There is something here that feels fraught and really worth examining.
For ex: seems strange NOT to acknowledge that greater life satisfaction, ease, relaxation are intrinsic goods, yet if they come at the expense of generativity and engagement-with-the-world seems wirehead-y
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So what do, since because of this there *does* seem to be a risk of wireheadiness with offering coaching or circling?
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there's a bit where says explicitly "All things being equal, human beings are ridiculously ANTI-wireheading" and i've been chewing on this
wireheading is not actually the failure mode i'm worried about with coaching etc, it's something a bit different
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i think helping people feel happier etc. is actually highly compatible with increasing their engagement with the world, certainly i myself have been most engaged with the world when i felt the happiest
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what i'm worried about is the possibility of sort of generating self-reinforcing loops - like spreading a coaching philosophy that makes people feel good by giving them hope in various ways but isn't necessarily conducive to like the broader human project in some sense
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or e.g. like creating a "circling ecosystem" that's people running circling workshops which inspire other people to run circling workshops etc. and similarly with people running meditation trainings that inspire other people to run meditation trainings etc.
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i think we have enough evidence now from case studies to tentatively conclude that "closed-loop meditation" is a real thing, that people can teach a style that damages people in subtle ways and still manages to produce a large ecosystem. real worried about that sort of thing
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I actually want to point out a further subtlety I see here.
Is this circling ecosystem thing so very different from a "guitar ecosystem" for example? In a post-scarcity world, maybe a good part of what we'd do would be of this form: transient creative acts
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Not sure if I got the words right enough to convey what I mean. What I'm trying to say is: are we so sure we know *what* we're grounding in, at the end of the day?
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hm. so to get concrete, i think what grounds guitar as an activity is on one level the concrete mechanics of the guitar itself - you can't delude yourself into believing things that obviously make your guitar stop sounding good
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and on a second level the less concrete mechanics of appreciating music - what causes things to sound good to you? what causes things to sound good to your audience? etc. etc.
Nod. There's definitely less room for untethered-from-physicality delusion with guitar
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whereas e.g. with spiritual training you can explicitly teach people crazy bullshit that makes them feel better like "none of this is real so you don't have to worry about any of your problems" or the other stuff the guru papers talk about
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