Does anyone here think they’re particularly good at introspection or modeling themselves, or have a method for training up these skills? It seems like it would be really useful to understand more about the true causes of my behavior, so I can figure out what conditions lead to me being good and what conditions lead to me behaving poorly, and then deliberately set up good conditions. But whenever I try to analyze my behavior, I just hit a brick wall—it all just feels like I chose to do what I did out of my magical free will. Which doesn’t explain anything.
If you know what you want, and then you choose actions that will help you get it, then that’s simple enough to analyze: you’re just rational, that’s all. But when you would swear with all your heart that you want some simple thing, but are continually breaking down and acting dysfunctionally—well, clearly something has gone horribly wrong with your brain, and you should figure out the problem and fix it. But if you can’t tell what’s wrong because your decision algorithm is utterly opaque, then what do you do?
Does anyone here think they’re particularly good at introspection or modeling themselves, or have a method for training up these skills? It seems like it would be really useful to understand more about the true causes of my behavior, so I can figure out what conditions lead to me being good and what conditions lead to me behaving poorly, and then deliberately set up good conditions. But whenever I try to analyze my behavior, I just hit a brick wall—it all just feels like I chose to do what I did out of my magical free will. Which doesn’t explain anything.
My suggestion is focussing your introspection on working out what you really want. That is, keep investigating what you really want until such time as the phrase ‘me behaving poorly’ and ‘being good’ sound like something that is in a foreign language, that you can understand only by translating.
You may be thinking “clearly something has gone horribly wrong with my brain” but your brain is thinking “Something is clearly wrong with my consciousness. It is trying to make me do all this crazy shit. Like the sort of stuff we’re supposed to pretend we want because that is what people ‘Should’ want. Consciousnesses are the kind of things that go around believing in God and sexual fidelity. That’s why I’m in charge, not him. But now he’s thinking he’s clever and is going to find ways to manipulate me into compliance. F@#@ that s#!$. Who does he think he is?”
When trying to work effectively with people empathy is critical. You need to be able to understand what they want and be able to work with each other for mutual benefit. Use the same principle with yourself. Once your brain believes you actually know what it (ie. you) want and are on approximately the same page it may well start trusting you and not feel obliged to thwart your influence. Then you can find a compromise that allows you to get that ‘simple thing’ you want without your instincts feeling that some other priority has been threatened.
People who watch me talking about myself sometimes say I’m good at introspection, but I think about half of what I do is making up superstitions so I have something doable to trick myself into making some other thing, previously undoable, doable. (“Clearly, the only reason I haven’t written my paper is that I haven’t had a glass of hot chocolate, when I’m cold and thirsty and want refined sugar.” Then I go get a cup of cocoa. Then I write my paper. I have to wrap up the need for cocoa in a fair amount of pseudoscience for this to work.) This is very effective at mood maintenance for me—I was on antidepressants and in therapy for a decade as a child, and quit both cold turkey in favor of methods like this and am fine—but I don’t know which (if, heck, any) of my conclusions that I come to this way are “really true” (that is, if the hot chocolate is a placebo or not). They’re just things that pop into my head when I think about what my brain might need from me before it will give back in the form of behaving itself.
You have to take care of you brain for it to be able to take care of you. If it won’t tell you what it wants, you have to guess. (Or have your iron levels checked :P)
I tend to think of my brain as a thing with certain needs. Companionship, recognition, physical contact, novelty, etc. Activities that provide these tend to persist. Figure out what your dysfunctional actions provide you in terms of your needs. Then try and find activities that provide these but aren’t so bad and try and replace the dysfunctional bits. Also change the situation you are in so that the dysfunctional default actions don’t automatically trigger.
My dream is to find a group of like minded people that I can socialise and work with. SIAI is very tempting in that regard.
One thing that has worked for me lately is the following: whenever I do something and don’t really know why I did it (or am uncomfortable with the validity of my rationalizations), I try and think of the action in Outside View terms. I think of (or better, write out) a short external description of what I did, in its most basic form, and its probable consequences. Then I ask what goal this action looks optimized for; it’s usually something pretty simple, but which I might not be happy consciously acknowledging (more selfish than usual, etc).
That being said, even more helpful than this has been discussing my actions with a fairly rational friend who has my permission to analyze it and hypothesize freely. When they come up with a hypothesis that I don’t like, but which I have no good counterarguments against, we’ve usually hit paydirt.
well, clearly something has gone horribly wrong with your brain, and you should figure out the problem and fix it.
