This is a really good post. I particularly like the suggestion that we don’t have to infer and cache conclusions about ourselves when we screw up and don’t return a library book. (Of course, other people would be rational to cache a conclusion about us because thinking differently wouldn’t be a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
This is the first post I’ve seen that seems to really fit Less Wrong’s mission of “refining the art of human rationality”
This post clearly spells out some issues, links them to research and presents possible solutions. I hope that more posts in the future take this form.
This post also nicely outlines the problem of one’s ability to really doubt themselves constantly at the appropriate level. I think these two points present a big challenge to the mission of leading a rational life:
3c. Reframe your past behavior as having occurred in a different context, and as not bearing on today’s decisions. Or add context cues to trick your brain into regarding today’s decision as belonging to a different category than past decisions. This is, for example, part of how conversion experiences can help people change their behavior. (For a cheap hack, try traveling.)
3d. More specifically, visualize your life as something you just inherited from someone else; ignore sunk words as you would aspire to ignore sunk costs.
How someone could do enough compartmentalizing of their identity to pull of either of these tasks escapes me.
How someone could do enough compartmentalizing of their identity to pull of either of these tasks escapes me.
The motive behind these prescriptions is to make the decision we want to make for our current selves, so there’s another way which non-rationalists use all the time. Suppose you make a New Year’s Resolution to exercise more; you genuinely do want to exercise more. But when the equipment is installed in your living room, you don’t feel like it any more. In fact, you’ll end up convincing yourself that you were never really serious about your resolution in the first place, if you allow yourself to. I think that a person’s past-self-concept does exert quite an influence on behaviour, but that current preferences can also alter the past-self-concept to fit. Consistency between past-self-concept and current self seems to be the overriding preference.
Of course this is a form of willing self-deception, so our overriding preference should be to actually do 3c and 3d, which are not self-deceptions, even if it does feel like compartmentalizing. I think one has to really convince oneself that such a perspective is not “compartmentalization”; that to disregard one’s past preferences is not a betrayal of one’s current self.
Has anyone brought up this study by Bruner and Potter (1964) before? I think it would relate to intertemporal beliefs and how we sometimes perceive them to be more sound than they really are:
In this demonstration, you will see nine different pictures. The pictures will get clearer and clearer. Make a guess as to what is being shown for each of the pictures, and write down your guess. Note the number of the picture where you were first able to recognize what was being shown. Then go backwards—press the “BACK” button on the browser—and see at which point you can no longer identify the picture. Are your “ascending” and “decending” points the same?
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IF YOU HAVE TRIED THE STUDY:
Pictures of common objects, coming slowly into focus, were viewed by adult observers. Recognition was delayed when subjects first viewed the pictures out of focus. The greater or more prolonged the initial blur, the slower the eventual recognition. Interference may be accounted for partly by the difficulty of rejecting incorrect hypotheses based on substandard cues.
It would be interesting to think of your intertemporal frame of mind as discontinuous and running at 24 frames per second (like a film). Maybe your consciousness gives your sense of beliefs a false sense of flowing like a movie from one time state to the next.
Thanks. Steve re-invented the library books technique by thinking about refactoring code and categories… but examples like the library books example are also standard in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And CBT has other good techniques for becoming aware of your own thinking and for changing your thinking habits in useful ways. I really think we should be rifling through their thoughts for rationality training gimmicks.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any good CBT resources to link my “I really think we should look at these people” claims to, and I especially know none online (I read a decent book on how to teach CBT in a bookstore but lost the name, and I read a decent summary at the end of a book on something else, in Martin Seligman’s book “Absolute Happiness”). Does anyone else know what reading we might want to consult?
I remember looking in a bookstore for good introductions on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and didn’t find any; I ended up buying a report of a few case studies (that doesn’t go too much in theory), but haven’t read it yet. It’s a useful reference to have, I just wish it was as accessible as say learning how to program (a topic for which you can find zillions of tutorials on the net).
I’m just getting into learning about CBT and its relatives. I’m in the middle of Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. Benefits: It seems pretty comprehensive and detailed, with plenty of “dialogs” between patient and therapist to illustrate the communication of various CBT concepts and techniques. Drawbacks: Because it’s geared toward therapists, not patients, some of the information seems irrelevant for self-therapy, e.g. how to structure a session.
