Ontological coupling
And kindness
Category: Insights, kindness, psychology
Epistemic status: My own thoughts
A while ago I spoke with a dear friend. We are both recovering edgy anti-theists from back when the internet was about debating religion.1 Said friend shared a story about a girl he met at a party.2
This particular girl was into dowsing,3 and told the group about “connecting” with the earth through her dowsing rods.4 The conversation went on, with people sharing similar stories about their favourite supernatural pastimes. After some time, the girl looked around surreptitiously,5 and asked the people around her whether they believed in ghosts.
My friend tactically placed himself so that he’d be the last person to answer, and waited while people voiced their take on ectoplasmic entities. When the focus finally shifted to him, he dissented in a mild and non-edgy way.
In most early 2000s stories of this nature, he would have SLAMMED this girl for asking such a question. Those were edgier times. I am glad he went the compassionate route. Firstly, it’s nicer. I like having nice friends.
But more importantly,6 he learnt something.
The other kind of Coupling
In programming, “coupling” is the degree to which different parts of the code are connected to each other. Programmers generally frown upon excessive coupling,7 since it tends to result in a kind of domino effect, where changes to one part of the code affect distant parts of the code base. Code needs to be connected together in order to do anything, but in order to have a workable system, things need to be connected together8 in expected ways.9
Now, what does this have to do with the ghost girl? She was “ontologically10 coupled".11 Her belief in ghosts had a surprising12 connection to something vulnerable. Questioning her ontological assumptions13 would have been close to a personal attack.14 She cared about the belief, and for good reason. Let’s go back to the party story!
After the ghost-belief check-in, the girl proceeded to share a vulnerable story. She’d been carrying some emotional baggage from back when a friend of her’s died. In order to process the grief, she’d “summoned the friend’s ghost” for a heartfelt session of reconciliation and closure.
This was a powerful way to process things. It also built imbued her supernatural beliefs with emotional weight, by coupling her ghost belief with her grief management strategies. Questioning her spectral suppositions isn’t just a mindy quest towards Coherent Metaphysics™; through ontological coupling, it’s a straight-up gut punch.
Wow.
A cascade of realizations
After hearing the story of the ghost girl, a cascade of realizations hit me.
The first realization is that ontological coupling is likely to be very common. In software development, wild-grown code tends to be highly coupled. I’m pretty sure the same goes for wild-grown minds. If this is the case, ontological coupling is the default.
This has wild implications for rationality training. Topics that seem to be far removed from anything sensitive might be coupled with things of great importance. Making progress in rationality then requires a dissolution of said coupling, by finding a synthesis that preserves what’s dear while rejecting the “ontological cruft”.
The ghost girl’s grief management method makes perfect sense to me. It reminds me of the Ideal Parent Figure protocol, where a guided meditation about engaging with attuned parents can help alleviate attachment issues.15 The core idea is that the emotional brain doesn't do a good job of differentiating between reality and imagination. With a bit of finesse, it’s possible to turn imagined experience into a powerful way of resolving emotional stuckness.16
One possible way to reconcile the therapeutic potential of her séance with ontological materialism17 is the idea of “serious play”. It’s possible to “play” the séance seriously, engaging with the experience without treating it as evidence for the existence of ghosts. This isn’t that far removed from nordic LARP, a practice that can play on some rather heavy themes.
The second realization is that I’ve been highly ontologically coupled, back when I was a Christian. My belief supported me when I got scared of death or nihilism,18 and was connected to things like ethics, my plans for the future, my political ideas, and my sense of "being in the know".19
That all broke down when I deconverted. It was an intense existential process where I was semi-depressed for half a year, followed by a long period of worldview re-design. What is important, and why? How do I live a good life? What is ethical? How is the world set up? How do I want to do my relationships?20 etc.
This breaking down followed by a building up was painful. It was a great challenge. I didn’t consciously choose to go into it but rather stumbled into it. After I “finished” reconstructing my worldview, I’ve had to take it apart and re-fit the pieces multiple times. Over time, it has grown malleable and decoupled, but getting here has been a lot of turmoil and effort.21
I have a hunch that many rationalists have gone through similar frame-shattering existential crises.22 It’s one way to force ontological decoupling, but it might not be the best approach given the existential pain involved.23
Thirdly, my edgy anti-theist phase was right after I deconverted. Back then, I judged myself for my past beliefs and lingering religious tendencies. I think a big part of my anti-theism was this judgment echoed out against others. Since then I’ve been working on my kindness and stopped trying to SLAM people. However, I’ve always been up for civil discourse related to differences in worldview. While engaging in such discourse, I’ve never thought back to my own process and the pain of forceful decoupling.
Taking out my grudges against past-me by judging other people doesn’t make a lot of sense. Instead, I can tune into my past experiences of existential turmoil to connect with a sense of compassion. I know what it’s like to avoid the pit, dancing around it precariously. I know what an ontological sucker punch feels like.
