I hadn’t thought about a normative aspect to the skeptics’ fear of ghosts, but after reading this post I acknowledge that there is one. I commit to fighting irrational fears from now on.
I read with interest all of the specific techniques proposed on this thread and welcome more. I’d be particularly interested if anyone had theories of or techniques against akrasia, the general inability of the mind to follow through on what it knows to be right.
My personal experience is that self-talk is only useful insofar as you’re using it to lead yourself to a sensory experience of some kind. For example, asking “What if [desired state of affairs] were true?” is far more useful than simply asserting it so. The former at least invites one to imagine something specific.
Repetition also isn’t as useful as most people seem to think. Your brain has little problem updating information immediately, if there’s sufficient emotion involved… and the “aha” of insight (i.e. reducing the modeling complexity required to explain your observations) counts as an emotion. If you have to repeat it over and over again—and it’s not a skill you’re practicing—you’re doing something wrong.
All of these terms—self-talk, visualization, and pretending—are also examples of Unteachable Excellence and Guessing The Teacher’s Password. You can equally use the term to describe something useful (like asking good questions) or something ridiculous (like affirmations). The specific way in which you talk, visualize, or pretend is of critical importance.
For example, if you simply visualize some scripted scenario, rather than engaging in inquiry with yourself, you are wasting your time. The “near” brain needs to generate the details, not the “far” brain, or else you don’t get the right memories in context.
I’ll admit to a bit of hand-waving on that last part—I know that when my clients visualize, self-talk, or pretend in “scripted” ways (driven by conscious, logical, and “far” thinking), my tests show no change in belief or behavior, and that when they simply ask what-if questions and observe their mind’s response, the tests show changes. My guess is that this has something to do with the “reconsolidation” theory of memory: that activating a memory is required in order to change it. But I’m more of a pragmatist than a theorist in this area.
My experience with self-talk is via Cognitive behavioral therapy, as described in “Feeling Good”. There are a lot of concrete and specific ways of adjusting one’s emotions to match one’s deliberative beliefs in that book.
“You can equally use the term to describe something useful or something ridiculous.” I agree completely. I think the success of religious memes has a lot to do with their systematic advocacy of self-talk, visualization and imitation of guru figures.
You say “When my clients visualize, self-talk in scripted ways, my tests show no change in belief or behavior.” I can easily imagine someone doing a brief experiment of self-talk without believing it can change them, and then demonstrating no change. However, I can also imagine Jesuits systematically visualizing the life of Jesus over a period of 30 days (with the goal of changing their emotions) succeeding at changing their emotions.
And when you imagine this, what concrete test are you imagining performing on the Jesuits before and after the 30 days’ visualization, in order to confirm that there was in fact behavioral change between the two points? ;-)
To be clear, I use tests of a person’s non-voluntary responses to imagined or recalled stimuli. I also prefer to get changes in test results within the order of 30 minutes (or 3 minutes for certain types of changes), rather than 30 days!
What’s more, I don’t instruct clients to use directed or scripted imagery or self-talk. In fact, I usually have to teach them NOT to do so.
Basically, when they apply a technique and get no change in test response, I go back over it with them, to find out what they did and how they did it. And one of the most common ways (by far) in which they’ve deviated from my instructions are by making statements, directing their visualization, indulging in analytical and abstract thinking, or otherwise failing to engage the “near” system with sensory detail.
And as soon as I get them to correct this, we start getting results immediately.
Now, does that prove that you CAN’T get results through directed, argumentative, or repetitive thinking? No, because you can’t prove a negative.
However, please note that these are not people who disbelieve in self-talk, nor are they attempting to prove or disprove anything. Rather, they are simply not familiar with—or skilled in—a particular way of engaging their minds, and are just doing the same things they always do.
Which is, of course, why they get the same results they always do.
And it’s also why I have such a pet peeve about self-help and psych books that try to teach the Unteachable Excellence, without understanding that by default, people try to Guess The Teacher’s Password—that is, to somehow change things without ever actually doing anything different.
Practical psychology is still far too much alchemy, not enough chemistry. Rationalists must—and CAN—do much better than this.
I hadn’t thought about a normative aspect to the skeptics’ fear of ghosts, but after reading this post I acknowledge that there is one. I commit to fighting irrational fears from now on.
