern of Authority Figure (e.g. parent, teacher, cop) punishing the Lower Class Figure (e.g. child, minority) for Context Appropriate Behavior (e.g. age-appropriate sex curiosity, culturally-appropriate responses) is evidence of generational childhood trauma/neglect (this is how the dysfunctional family that abuses their children operates).

Stage 5 (authority figure) burning their bridges because they think Stage 4 (lower class figure) is bad evem though the bridge is necessary for society to function normally (context-appropriate behavior??????) seems to me to fit that pattern.

Again, can you please pinpoint where it says stuff about burning bridges and that stage 4 is bad? On the contrary, it actually laments that stage 4 was unjustly discredited, hindering the ability of individuals to develop there and eventually further!

I don't get at all the rest about self-hate and childhood trauma. I survived myself a hefty dose of either (am hard of hearing since 2) and just don't see any link there.

>With nothing beyond the discredited stage 4 to look forward to, it is mostly no longer possible for humanities majors to develop a rational, systematic self.

As I understand it, the article says that Stage 5'ers are burning the bridge to 4 because stage 4 is perceived as unsophisticated, but Stage 4 is required to grow to Stage 5. If 4 was required to reach 5, why would a 5'er work to discredit 4 - unless these 5'ers saw their Stage-4 self as useless?

Yes the article says that Stage 4 is necessary - but it also says that some Stage 5'ers are dismantling Stage 4 because some 5'ers think it's unsophisticated.

Unrelated - but oh lord I was at the Salvador Dali museum (Dali being an anti-rationalist artist) a few days ago and you could smell the pretense in the air. I didn't know I was going to the museum that day so I was dressed like a slobby, computer nerdy tourist. So many side remarks from the security guards and regular visitors - projecting their sophistication insecurities onto me! The insecure sophisticated anti-rationalists are real!

This is unfortunate misunderstanding. It's the deconstructive postmodernism that did the discreditation of Stage 4. Author in the paragraphs after "Deconstructive postmodernism" explains that first postmodernists were okay because they understood stage 4 rationality and they actually made forays toward stage 5. But their most vocal followers did not understood stage 4 at all and so they bastardized it.

> [This] form of self-hate projection is a well-known problem for abusive parents/teachers, but damn I never knew it was a problem for adults.

... I mean, I kind of get the point you're making, but the way you formulated it contradicts itself.

The size of my armchair psychology blindspots cannot be described purely rationally!

I'm reminded of the SSC article https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-mil...

The idea being that, there are some mental tools that people have of either have or don't; and books that explain how to acquire these tools can be life-changing for people who didn't have them, and incredibly banal and boring for people who already had the tools.

I feel very much in the second category when it comes to this article.

(Also, it feels like the article would have benefited a lot from being closer to SlateStarCodex's writing style; it gets way too abstract at times)

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