I’ve known for some time that people get sensitive around matters of belief, but I haven’t taken the time until now to put myself in their shoes and tried to imagine what it’s like.
I think I’ve fallen prey to the typical mind fallacy, expecting everyone else to have their emotions integrated with their worldview the same way I do. This is very unrealistic, given that my personal configuration has gone through a lot of changes over the years.
Beliefs have consequences
At this point, it might make sense to some to take a radically agnostic stance, where truth is just opinion, and all beliefs are equally justified.24 This is a mistake in my opinion. As with most relativist25 stances, it's rather paradoxical. The opinion that "all opinions are equally valid" is held as an unquestionable meta-assumption, a kind of implicit totalitarianism.
There is a middle way between rejection and acceptance; trying on the perspectives of others to get a more flexible grip on existence. After discovering the signal in between all of the noise,26 it's usually possible to integrate elements of the newfound perspectives into your overall worldview.
But do so with care. If you’ve never strived towards a completely coherent worldview and failed, you might not have a developed a strong enough epistemic immune system. Start by reading the sequences.
P.S: I narrowly escaped several interesting tangents, including Kegan stages (only lightly alluded to in the end), Wilber’s modernity-as-separation-of-the-value-spheres vis-à-vis ontological decoupling, and defending the value of coherence. ‘til next time :)
Not that kind of story.
"Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign "earth vibrations" and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus.”
“malign ‘earth vibrations’” is normally detected using seismometers, but I digress.
Not sure exactly what I was told, seeing as this was a while ago, so I’m adding a bit of flourish to keep things nice and bloggy, while keeping the core parts of the story.
in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention; secretively
I value discovery rather highly, though kindness is at the top. I wrote “more importantly” mostly for comedic effect.
Though not me amirite ;)
=connected, unified
Slinging random things together because it kinda works is the closest we can come to evil in this world.
I could rant about this for quite a bit of time. Why are people happy when code starts working, even if it’s a contingent mess a la Rube Goldberg?
ontology = answering “what exists?”
ontological coupling = the answer to “what exists” have unforeseen consequences in vulnerable/emotional areas of life
to me
= ”Ghosts exists”
During a conversation with my friend, he mentioned that there exist crowds of people that covertly value various supernatural beliefs and practices, who have a kind of referral system, where people get OK:d as unlikely to attack their beliefs. Fascinating.
Attachment issues= there is a psychological model of relational development where a relational/attachment pattern is formed during early childhood. The idea is that parents need to help young kids regulate their emotions, and if the parents aren’t attuned and responsive, emotional regulation might go awry. If someone’s parents didn’t give them enough space and force-cuddled, that person might grow up to distance themself whenever someone shows romantic interest. If someone’s parents were unreliable and didn’t provide a sense of safety, then that person might grow up to become overly clingy, forming codependent relationships with others. Some people have a mix. This is a model, handle with care. More info here.
For more on this topic, check "unlocking the emotional brain" or this video on “trauma mapping”.
Ontological materialism is the idea that existence is based on the same kind of stuff, i.e. matter/energy/quantum fields. Many ontological materialists reject introspection and spiritual explorations as “unreal”. I think of it as an exploration of patterns that are “hosted” by underlying matter. Kind of like software/hardware. Turning aspects of lived experience into fundamental elements of reality smells like mind projection fallacy to me.
Being afraid that there’s no meaning is.. funny. It’s a bit paradoxical once you reveal the hidden inference.
Elitist contrarianism works well if you are well-read enough to SLAM most of the basic atheist arguments. The old testament rules? NEW COVENANT. The problem of evil? UNIVERSAL RECONCILIATION BITCHES.
I met my partner on tinder. Early on, I said that I didn’t want to be monogamous, since I thought that was Abrahamitic bs. It turned out well.
No pain no gain? :D
This plays well with stage theories on adult human development, where patterns of cognition develop between stable equilibria interspersed with bouts of existential crisis. More on this here.
Though then again, maybe it’s necessary; some things require skin-in-the-game real-life learning to get.
= stop at postmodernism
"everything is just subjective opinion man”
"Listen to the signal” is one of my principles.
For me trying to get from kegan stage 4 to 5 has included not needing other people to be right. I used to be existentially terrified that others did not yearn desperately for coherence and truth. Now, a part of that need has relaxed which has allowed me the flexibility to inhabit/visit the worldviews of others. A big part of this is being a bit less attached to my own world view, identifying with it less. Another is somehow trusting truth more and not being to afraid to let go, with the expectation to find it again. A third is a sense of being a space rather than a point in world-view-space. If I can grow as to authentically relate to more world views and people rather that only inhabit the most correct one, that becomes a lot less fragile.