Celia Green is a figure who should interest some LW readers. If you can imagine Eliezer, not as an A.I. futurist in 2000s America, but as a parapsychologist in 1960s Britain - she must have been a little like that. She founded her own research institute in her mid-20s, invented psychological theories meant to explain why the human race was walking around resigned to mortality and ignorance, felt that her peers (who got all the research money) were doing everything wrong... I would say that her two outstanding books are The Human Evasion and Advice to Clever Children. The first book, while still very obscure, has slowly acquired a fanbase online; but the second book remains thoroughly unknown.
For a synopsis of what the books are about, I think something I wrote in 1993 (I've been promoting her work on the Internet for years) remains reasonable. They contain an analysis of the alleged deficiencies and hidden motivations of normal human psychology, description of an alternative outlook, and an examination of various topics from that new perspective. There is some similarity to the rationalist ideal developed in the Sequences here, in that her alternative involves existential urgency, deep respect for uncertainty, and superhuman aspiration.
There are also prominent differences. Green's starting point is not Bayesian calculation, it's Humean skepticism. Green would agree that one should aspire to "think like reality", but for her this would mean, above all, being mindful of "total uncertainty". It's a fact that I don't know what comes next, that I don't know the true nature of reality, that I don't know what's possible if I try; I may have habitual opinions about these matters, but a moment's honest reflection shows that none of these opinions are knowledge in any genuine sense; even if they are correct, I don't know them to be correct. So if I am interested in thinking like reality, I can begin by acknowledging the radical uncertainty of my situation. I exist, I don't know why, I don't know what I am, I don't know what the world is or what it has planned for me. I may have my ideas, but I should be able to see them as ideas and hold them apart from the unknown reality.
If you are like me, you will enjoy the outlook of open-ended striving that Green develops in this intellectual context, but you will be jarred by her account of ordinary, non-striving psychology. Her answer to the question, why does the human race have such petty interests and limited ambitions, is that it is sunk in an orgy of mutual hatred, mostly disguised, and resulting from an attempt to evade the psychology of striving. More precisely, to be a finite human being is to be in a desperate and frustrating situation; and people attempt to solve this problem, not by overcoming their limitations, but by suppressing their reactions to the situation. Other people are central to the resulting psychological maneuvers. They are a way for you to distract yourself from your own situation, and they are a safe target if the existential frustration and desperation reassert themselves.
Celia Green's psychological ideas are the product of her personal confrontation with the mysterious existential situation, and also her confrontation with an uncomprehending society. I've thought for some time that her portrayal of universal human depravity results from overestimating the potential of the average human being; that in effect she has asked herself, if I were that person, how could I possibly lead the life I see them living, and say the things I hear them saying, unless I were that twisted up inside? Nonetheless, I do think she has described an aspect of human psychology which is real and largely unexamined, and also that her advice on how to avoid the resentful turning-away from reality, and live in the uncertainty, is quite profound. One reason I'm promoting these books is in the hope that some small part of the culture at large is finally ready to digest their contents and critically assess them. People ought to be doing PhDs on the thought of Celia Green, but she's unknown in that world.
As for Celia Green herself, she's still alive and still going. She has a blog and a personal website and an organization based near Oxford. She's an "academic exile", but true to her philosophy, she hasn't compromised one iota and hopes to start her own private university. She may especially be of interest to the metaphysically inclined faction of LW readers, identified by Yvain in a recent blog post.
Did Eliezer ever explain what causes people to be "mad"? These books propose an explanation: human beings try to restrict their attention to other human beings, and they especially want to regard as bad only those bads which are caused by other human beings, because other people can at least be attacked and punished, whereas there is no analogous method of psychological relief available if the cause of the bad thing is just nature or the universe.
That is why Green says (in the final chapter of Advice) that the other way of thinking starts with an interest in the universe, driven by the reaction to one's limitations. Life contains impersonally caused badness. You will react to it when you begin to encounter it. The usual reaction is to resign oneself to it; one tries to take the sting from it by accepting it. The "centralized" way of reacting to it is instead to not accept it, to remain engaged with it - to fight it - and this is what the total uncertainty counsels, or at least it does not license the view that nothing can be done, which is implicit in resignation.
So far as I know, these psychological reflections are unique to Green's work, and they are just the beginning of her interpretation of numerous social and historical phenomena. They have a normative dimension as well as purely explanatory value, and they also ought to have some practical value for, say, people who want to cure aging or end death and who can't understand why society treats such aspirations as talkshow curiosities rather than central priorities.
Russell wrote of Schopenhauer that pessimists can be of value by bringing forward facts and considerations which optimists would prefer to overlook, thereby helping to create a more accurate picture of reality; even if their work appears biased when considered in isolation, on account of its being produced in opposition to a prevailing bias. I suggest approaching Green's account of human nature in this spirit. It's not scripture, but it is drawing attention to a very underremarked aspect of psychology.
As for what she has accomplished in life, her works are certainly full of ideas which individually might have served as the basis of a whole career, and in the case of lucid dreams it does seem that her work helped to create career opportunities for other people, by pioneering the subject in which they went on to specialize. I can only speculate as to exactly why it is that she has received so little attention and support over the years.
Yes. We're semi-evolved monkeys created by a blind idiot god that has fortuitously created something with intellectual escape velocity. Everything we achieve as a result, we are by definition only just rational enough to achieve it, or it would have happened earlier.
And yet, society does not treat modern life-saving medicine as a talkshow curiosity, nor the urge to rally to support the victims of disasters, including the "impersonally caused badness" of natural disasters. So her diagnosis seems wide of the mark.
Has she expressed any view about the people who actually are going for the big ones, trying to cure aging and end death? SENS, cryonics, uploading, AGI? I don't get the impression these ideas have impinged upon her.
In science, that's generally not a good sign, except in the initial stages of someone discovering a new thing.
Alas for the flower that is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air. Has her fanbase, as you call it, done anything new with these ideas?
I've never seen the significance of lucid dreaming, btw. I mean, "Hey, I can be conscious while dreaming, how cool is that?!?!" But, so what? Being conscious while waking seems more important to me.