Ideally it would communicate: “Lying to yourself will eventually screw you up worse than getting hurt by a truth,” instead of “learning new truths has no negative consequences.”
There is a subtle but important difference between “Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse” and “learning new truths has no negative consequences.” The former does not imply a negation of the latter; the Litany is simply saying that refusing to update your map because you are afraid of what you might find is silly, because what’s in the territory is already there whether you know it or not.
I get the point of the litany, but there’s a reason people go into denial about things. Yes, if your girlfriend actually hates you, you are going to need to face that reality and you might as well do it sooner. But owning up to it absolutely makes it worse in the near term.
But owning up to it absolutely makes it worse in the near term.
I believe I don’t experience this effect at all, and sometimes the opposite is true: it’s nice to finally notice a problem (related to myself or what I’m doing or what affects me) that I didn’t before.
I believe I don’t experience this effect at all, and sometimes the opposite is true: it’s nice to finally notice a problem (related to myself or what I’m doing or what affects me) that I didn’t before.
This sounds extremely plausible to me. While I suspect you’re further along this spectrum than most here, in general, people on Less Wrong are more likely to appreciate being able to solve a problem in this way.
This can make the Litany of Gendlin useful for us. But it makes it less useful as a tool to share with others. Especially if we are (as I strongly suspect) an outlier among humans in this regard.
(Meta Note: I just found myself editing the above paragraph to sound less like an attack, because normally I need to do that to avoid degenerating into flamewar. Originally it said something like “I think you’re at the extreme end of this spectrum, but people on Less Wrong in general tend to prefer criticism more than most.” Which was already a slightly toned down version of the fleeting thought that triggered the typing. I think even the fully uncensored version wasn’t actually wrong or mean, but through a text-only medium, most forum-goers I’ve interacted with would interpret it that way).
(By “us” I meant specifically me and wedrifid, since I’ve been rebuked for being insensitive sufficiently often to recognize this property in my own writing, and wedrifid seems to me an outlier in this regard as well. I actually delete some comments I write (usually before publishing) to correct this tendency, after I notice that there is no easy “civilized” way of expressing my concerns and the point isn’t sufficiently important, and downvote instead. Just today I published such a comment and then deleted it.)
Hadn’t noticed the tendency in wedrified, but I recognized what you’re talking about (hence the original ‘extreme end of the spectrum.’) I think Less Wrongians are still more likely to prefer criticism than the average person.
I’m not sure about “absolutely.” I’m often surprised by how much energy I end up spending on not-thinking about things I don’t want to face, and consequently how much better my life gets immediately upon giving up that not-thinking, completely independent of the long-term strategic benefits of thinking.
Owning up to the fact that your girlfriend actually hates you doesn’t make her hate you more.
Owning up to the fact would make you feel bad, and so would stubbing your toe.
Even here that wouldn’t be my anticipated experience. Owning up to it would entail recategorizing a whole bunch of experiences from “unexpected unpleasant actions by someone who loves me” to “some girl who hates me just being a bitch”. I can almost hear the gate to that emotional vulnerability slamming shut.
Evidence is a hard problem, especially about emotions, and there are people who want to believe the worst just as there are people who want to ignore the bad news.
Maybe your girlfriend hates you. Maybe she loves you some of the time, but not enough to take the ill effects of her bad temper seriously. The latter is a more complicated situation.
Maybe your girlfriend hates you. Maybe she loves you some of the time, but not enough to take the ill effects of her bad temper seriously. The latter is a more complicated situation.
More complicated for her at least—because in that case she’ll actually be sad when I dump her. I find it simplifies things greatly if I concern myself with actual relevant behavior and not speculative model’s of internal state.
There’s a lot of related scenarios. I’m sure for each one you can explain why it’s ultimately beneficial to have faced the Hard Truth, but that doesn’t change the fact that you will feel like crap for a while, and for most people “not feeling like crap” is a fairly strong component to their utility function.
This doesn’t unpack it enough for me. I think you’re just getting at the problems of bounded rationality—it’s really easy to claim that someone who refuses to believe the bad things about the world is happier. Scott Aaronson is pertinent.
