a golfer envisions and attempts to anticipate every shot as if it were going to be a hole-in-one, even though most of them will not be… but in the process, achieves a better result than if s/he anticipated performing an average shot… The compartmentalization that must occur for this to work is that the “far” mind must not be allowed to break the golfer’s concentration by pointing out that the envisioned shot is a lie, and that one should therefore not be feeling the associated feelings.
I think maybe the problem is that different neurological processes are being taken as the primary prototype of “compartmentalization” by Anna and yourself.
Performance enhancing direction of one’s attention so as not to be distracted in the N minutes prior to a critical performance seems much different to me than the way the same person might calculatingly speculate about their own performance three days in advance while placing a side bet on themselves.
Volitional control over the contents of one’s working memory, with a thoughtful eye to the harmonization of your performance, your moment-to-moment-mindstates, and your long-term-mind-structures (like skills and declarative knowledge and such) , seems like something that would help the golfer in both cases. In both cases there is some element of explicit calculating prediction (about the value of the bet or the golfing technique) that could be wrong, but whose rightness is likely to correlate with success in either the bet or the technique.
Part of the trick here seems to be that both the pro- and the anti-compartmentalization advice are abstract enough that both describe and might inspire good or bad behavior, and whether you think the advice is good or bad depends on which subsets of vaguely implied behavior are salient to you (based on skill estimates, typical situations, or whatever).
Rationalists, especially early on, still get hurt… they just shouldn’t get hurt twice in the same way if they’re “doing it right”.
Any mistake should make you double check both the theory and its interpretation. The core claim of advocates of rationality is simply that there is a “there” there, that’s worth pursuing… that seven “rational iterations” into a process, you’ll be in much better position than if you’d done ten things “at random” (two of which were basically repetitions of an earlier mistake).
In both cases there is some element of explicit calculating prediction (about the value of the bet or the golfing technique) that could be wrong, but whose rightness is likely to correlate with success in either the bet or the technique.
See Seligman’s optimism research. Optimists out-perform pessimists and realists in the long run, in any task that requires motivation to develop skill. This strongly implies that an epistemically accurate assessment of your ability is a handicap to actual performance in such areas.
These kinds of research can’t just be shrugged off with “seems like something that would help”, unless you want to drop epistemic rationality along with the instrumental. ;-)
I’m a fairly good calligrapher—the sort of good which comes from lots of attentive hours, though not focused experiments.
I’ve considered it a blessing that my ambition was always just a tiny bit ahead of what I was able to do. If I’d been able to see the difference between what I could do when I started and what I’m able to do now (let alone what people who are much better than I am are able to do), I think I would have given up. Admittedly, it’s a mixed blessing—it doesn’t encourage great ambition.
I hear about a lot of people who give up on making music because the difference between the sounds they can hear in their heads and the sounds they can produce at the beginning are simply too large.
In Effortless Mastery, Kenny Werner teaches thinking of every sound you make as the most beautiful sound, since he believes that the effort to sound good is a lot of what screws up musicians. I need to reread to see how he gets from there to directed practice, but he’s an excellent musician.
I’ve also gotten some good results on being able to filter out background noise by using “this is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard” rather than trying to make out particular voices in a noisy bar.
Steve Barnes recommends high goal-setting and a minute of meditation every three hours to lower anxiety enough to pursue the goals. It’s worked well for him and seems to work well for some people. I’ve developed a ugh field about my whole fucking life as a result of paying attention to his stuff, and am currently working on undoing it. Surprisingly, draining the certainty out of self-hatred has worked much better than trying to do anything about the hostility.
I’ve considered it a blessing that my ambition was always just a tiny bit ahead of what I was able to do. If I’d been able to see the difference between what I could do when I started and what I’m able to do now (let alone what people who are much better than I am are able to do), I think I would have given up. Admittedly, it’s a mixed blessing—it doesn’t encourage great ambition.
That reminds me of another way in which more epistemic accuracy isn’t always useful: projects that I never would have started/finished if I had realized in advance how much work they’d end up being. ;-)
I think maybe the problem is that different neurological processes are being taken as the primary prototype of “compartmentalization” by Anna and yourself.
Performance enhancing direction of one’s attention so as not to be distracted in the N minutes prior to a critical performance seems much different to me than the way the same person might calculatingly speculate about their own performance three days in advance while placing a side bet on themselves.
Volitional control over the contents of one’s working memory, with a thoughtful eye to the harmonization of your performance, your moment-to-moment-mindstates, and your long-term-mind-structures (like skills and declarative knowledge and such) , seems like something that would help the golfer in both cases. In both cases there is some element of explicit calculating prediction (about the value of the bet or the golfing technique) that could be wrong, but whose rightness is likely to correlate with success in either the bet or the technique.
Part of the trick here seems to be that both the pro- and the anti-compartmentalization advice are abstract enough that both describe and might inspire good or bad behavior, and whether you think the advice is good or bad depends on which subsets of vaguely implied behavior are salient to you (based on skill estimates, typical situations, or whatever).
Rationalists, especially early on, still get hurt… they just shouldn’t get hurt twice in the same way if they’re “doing it right”.
Any mistake should make you double check both the theory and its interpretation. The core claim of advocates of rationality is simply that there is a “there” there, that’s worth pursuing… that seven “rational iterations” into a process, you’ll be in much better position than if you’d done ten things “at random” (two of which were basically repetitions of an earlier mistake).
See Seligman’s optimism research. Optimists out-perform pessimists and realists in the long run, in any task that requires motivation to develop skill. This strongly implies that an epistemically accurate assessment of your ability is a handicap to actual performance in such areas.
These kinds of research can’t just be shrugged off with “seems like something that would help”, unless you want to drop epistemic rationality along with the instrumental. ;-)
I’m a fairly good calligrapher—the sort of good which comes from lots of attentive hours, though not focused experiments.
I’ve considered it a blessing that my ambition was always just a tiny bit ahead of what I was able to do. If I’d been able to see the difference between what I could do when I started and what I’m able to do now (let alone what people who are much better than I am are able to do), I think I would have given up. Admittedly, it’s a mixed blessing—it doesn’t encourage great ambition.
I hear about a lot of people who give up on making music because the difference between the sounds they can hear in their heads and the sounds they can produce at the beginning are simply too large.
In Effortless Mastery, Kenny Werner teaches thinking of every sound you make as the most beautiful sound, since he believes that the effort to sound good is a lot of what screws up musicians. I need to reread to see how he gets from there to directed practice, but he’s an excellent musician.
I’ve also gotten some good results on being able to filter out background noise by using “this is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard” rather than trying to make out particular voices in a noisy bar.
Steve Barnes recommends high goal-setting and a minute of meditation every three hours to lower anxiety enough to pursue the goals. It’s worked well for him and seems to work well for some people. I’ve developed a ugh field about my whole fucking life as a result of paying attention to his stuff, and am currently working on undoing it. Surprisingly, draining the certainty out of self-hatred has worked much better than trying to do anything about the hostility.
A quote about not going head-on against psychological defenses
That reminds me of another way in which more epistemic accuracy isn’t always useful: projects that I never would have started/finished if I had realized in advance how much work they’d end up being. ;-)