A review by inquiry_from_an_anti_library
Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Is This An Overview?

There are many choices in life in which it would be best to consider as much information about them before making a decision.  Choices of what to experience, or not experience.  The problem is that informed decisions can be impossible.  As life presents many choices without being able to understand the different options, how they would impact the future of the individual.  These are transformative experiences, that fundamentally change the individual.  Changing what it would be like to live.  There is no way of knowing how the change would affect the individual, until the individual has the experience.  An experience in which the individual has an epistemic transformation given the new information.  An experience that changes how the individual understands and processes information. 

Information limitations prevents knowing what to expect and make an informed choice.  Lived experiences cannot inform what it would be like to undergo the change because the change would alter values attached to previous and new information.  Different individuals have different reactions to the same change, therefore testimonies of others about their experience cannot be relied upon, especially because their experiences transformed the way they think.  The only source of information about the experience, is the experience itself.  The choice needs to be based on what the individual wants to discover.  To discover how the change will affect them, or a life without the change.

Caveats?

The book is a systematic analysis of transformative experiences, providing various theoretic and practical examples.  The examples and explanations tend to be self-similar and repeated.