1) look around the room and attempt to produce three instances of something resembling tiny quiet confusion (or louder than that if it’s available) 2) try to precisely describe the difference between surprise and confusion 3) sketch a taxonomy of confusing experiences and then ask yourself what you might be missing
I think the difference between surprise and confusion is that surprise is when something-with-low-probability happens, and confusion is when something happens that my model can’t explain. They sometimes (often) overlap (i.e. if lightning strikes, I’m surprised because that doesn’t usually happen, but I’m not confused)
look around the room and attempt to produce three instances of something resembling tiny quiet confusion (or louder than that if it’s available)
I hadn’t done this particular exercise. I just tried it now and had some little microconfusions (why is the plant wiggling? Oh, because the fan is blowing on it. Why does the light scatter like that? Okay this one is actually somewhat interesting – my brain returned a cached answer of “because there’s a light source and an obstruction casting a shadow, with some scattering”, then I realized I didn’t actually have that good a grip on why the scattering was happening the way it was).
It does make sense that if I cultivate “notice small confusions around” I can see more confusions. Something feels unsatisfying about this, compared to what I meant in the OP. I think I meant “confusions that… matter in some way,” where the thing I’m noticing is not just “oh, a confusion”, but also “oh, the feeling of slightly sliding off a confusion, with stakes.” I feel some defensive feeling like that has a different qualia than confusions I actively go looking for.
But, I guess the “Ray you don’t actually know how light scattering really works, despite having literally gone to school to study light scattering” thing does count at least for the “sliding off” property, even if it doesn’t have the “something is actually at stake beyond studying confusion for it’s own sake” property.
if you wanna second-guess yourself even harder,
1) look around the room and attempt to produce three instances of something resembling tiny quiet confusion (or louder than that if it’s available)
2) try to precisely describe the difference between surprise and confusion
3) sketch a taxonomy of confusing experiences and then ask yourself what you might be missing
I think the difference between surprise and confusion is that surprise is when something-with-low-probability happens, and confusion is when something happens that my model can’t explain. They sometimes (often) overlap (i.e. if lightning strikes, I’m surprised because that doesn’t usually happen, but I’m not confused)
I hadn’t done this particular exercise. I just tried it now and had some little microconfusions (why is the plant wiggling? Oh, because the fan is blowing on it. Why does the light scatter like that? Okay this one is actually somewhat interesting – my brain returned a cached answer of “because there’s a light source and an obstruction casting a shadow, with some scattering”, then I realized I didn’t actually have that good a grip on why the scattering was happening the way it was).
It does make sense that if I cultivate “notice small confusions around” I can see more confusions. Something feels unsatisfying about this, compared to what I meant in the OP. I think I meant “confusions that… matter in some way,” where the thing I’m noticing is not just “oh, a confusion”, but also “oh, the feeling of slightly sliding off a confusion, with stakes.” I feel some defensive feeling like that has a different qualia than confusions I actively go looking for.
But, I guess the “Ray you don’t actually know how light scattering really works, despite having literally gone to school to study light scattering” thing does count at least for the “sliding off” property, even if it doesn’t have the “something is actually at stake beyond studying confusion for it’s own sake” property.