I forget what’s in the deliberate grieving post, but based on what you say here, I’ll note that what I have in mind is largely about identity, not plans. As in, the root of emotional processing is attachment not to an idea about plans but an idea about the self. When one thinks “this is a great plan” the second thought is often “and I’m a great person for coming up with such a great plan”. If the plan isn’t great, then the person might not be either, and that’s way more painful than the plan not being great.
Based on a lot of observations, I see rationalists sometimes manage to get around this because they are far enough on the autism spectrum to just not form strong a strong sense of identity. More often, though, they LARP at not having a strong sense of identity, and actually have to first get in touch with who they are (as supposed to who they wish they were) to begin to develop the skills to do actual emotional processing instead of bypassing it (and suffering all the usual consequences of suppressing a part of one’s being).
That does all feel relevant. But, in case of Illusion of Transparency, the thing I meant by “Don’t think of ‘your plans’ as something that aren’t supposed to change’” was like:
Person has a general life plan of “finish college, get degree, make parents vaguely proud or at least appeased, make some money.” And when you hear “maybe your degree is going to be useless because the whole industry will get automated or at least radically changed”, you might subconsciously think “that would be way too inconvenient, so it’s probably not true.”
Or, when you were planning to work on X today, and the boss shows up and says “X is cancelled, we’re gonna work on Y instead”, you might feel some whiplash and disorientation and anger about that.
If you were planning a wedding and you hear “20% chance of rain that day”, you might think “eh, that’s not that high, I don’t really know what we’d do in case of rain anyway”, and then the day of it’s raining you’re like “Well, shit” and then you do a last minute scramble and it’s more effortful and expensive than if you had looked into it beforehand.
Some of these will have identity wrapped up in them, and there are many other situations where identity is more central. But these situations seem to be ones where people feel this “it’s not fair / it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to half to do this work, so, I won’t. Or, I’ll drag my feet about it.”
I forget what’s in the deliberate grieving post, but based on what you say here, I’ll note that what I have in mind is largely about identity, not plans. As in, the root of emotional processing is attachment not to an idea about plans but an idea about the self. When one thinks “this is a great plan” the second thought is often “and I’m a great person for coming up with such a great plan”. If the plan isn’t great, then the person might not be either, and that’s way more painful than the plan not being great.
Based on a lot of observations, I see rationalists sometimes manage to get around this because they are far enough on the autism spectrum to just not form strong a strong sense of identity. More often, though, they LARP at not having a strong sense of identity, and actually have to first get in touch with who they are (as supposed to who they wish they were) to begin to develop the skills to do actual emotional processing instead of bypassing it (and suffering all the usual consequences of suppressing a part of one’s being).
That does all feel relevant. But, in case of Illusion of Transparency, the thing I meant by “Don’t think of ‘your plans’ as something that aren’t supposed to change’” was like:
Person has a general life plan of “finish college, get degree, make parents vaguely proud or at least appeased, make some money.” And when you hear “maybe your degree is going to be useless because the whole industry will get automated or at least radically changed”, you might subconsciously think “that would be way too inconvenient, so it’s probably not true.”
Or, when you were planning to work on X today, and the boss shows up and says “X is cancelled, we’re gonna work on Y instead”, you might feel some whiplash and disorientation and anger about that.
If you were planning a wedding and you hear “20% chance of rain that day”, you might think “eh, that’s not that high, I don’t really know what we’d do in case of rain anyway”, and then the day of it’s raining you’re like “Well, shit” and then you do a last minute scramble and it’s more effortful and expensive than if you had looked into it beforehand.
Some of these will have identity wrapped up in them, and there are many other situations where identity is more central. But these situations seem to be ones where people feel this “it’s not fair / it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to half to do this work, so, I won’t. Or, I’ll drag my feet about it.”