Project: Part 0: Considering major life choices

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24

Integrating some of my earlier comments about this project question:

I’ve made the following list primarily based on my notes from my earlier post:

I don’t think these are necessarily true reasons that Corentin in particular chose to leave. But I think they are possible reasons that someone might leave.

  • Broad cause: Debate pessimism
    • Overconfident expectation of how quickly conflicts of ideas can be honestly resolved or how easy accurate communication is.
      • Possible sub-cause: Convinced by cultural influences such as TV debates which are more about each side expressing their point of view, but not actually fully convincing anyone, and concluding this is the best existing form of discussion.
      • Possible sub-cause: Lack of debating skill or appreciation of how much improvement there is, leading to overwhelm.
      • Possible sub-cause: Impatience, the sense that there are too many things to do and discussion isn’t profitable enough by comparison.
      • Possible sub-cause: Lack of skill in managing overwhelm and breaking tasks down into manageable sub-tasks.
      • Possible sub-cause: Lack of skill in self-reflection and understanding how to communicate intuitive disagreement.
      • Possible sub-cause: Scheduling conflicts, commitments in life that preclude taking time to debate or study in ways that aren’t part of their commitments.
        • Possible solution: Concrete examples that discussions can be solved effectively, of how much improvement potential there is, and the benefit of improvement.
        • Possible solution: Concrete guidance on managing overwhelm and how to break big hard tasks into smaller manageable ones.
  • Broad cause: Authoritarian thinking
    • Convinced that new ideas need an authority to accept them, so not open to honest discussion and criticism.
      • Possible sub-cause: Insecurity about being making decisions independently, seeking safety in the authority/tribe/group.
      • Possible sub-cause: Collective thinking, convinced that group votes are the best way of finding true ideas or rejecting false ideas (similar: statistical thinking, convinced by Bayesian epistemology)
        • Possible solution: Difficult! If someone needs an authority to accept an idea, better ideas that don’t play to authority will have obstacles. I don’t have a straightforward answer here. I think it’s possible to get in under the authoritarian thinking to uproot it in theory.
  • Broad cause: Subjectivism
    • Convinced that truth is subjective and/or “nothing is true”, so there’s no point to trying to pursue truth and honesty.
      • Possible sub-cause: Authoritarian thinking, uncritically accepting subjectivist ideas owing to status or other similar reasons.
        • Possible solution: Difficult! If someone believes nothing is true, they have a ready-loaded response to reject any new idea. Again I think it’s possible that there’s some way of uprooting the misconception but don’t have a straightforward answer.
  • Broad cause: Arrogance
    • Convinced they know enough/they don’t have any bad ideas. Generally: dishonesty.
      • Possible sub-cause: Insecurity, the need to think their current ideas are infallible is an evasion and excuse to avoid the uncertainty of making decisions.
      • Possible sub-cause: Defensiveness, faced with someone who is a better thinker and/or debater they feel threatened or scared that they’re not good enough (in life, in general, etc) if they acknowledge mistakes so they entrench their position.
      • Possible sub-cause: Status seeking, convinced that they need to appear to be right for social status/profit reasons.
        • Possible solution: Difficult, but avoiding direct criticism and presenting good ideas in an impersonal way so that the arrogant person can consider it privately (which may trigger less arrogance) may be more effective than direct criticism.

I’m interested in countering reasons people leave because my past engagement with FI/curi has been infrequent and erratic and there could be related reasons for that. I think I’m overall better off staying active here as it helps me avoid deceiving myself. It would also be beneficial (to me directly, and to the pursuit of truth and betterment of humanity in general) if more good people could be convinced of this.

I think this list covers a lot of bases. There may be more to add (or possibly some reorganising of groups) which I might find studying the other examples Elliot provided or further analysis of Elliot’s additional post. (links mainly so I can easily find them later)

I don’t plan to make this into an article on my blog in it’s current form. I think it would be misleading about CF to post about why people leave it out of context.
I might instead write an unambiguously pro-CF article that’s related but focuses on the solutions. Such as writing about why people should join CF and stick around, or writing about why people evade serious discussion and how and why they can do better.

Project notes

Goal completed for the week.

Next week I plan to write about this question: