[I felt inclined to look for observations of this thing outside of the context of the pandemic.]
Some observations:
I experience this process (either in full or the initial stages of it) for example when asked about my work (as it relates to EA, x-risks, AI safety, rationality and the like), or when sharing ~unconventional plan (e.g. “I’ll just spend the next few months thinking about this”) when talking to e.g. old friends from when I was growing up, people in the public sphere like a dentist, physiotherapist etc. This used to be also somewhat the case with my family but I’ve made some conscious (and successful) effort to reduce it.
My default reaction is [exagerating a bit for the purpose of pulling out the main contures] to sort of duck; my brain kicks into a process that feels like “oh we need to fabricate a lie now, focus” (though, lying is a bit misleading—it’s more like “what are the fewest, least reveiling words I can say about this that will still be taken as a ‘sufficient’ answer”); my thinking feels restrained, quite the opposite of being able to think freely, clearly and calmly; often there is an experience (reminiscent) of something like shame ; also some feeling of helplessness, “I can’t explain myself” or “they won’t understand me”; sometimes the question feels a bit intrusive, like if they wanted to come in(to my mind?) and break things. (?)
Some reflections:
“Inferential distance and the cost of explaining”:
This is very viscerally salient to me in the moment when the “alien process” kicks in. I basically have the thought pattern of “They won’t understand what I’m talking about. Mhh I guess I could explain it to them? But that will be lengthy and effortful, and I don’t want to spend that effort.”
I think this pragmatic consideration is often legitimate. At the same time I also suspect that my mind often uses this as an excuse/cover-up for something else.
For example, I am on average much less reluctant to give answers to such questions in English compared to German or French. I think about my work in English, thus, explaining my beliefs in another language is extra costly because it requires lots of non-trivial translation. That said, speaking German or French is also correlated with being in specific environments, notably environments I grew up in and that trigger memories of older self-conceptions of mine, and where I generally feel more expectations from the society, or soemthing.
“Updating based on someone’s conclusions (including their observed behaviour) is often misleading (as opposed to updating on based one someone’s reasoning/map)”:
Based on the above, if I inner sim telling someone about my belief X that is, say, slightly outside of their overton window , I feel kinda doomy, like things will go wrong or at the very least it won’t be useful. So, it feels like I either want to get the chance to sit down with them for 2h+ or say as little as possible about my belief X.
I think it’s interesting to double click on what “things go wrong” means here. The two main things that come up are:
An epsitemic worry: they will objectively-speaking make a wrong update and walk away with more wrong rather than less wrong beliefs
A ~social worry: all they will update about is me being ~weird. A decent part of the worry here is something like: they will distance themselves from me because they will feel like they can’t talk to me/like we’re not talking the same language, a sense of isolation. Another part seems more extrem: They will think I’m crazy(?) (I sort of crinche at this one. I don’t really think they will think I’m crazy(?). Idk—there is something here, but I’m confused about what it is.)
[I felt inclined to look for observations of this thing outside of the context of the pandemic.]
Some observations:
I experience this process (either in full or the initial stages of it) for example when asked about my work (as it relates to EA, x-risks, AI safety, rationality and the like), or when sharing ~unconventional plan (e.g. “I’ll just spend the next few months thinking about this”) when talking to e.g. old friends from when I was growing up, people in the public sphere like a dentist, physiotherapist etc. This used to be also somewhat the case with my family but I’ve made some conscious (and successful) effort to reduce it.
My default reaction is [exagerating a bit for the purpose of pulling out the main contures] to sort of duck; my brain kicks into a process that feels like “oh we need to fabricate a lie now, focus” (though, lying is a bit misleading—it’s more like “what are the fewest, least reveiling words I can say about this that will still be taken as a ‘sufficient’ answer”); my thinking feels restrained, quite the opposite of being able to think freely, clearly and calmly; often there is an experience (reminiscent) of something like shame ; also some feeling of helplessness, “I can’t explain myself” or “they won’t understand me”; sometimes the question feels a bit intrusive, like if they wanted to come in(to my mind?) and break things. (?)
Some reflections:
“Inferential distance and the cost of explaining”:
This is very viscerally salient to me in the moment when the “alien process” kicks in. I basically have the thought pattern of “They won’t understand what I’m talking about. Mhh I guess I could explain it to them? But that will be lengthy and effortful, and I don’t want to spend that effort.”
I think this pragmatic consideration is often legitimate. At the same time I also suspect that my mind often uses this as an excuse/cover-up for something else.
For example, I am on average much less reluctant to give answers to such questions in English compared to German or French. I think about my work in English, thus, explaining my beliefs in another language is extra costly because it requires lots of non-trivial translation. That said, speaking German or French is also correlated with being in specific environments, notably environments I grew up in and that trigger memories of older self-conceptions of mine, and where I generally feel more expectations from the society, or soemthing.
“Updating based on someone’s conclusions (including their observed behaviour) is often misleading (as opposed to updating on based one someone’s reasoning/map)”:
Based on the above, if I inner sim telling someone about my belief X that is, say, slightly outside of their overton window , I feel kinda doomy, like things will go wrong or at the very least it won’t be useful. So, it feels like I either want to get the chance to sit down with them for 2h+ or say as little as possible about my belief X.
I think it’s interesting to double click on what “things go wrong” means here. The two main things that come up are:
An epsitemic worry: they will objectively-speaking make a wrong update and walk away with more wrong rather than less wrong beliefs
A ~social worry: all they will update about is me being ~weird. A decent part of the worry here is something like: they will distance themselves from me because they will feel like they can’t talk to me/like we’re not talking the same language, a sense of isolation. Another part seems more extrem: They will think I’m crazy(?) (I sort of crinche at this one. I don’t really think they will think I’m crazy(?). Idk—there is something here, but I’m confused about what it is.)