Part of the point of CBT is to prepare people to be their own therapists. It would be nice if anyone out there knew about literature specifically about self-therapy.
The classic self-help book about cognitive therapy is “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David Burns. I’ve read it and consider its popularity well-deserved. It’s focused on fighting depression but I think it should be useful even if you have a different purpose in mind.
This is a really good post. I particularly like the suggestion that we don’t have to infer and cache conclusions about ourselves when we screw up and don’t return a library book. (Of course, other people would be rational to cache a conclusion about us because thinking differently wouldn’t be a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
This is the first post I’ve seen that seems to really fit Less Wrong’s mission of “refining the art of human rationality”
This post clearly spells out some issues, links them to research and presents possible solutions. I hope that more posts in the future take this form.
This post also nicely outlines the problem of one’s ability to really doubt themselves constantly at the appropriate level. I think these two points present a big challenge to the mission of leading a rational life:
How someone could do enough compartmentalizing of their identity to pull of either of these tasks escapes me.
The motive behind these prescriptions is to make the decision we want to make for our current selves, so there’s another way which non-rationalists use all the time. Suppose you make a New Year’s Resolution to exercise more; you genuinely do want to exercise more. But when the equipment is installed in your living room, you don’t feel like it any more. In fact, you’ll end up convincing yourself that you were never really serious about your resolution in the first place, if you allow yourself to. I think that a person’s past-self-concept does exert quite an influence on behaviour, but that current preferences can also alter the past-self-concept to fit. Consistency between past-self-concept and current self seems to be the overriding preference.
Of course this is a form of willing self-deception, so our overriding preference should be to actually do 3c and 3d, which are not self-deceptions, even if it does feel like compartmentalizing. I think one has to really convince oneself that such a perspective is not “compartmentalization”; that to disregard one’s past preferences is not a betrayal of one’s current self.
Has anyone brought up this study by Bruner and Potter (1964) before? I think it would relate to intertemporal beliefs and how we sometimes perceive them to be more sound than they really are:
http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~kin356/bpdemo.htm
========
IF YOU HAVE TRIED THE STUDY:
It would be interesting to think of your intertemporal frame of mind as discontinuous and running at 24 frames per second (like a film). Maybe your consciousness gives your sense of beliefs a false sense of flowing like a movie from one time state to the next.
Thanks. Steve re-invented the library books technique by thinking about refactoring code and categories… but examples like the library books example are also standard in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And CBT has other good techniques for becoming aware of your own thinking and for changing your thinking habits in useful ways. I really think we should be rifling through their thoughts for rationality training gimmicks.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any good CBT resources to link my “I really think we should look at these people” claims to, and I especially know none online (I read a decent book on how to teach CBT in a bookstore but lost the name, and I read a decent summary at the end of a book on something else, in Martin Seligman’s book “Absolute Happiness”). Does anyone else know what reading we might want to consult?
I found “Feeling Good” by David Burns to be helpful.
I remember looking in a bookstore for good introductions on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and didn’t find any; I ended up buying a report of a few case studies (that doesn’t go too much in theory), but haven’t read it yet. It’s a useful reference to have, I just wish it was as accessible as say learning how to program (a topic for which you can find zillions of tutorials on the net).
I’m just getting into learning about CBT and its relatives. I’m in the middle of Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond. Benefits: It seems pretty comprehensive and detailed, with plenty of “dialogs” between patient and therapist to illustrate the communication of various CBT concepts and techniques. Drawbacks: Because it’s geared toward therapists, not patients, some of the information seems irrelevant for self-therapy, e.g. how to structure a session.
Part of the point of CBT is to prepare people to be their own therapists. It would be nice if anyone out there knew about literature specifically about self-therapy.
The classic self-help book about cognitive therapy is “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David Burns. I’ve read it and consider its popularity well-deserved. It’s focused on fighting depression but I think it should be useful even if you have a different purpose in mind.
Heh, what you describe looks exactly like the book I have (though it’s in French, so it’s not the same book).
This perhaps offers a partial explanation of the “fundamental attribution error”.