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A review by nghia
Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul
3.0
L.A. Paul has a great insight that is overwhelmed tedious exposition. She belabors her points; constantly, repeatedly, and excessively. So much so that it seriously reduces the enjoyment of the book. The entirety, I mean the entirety of chapter 3 can be skipped. And it is the longest chapter in the book! It is just her repeatedly coming up with examples of "transformative experiences" and then trying to convince you in agonizing detail that it is, in fact, a transformative experience under her criteria. When, in fact, no normal reader is going to disagree.
If you go from being deaf to being able to hear -- via a Cochlear implant -- is that a transformative experience? I haven't even told you what a "transformative experience" is and you're already agreeing, "Yep, that sure sounds like a big experience!" Paul spends 14 pages(!!), pages 56-70, on this. The book is only 123 pages long, so this is 11% of the entire book.
Not satisfied, she then immediately spends 23 pages(!!), pages 71-94 (18% of the entire book!), trying to convince you that becoming a parent is also a transformative experience. Like, duh. No kidding. Seriously, skip the entire 3rd chapter. It is terrible and adds nothing to her point.
It is a shame because her key insight is a very good one: there is a wide-spread normative standard that our choices should be "rational", which means some kind of utility-maximizing by picking "the best" choice from the options in front of us. We know that people don't always live up to this standard but even those who say we don't live up to it, don't really argue that we shouldn't even try to live up to it.
But there are some experiences in our lives that are "transformative experiences". They are simultaneously personal transformations and epistemic transformations. Because both change simultaneously, we don't know what our future set of preferences will be, so we can't make a "rational choice". There are some things that we can't know whether we enjoy until we try them. And maybe the me-before doesn't like it but the me-after does like it? Which version of you has the preferences that matter?
Becoming a parent is a classic, obvious example. Trauma is another one (think of the common "you can't possibly understand how I feel" reply from many grieving people). Paul's insight seems intuitively obvious once it is pointed out, which makes her later tedious explanations seem all the more pointless.
All of this seems to undermine, or at least call into question, the ideal of "rational choice" as a normative sense. Much of Paul's book is taken up trying to "rescue" rational choice. This part was also underwhelming. She doesn't provide an especially compelling case for why rational choice should be rescued. And her solution in the end is, in her own words, deeply unsatisfying.
When we are faced with a transformative experience we run the risk that (because it is personal and transformative and because we cannot predict the outcome) the most core of our values will change, undermining our own sense of self. Given that, is it any wonder that people are as conservative as they are? Why would anyone choose a transformative experience in Paul's model? You can't measure the potential positives but your entire sense of self is at risk. Why would you make the choice to have a transformative experience?
It is hard to imagine how unsatisfied you must be with your current self to "plunge into the unknown jungle of a new self" with (in Paul's model) no real idea what that future self might be.
Paul's book ends on that note, fairly abruptly. It felt under-explored. I wish the author had spent less time convincing me that her examples were transformative experiences and more page count exploring the consequences.
If you go from being deaf to being able to hear -- via a Cochlear implant -- is that a transformative experience? I haven't even told you what a "transformative experience" is and you're already agreeing, "Yep, that sure sounds like a big experience!" Paul spends 14 pages(!!), pages 56-70, on this. The book is only 123 pages long, so this is 11% of the entire book.
Not satisfied, she then immediately spends 23 pages(!!), pages 71-94 (18% of the entire book!), trying to convince you that becoming a parent is also a transformative experience. Like, duh. No kidding. Seriously, skip the entire 3rd chapter. It is terrible and adds nothing to her point.
It is a shame because her key insight is a very good one: there is a wide-spread normative standard that our choices should be "rational", which means some kind of utility-maximizing by picking "the best" choice from the options in front of us. We know that people don't always live up to this standard but even those who say we don't live up to it, don't really argue that we shouldn't even try to live up to it.
But there are some experiences in our lives that are "transformative experiences". They are simultaneously personal transformations and epistemic transformations. Because both change simultaneously, we don't know what our future set of preferences will be, so we can't make a "rational choice". There are some things that we can't know whether we enjoy until we try them. And maybe the me-before doesn't like it but the me-after does like it? Which version of you has the preferences that matter?
Becoming a parent is a classic, obvious example. Trauma is another one (think of the common "you can't possibly understand how I feel" reply from many grieving people). Paul's insight seems intuitively obvious once it is pointed out, which makes her later tedious explanations seem all the more pointless.
All of this seems to undermine, or at least call into question, the ideal of "rational choice" as a normative sense. Much of Paul's book is taken up trying to "rescue" rational choice. This part was also underwhelming. She doesn't provide an especially compelling case for why rational choice should be rescued. And her solution in the end is, in her own words, deeply unsatisfying.
We must embrace the epistemic fact that, in real-life cases of making major life decisions in transformative contexts, we have very little to go on. To the extent that our choice depends on our subjective preferences, we choose between the alternatives of discovering what it is like to have the new preferences and experiences involved, or keeping the status quo
When we are faced with a transformative experience we run the risk that (because it is personal and transformative and because we cannot predict the outcome) the most core of our values will change, undermining our own sense of self. Given that, is it any wonder that people are as conservative as they are? Why would anyone choose a transformative experience in Paul's model? You can't measure the potential positives but your entire sense of self is at risk. Why would you make the choice to have a transformative experience?
that is, we choose to become the kind of person—without knowing what that will be like—that these experiences will make us into. [...]
When faced with each of life’s transformative choices, you must ask yourself: do I plunge into the unknown jungle of a new self? Or do I stay on the ship?
It is hard to imagine how unsatisfied you must be with your current self to "plunge into the unknown jungle of a new self" with (in Paul's model) no real idea what that future self might be.
Paul's book ends on that note, fairly abruptly. It felt under-explored. I wish the author had spent less time convincing me that her examples were transformative experiences and more page count exploring the consequences.