I read with interest all of the specific techniques proposed on this thread and welcome more. I’d be particularly interested if anyone had theories of or techniques against akrasia, the general inability of the mind to follow through on what it knows to be right.
I think there are a lot of techniques for aligning emotions with (deliberative) knowledge.
Self-talk—saying, repeatedly, either internally or out loud, the true state of affairs that you would like your emotions to align with.
Visualization—actively imagining “how the truth looks”.
Pretending—pretend to be the kind of person that you want to be.
My personal experience is that self-talk is only useful insofar as you’re using it to lead yourself to a sensory experience of some kind. For example, asking “What if [desired state of affairs] were true?” is far more useful than simply asserting it so. The former at least invites one to imagine something specific.
Repetition also isn’t as useful as most people seem to think. Your brain has little problem updating information immediately, if there’s sufficient emotion involved… and the “aha” of insight (i.e. reducing the modeling complexity required to explain your observations) counts as an emotion. If you have to repeat it over and over again—and it’s not a skill you’re practicing—you’re doing something wrong.
All of these terms—self-talk, visualization, and pretending—are also examples of Unteachable Excellence and Guessing The Teacher’s Password. You can equally use the term to describe something useful (like asking good questions) or something ridiculous (like affirmations). The specific way in which you talk, visualize, or pretend is of critical importance.
For example, if you simply visualize some scripted scenario, rather than engaging in inquiry with yourself, you are wasting your time. The “near” brain needs to generate the details, not the “far” brain, or else you don’t get the right memories in context.
I’ll admit to a bit of hand-waving on that last part—I know that when my clients visualize, self-talk, or pretend in “scripted” ways (driven by conscious, logical, and “far” thinking), my tests show no change in belief or behavior, and that when they simply ask what-if questions and observe their mind’s response, the tests show changes. My guess is that this has something to do with the “reconsolidation” theory of memory: that activating a memory is required in order to change it. But I’m more of a pragmatist than a theorist in this area.
My experience with self-talk is via Cognitive behavioral therapy, as described in “Feeling Good”. There are a lot of concrete and specific ways of adjusting one’s emotions to match one’s deliberative beliefs in that book.
“You can equally use the term to describe something useful or something ridiculous.” I agree completely. I think the success of religious memes has a lot to do with their systematic advocacy of self-talk, visualization and imitation of guru figures.
You say “When my clients visualize, self-talk in scripted ways, my tests show no change in belief or behavior.” I can easily imagine someone doing a brief experiment of self-talk without believing it can change them, and then demonstrating no change. However, I can also imagine Jesuits systematically visualizing the life of Jesus over a period of 30 days (with the goal of changing their emotions) succeeding at changing their emotions.
And when you imagine this, what concrete test are you imagining performing on the Jesuits before and after the 30 days’ visualization, in order to confirm that there was in fact behavioral change between the two points? ;-)
To be clear, I use tests of a person’s non-voluntary responses to imagined or recalled stimuli. I also prefer to get changes in test results within the order of 30 minutes (or 3 minutes for certain types of changes), rather than 30 days!
What’s more, I don’t instruct clients to use directed or scripted imagery or self-talk. In fact, I usually have to teach them NOT to do so.
Basically, when they apply a technique and get no change in test response, I go back over it with them, to find out what they did and how they did it. And one of the most common ways (by far) in which they’ve deviated from my instructions are by making statements, directing their visualization, indulging in analytical and abstract thinking, or otherwise failing to engage the “near” system with sensory detail.
And as soon as I get them to correct this, we start getting results immediately.
Now, does that prove that you CAN’T get results through directed, argumentative, or repetitive thinking? No, because you can’t prove a negative.
However, please note that these are not people who disbelieve in self-talk, nor are they attempting to prove or disprove anything. Rather, they are simply not familiar with—or skilled in—a particular way of engaging their minds, and are just doing the same things they always do.
Which is, of course, why they get the same results they always do.
And it’s also why I have such a pet peeve about self-help and psych books that try to teach the Unteachable Excellence, without understanding that by default, people try to Guess The Teacher’s Password—that is, to somehow change things without ever actually doing anything different.
Practical psychology is still far too much alchemy, not enough chemistry. Rationalists must—and CAN—do much better than this.
practice, practice, practice
Who you gonna call?