I remember having full-blown conversations with people I’m close to in my head, but they feel more like a fear-driven response where I’m having to defend myself against them
I wouldn’t be surprised if this mode were the most frequent one. I remember more people mentioning dialogs like this than in the form of advisors. I also have memories close to this though the mental dialogues I went through were less wordy but more hypothetical arguments back and forth (I guess what Kaj called conceptese).
But it proves that your brain can do the emulation. If it works for conflict, it should also work for advice. Though, as you say, it may require practice.
If it helps, I’m 20 and have struggled with social interactions in the past, possibly I will just develop this skill over time.
I can relate. I struggled too and avoided social except with close friends. Only much later, around 40, when I hit limits of what I could achieve as a single software developer, did I practice it more. Of course, it’s more effort now, but on the other hand, I also have more mental tools that I can through at it. And more social capital to apply.
No, as I wrote elsewhere in this thread-forest, I don’t have much inner monologue, no imaginary friend, little inner conflict in general (which I attribute to a sane childhood), and I think mostly in concepts.
I would be surprised-but-not-shocked if you can’t make this work in a fundamental sense. Human variation is actually pretty wide (e.g. diachronics vs. episodics, some people having no inner monologue, synesthesia, some people having no visual imagery), so there are no doubt many thousands of people out in the world that just do not have this capacity, but an overwhelming majority of people should find this pretty easy on my models.
Which makes my first hypothesis “something about the way I’ve tried to explain this was clumsy, and I’ve given you a wrong impression, and you’ve correctly identified the-thing-you’re-imagining as not very workable but it’s not the thing I was hoping to convey.”
In particular, the words “predict” and “accuracy” from hypothesis 1 seem like they might indicate that I’ve nudged you in the wrong direction. There’s a quote I like a lot that goes something like “History deals with what happened. Fiction deals with what happens.”
So, in a story, “but it really happened that way once!” is not sufficient justification; stories have to pass muster as feeling plausible in a way that actual reality doesn’t.
Similarly, there’s a huge range of things a specific person might actually say, based on a truly staggering number of factors. The thing a shoulder advisor does is not “predict with accuracy” but rather “emulate with verisimilitude.” I don’t use my shoulder advisors to guess people’s exact reactions, so much as to remind myself of their typical response. You don’t have to know them deeply enough to know what they’d say, just to get a sense of “oh, they’d say something like this isn’t specific enough, I’ve got holes in my plan, blah blah blah,” and over time this simulation gets sharper and sharper and more specific (while still just being one possible example plucked out of a very wide space).
Hypothesis 2 would surprise me, but again, human variation. You do you, in the world where H2 holds. =P
As for hypothesis 3, I again think I must have just said things that led you down the wrong path. There’s a bit of effort in remembering to check with a shoulder advisor at all, at first—in having the mental discipline to bother to do the move. But if you’re finding it effortful in the moment—if the act of having a shoulder advisor in the room with you feels like something you’re having to try to do, or work at, then you’re either doing something very different from what I do or your mind is shaped very differently from most of those I’ve run into.
Which is possible! Would be surprising, but not shocking.
I think my advice would be to grab your most-likely-candidate for useful shoulder advisory, and have that person read this very comment I’ve written here. Like, imagine them reading these words, and see where they scoff or laugh or shake their head or furrow their brow or get really excited or whatever.
- I don’t care about anyone’s perspectives on my decisions enough to want to model them
Duncan:
Hypothesis 2 would surprise me, but again, human variation.
As anecdata: I can very much relate to Samuel’s point. It describes the younger me pretty well. It is only later that I came around to see this as useful.
This sounds like you use another way of modeling people. Can you share some ideas about how? It might be interesting to compare the differences.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this mode were the most frequent one. I remember more people mentioning dialogs like this than in the form of advisors. I also have memories close to this though the mental dialogues I went through were less wordy but more hypothetical arguments back and forth (I guess what Kaj called conceptese).
But it proves that your brain can do the emulation. If it works for conflict, it should also work for advice. Though, as you say, it may require practice.
I can relate. I struggled too and avoided social except with close friends. Only much later, around 40, when I hit limits of what I could achieve as a single software developer, did I practice it more. Of course, it’s more effort now, but on the other hand, I also have more mental tools that I can through at it. And more social capital to apply.
No, as I wrote elsewhere in this thread-forest, I don’t have much inner monologue, no imaginary friend, little inner conflict in general (which I attribute to a sane childhood), and I think mostly in concepts.
I would be surprised-but-not-shocked if you can’t make this work in a fundamental sense. Human variation is actually pretty wide (e.g. diachronics vs. episodics, some people having no inner monologue, synesthesia, some people having no visual imagery), so there are no doubt many thousands of people out in the world that just do not have this capacity, but an overwhelming majority of people should find this pretty easy on my models.
Which makes my first hypothesis “something about the way I’ve tried to explain this was clumsy, and I’ve given you a wrong impression, and you’ve correctly identified the-thing-you’re-imagining as not very workable but it’s not the thing I was hoping to convey.”
In particular, the words “predict” and “accuracy” from hypothesis 1 seem like they might indicate that I’ve nudged you in the wrong direction. There’s a quote I like a lot that goes something like “History deals with what happened. Fiction deals with what happens.”
So, in a story, “but it really happened that way once!” is not sufficient justification; stories have to pass muster as feeling plausible in a way that actual reality doesn’t.
Similarly, there’s a huge range of things a specific person might actually say, based on a truly staggering number of factors. The thing a shoulder advisor does is not “predict with accuracy” but rather “emulate with verisimilitude.” I don’t use my shoulder advisors to guess people’s exact reactions, so much as to remind myself of their typical response. You don’t have to know them deeply enough to know what they’d say, just to get a sense of “oh, they’d say something like this isn’t specific enough, I’ve got holes in my plan, blah blah blah,” and over time this simulation gets sharper and sharper and more specific (while still just being one possible example plucked out of a very wide space).
Hypothesis 2 would surprise me, but again, human variation. You do you, in the world where H2 holds. =P
As for hypothesis 3, I again think I must have just said things that led you down the wrong path. There’s a bit of effort in remembering to check with a shoulder advisor at all, at first—in having the mental discipline to bother to do the move. But if you’re finding it effortful in the moment—if the act of having a shoulder advisor in the room with you feels like something you’re having to try to do, or work at, then you’re either doing something very different from what I do or your mind is shaped very differently from most of those I’ve run into.
Which is possible! Would be surprising, but not shocking.
I think my advice would be to grab your most-likely-candidate for useful shoulder advisory, and have that person read this very comment I’ve written here. Like, imagine them reading these words, and see where they scoff or laugh or shake their head or furrow their brow or get really excited or whatever.
Samuel’s Hypothesis 2:
Duncan:
As anecdata: I can very much relate to Samuel’s point. It describes the younger me pretty well. It is only later that I came around to see this as useful.