There is a subtle but important difference between “Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse” and “learning new truths has no negative consequences.” The former does not imply a negation of the latter; the Litany is simply saying that refusing to update your map because you are afraid of what you might find is silly, because what’s in the territory is already there whether you know it or not.
I get the point of the litany, but there’s a reason people go into denial about things. Yes, if your girlfriend actually hates you, you are going to need to face that reality and you might as well do it sooner. But owning up to it absolutely makes it worse in the near term.
I believe I don’t experience this effect at all, and sometimes the opposite is true: it’s nice to finally notice a problem (related to myself or what I’m doing or what affects me) that I didn’t before.
Matches my experience.
Perhaps this property causes us in particular to be less hesitant to harshly criticize? This motivates collecting more data...
This sounds extremely plausible to me. While I suspect you’re further along this spectrum than most here, in general, people on Less Wrong are more likely to appreciate being able to solve a problem in this way.
This can make the Litany of Gendlin useful for us. But it makes it less useful as a tool to share with others. Especially if we are (as I strongly suspect) an outlier among humans in this regard.
(Meta Note: I just found myself editing the above paragraph to sound less like an attack, because normally I need to do that to avoid degenerating into flamewar. Originally it said something like “I think you’re at the extreme end of this spectrum, but people on Less Wrong in general tend to prefer criticism more than most.” Which was already a slightly toned down version of the fleeting thought that triggered the typing. I think even the fully uncensored version wasn’t actually wrong or mean, but through a text-only medium, most forum-goers I’ve interacted with would interpret it that way).
(By “us” I meant specifically me and wedrifid, since I’ve been rebuked for being insensitive sufficiently often to recognize this property in my own writing, and wedrifid seems to me an outlier in this regard as well. I actually delete some comments I write (usually before publishing) to correct this tendency, after I notice that there is no easy “civilized” way of expressing my concerns and the point isn’t sufficiently important, and downvote instead. Just today I published such a comment and then deleted it.)
Hadn’t noticed the tendency in wedrified, but I recognized what you’re talking about (hence the original ‘extreme end of the spectrum.’) I think Less Wrongians are still more likely to prefer criticism than the average person.
I’m not sure about “absolutely.” I’m often surprised by how much energy I end up spending on not-thinking about things I don’t want to face, and consequently how much better my life gets immediately upon giving up that not-thinking, completely independent of the long-term strategic benefits of thinking.
Fair statement. I think it depends a lot on how much evidence has accumulated in favor of the Hard Truth in question.
Owning up to the fact that your girlfriend actually hates you doesn’t make her hate you more.
Owning up to the fact would make you feel bad, and so would stubbing your toe.
Distinguish between the two levels: what the information means, and what it feels like from the inside to process the information.
Even here that wouldn’t be my anticipated experience. Owning up to it would entail recategorizing a whole bunch of experiences from “unexpected unpleasant actions by someone who loves me” to “some girl who hates me just being a bitch”. I can almost hear the gate to that emotional vulnerability slamming shut.
Evidence is a hard problem, especially about emotions, and there are people who want to believe the worst just as there are people who want to ignore the bad news.
Maybe your girlfriend hates you. Maybe she loves you some of the time, but not enough to take the ill effects of her bad temper seriously. The latter is a more complicated situation.
More complicated for her at least—because in that case she’ll actually be sad when I dump her. I find it simplifies things greatly if I concern myself with actual relevant behavior and not speculative model’s of internal state.
I think I understand how to dissolve this problem—could you describe what things in particular make it worse?
You feel like crap.
There’s a lot of related scenarios. I’m sure for each one you can explain why it’s ultimately beneficial to have faced the Hard Truth, but that doesn’t change the fact that you will feel like crap for a while, and for most people “not feeling like crap” is a fairly strong component to their utility function.
This doesn’t unpack it enough for me. I think you’re just getting at the problems of bounded rationality—it’s really easy to claim that someone who refuses to believe the bad things about the world is happier. Scott Aaronson is pertinent.