I don’t think of this as something wrong with my brain, so much as it functioning properly in maintaining a conscious/unconscious firewall, even though this isn’t as adaptive in today’s world as it once was. It’s really helped me in introspection to not judge myself, to not get angry with my revealed preferences.
Does anyone here think they’re particularly good at introspection or modeling themselves, or have a method for training up these skills? It seems like it would be really useful to understand more about the true causes of my behavior, so I can figure out what conditions lead to me being good and what conditions lead to me behaving poorly, and then deliberately set up good conditions. But whenever I try to analyze my behavior, I just hit a brick wall—it all just feels like I chose to do what I did out of my magical free will. Which doesn’t explain anything.
If you know what you want, and then you choose actions that will help you get it, then that’s simple enough to analyze: you’re just rational, that’s all. But when you would swear with all your heart that you want some simple thing, but are continually breaking down and acting dysfunctionally—well, clearly something has gone horribly wrong with your brain, and you should figure out the problem and fix it. But if you can’t tell what’s wrong because your decision algorithm is utterly opaque, then what do you do?
My suggestion is focussing your introspection on working out what you really want. That is, keep investigating what you really want until such time as the phrase ‘me behaving poorly’ and ‘being good’ sound like something that is in a foreign language, that you can understand only by translating.
You may be thinking “clearly something has gone horribly wrong with my brain” but your brain is thinking “Something is clearly wrong with my consciousness. It is trying to make me do all this crazy shit. Like the sort of stuff we’re supposed to pretend we want because that is what people ‘Should’ want. Consciousnesses are the kind of things that go around believing in God and sexual fidelity. That’s why I’m in charge, not him. But now he’s thinking he’s clever and is going to find ways to manipulate me into compliance. F@#@ that s#!$. Who does he think he is?”
When trying to work effectively with people empathy is critical. You need to be able to understand what they want and be able to work with each other for mutual benefit. Use the same principle with yourself. Once your brain believes you actually know what it (ie. you) want and are on approximately the same page it may well start trusting you and not feel obliged to thwart your influence. Then you can find a compromise that allows you to get that ‘simple thing’ you want without your instincts feeling that some other priority has been threatened.
People who watch me talking about myself sometimes say I’m good at introspection, but I think about half of what I do is making up superstitions so I have something doable to trick myself into making some other thing, previously undoable, doable. (“Clearly, the only reason I haven’t written my paper is that I haven’t had a glass of hot chocolate, when I’m cold and thirsty and want refined sugar.” Then I go get a cup of cocoa. Then I write my paper. I have to wrap up the need for cocoa in a fair amount of pseudoscience for this to work.) This is very effective at mood maintenance for me—I was on antidepressants and in therapy for a decade as a child, and quit both cold turkey in favor of methods like this and am fine—but I don’t know which (if, heck, any) of my conclusions that I come to this way are “really true” (that is, if the hot chocolate is a placebo or not). They’re just things that pop into my head when I think about what my brain might need from me before it will give back in the form of behaving itself.
You have to take care of you brain for it to be able to take care of you. If it won’t tell you what it wants, you have to guess. (Or have your iron levels checked :P)
I tend to think of my brain as a thing with certain needs. Companionship, recognition, physical contact, novelty, etc. Activities that provide these tend to persist. Figure out what your dysfunctional actions provide you in terms of your needs. Then try and find activities that provide these but aren’t so bad and try and replace the dysfunctional bits. Also change the situation you are in so that the dysfunctional default actions don’t automatically trigger.
My dream is to find a group of like minded people that I can socialise and work with. SIAI is very tempting in that regard.
One thing that has worked for me lately is the following: whenever I do something and don’t really know why I did it (or am uncomfortable with the validity of my rationalizations), I try and think of the action in Outside View terms. I think of (or better, write out) a short external description of what I did, in its most basic form, and its probable consequences. Then I ask what goal this action looks optimized for; it’s usually something pretty simple, but which I might not be happy consciously acknowledging (more selfish than usual, etc).
That being said, even more helpful than this has been discussing my actions with a fairly rational friend who has my permission to analyze it and hypothesize freely. When they come up with a hypothesis that I don’t like, but which I have no good counterarguments against, we’ve usually hit paydirt.
I don’t think of this as something wrong with my brain, so much as it functioning properly in maintaining a conscious/unconscious firewall, even though this isn’t as adaptive in today’s world as it once was. It’s really helped me in introspection to not judge myself, to not get angry with my revealed preferences.