Title: The “Unknowable”
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 6.4
Words: 950
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
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## The “Unknowable”

Many religious traditions—ranging from the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, Zen Buddhist kōans, and Kabbalah’s emphasis that most live in a world of illusion—use elusive truths, ambiguity, paradoxes, or complex concepts as a very clever hack. By prompting people to attempt to wrap their heads around such things, a cultivar can also trigger feelings of love (a mechanism which, in *The Pragmatist’s Guide to Relationships*, we explore in greater depth). By informing outsiders or inferiors in a culture or tradition that certain truths cannot be clearly articulated or are in some way unknowable, senior members can furthermore enforce stricter status hierarchies that others feel incentivized to climb.

Several early readers of this book criticized our blunt and pragmatic analysis of various cultural and religious traditions, citing these unknowable truths. One cannot take actionable, *pragmatic*, action in the world without drawing concrete conclusions, as imperfect as they may be. If you didn’t care about practical take-aways, you would probably be looking for *The Nuanced Mystic’s Guide to Crafting Religion* instead of something from the *Pragmatist’s Guide* series.

But let’s take a moment to explore this mechanism, given how pervasive it is.

Anyone who like me (Malcolm) got into the Church of the SubGenius understands the trope of the “unknowable truth” well because it is frequently highlighted in its satire. In the Church of the SubGenius teachings, the concept of Slack is laid out quite plainly to mean the aesthetic of effortless success gained through cunning and sleight of hand/mind. At the same time, it is framed as axiomatic that anyone who claims to be able to know what Slack is or describe Slack neither understands nor has it. This is a psychological trick that many traditions use to feel more profound and trigger feelings of love and awe.

Beyond presenting simple gatekeeping mechanisms, signaling to outsiders that serious “work” needs to be put in before one can consider themselves a true member, unknowable truths work to keep members in their chosen cultivar by presenting an automatic hand-waving defense that gets activated in the face of scrutiny. “Hey!” an outsider might say: “Isn’t it kind of bad that your cultivar believes X?”

“No,” the adherent will respond; “you clearly do not understand our true beliefs.”

“Then explain them to me,” the outsider says.

“Hah!” the adherent scoffs; “It’s not so simple! This sacred truth is not something someone like me can explain to you using mere words [insert long rambling statements about putting in work or about obscure references that don’t actually address the issue at hand].”

In such scenarios, the adherent has zero obligation to think critically about their cultivar’s metaphysical belief system and is actively rewarded for not trying to clearly articulate its views, as per this unknowable truth mechanism, the very attempt to do so is, at best, a complete failure to actually capture the unknowable truth, which, by definition, cannot be articulated, and, at worst, apostasy.

Talk about an elegant retention mechanism! A big problem faced by the LDS Church is that missionaries are actively encouraged to engage in doctrine full of clearly articulated claims—many of which can unfortunately (for retention) be disproven or at least heavily undermined in the age of the internet. This causes many to lose their faith at a time when they should be reaffirming it.

Unknowable truths also work well at suppressing dissent and impertinence within cultivars. For example, Zen Buddhist kōans can be used to gaslight practitioners and slowly wear down their ability to engage in personal critical thought in the face of “great masters”. Consider the famous kōan: “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”

There is a real answer to this (depending on how you interpret the question—the only mystery comes from the fact that there are multiple ways the question could be interpreted). We know the sound of our fingers rustling together. We know the sound of a hand clasping quickly against itself. Simone even had a middle school classmate capable of whipping his loose hand so quickly, he could literally clap, single-handedly. We could record all these things with high-quality sound equipment and present them to the Zen master who posed this question and yet he would respond with the pseudo-profound wording equivalent of: “You just don’t get it.”

By doing this, the Zen master undermines any confidence we previously had in our own logical thought and empirical experience—and even our faith in reality itself. And that’s the point. Once an individual has been worn down like this, they will more uncritically accept what their “superior” tells them. This is both the core point of gaslighting in an abusive relationship and the reason why many traditions independently evolved these practices, (though they would claim that an individual can only see truth after this “old way” of seeing the world—e.g. critically—is eroded).

While we agree that unknowable truths are powerful love-creating, gatekeeping, retention-improving, hierarchy-enforcing, and gaslighting mechanisms that are important for any skilled cultivar crafter to know about, we personally see them as unethical and certainly outside the bounds of our commitment to pragmatism (and obviously someone with a Calvinist perspective is going to have zero chill around any manipulative tactic that actively undermines truth seeking).

Note that cultivars which leverage unknowable truths typically have a smarter “mirror cultivar” that does not fall for it, so in calling this out, we are in no way criticizing all religions with unknowable-truth-wielding sects or branches—we only question the morality of those branches. An idea that is only understandable to people who accept its profundity is a psychological trick, not a revelation.