Why this works is actually more interesting, for me, than that it works. There seem to be 2 distinct use cases: signaling to others, and self-signaling (ie, identity forming).
When signaling to others, we might not want to fully identify with some tribe if we don’t fully agree with all the associations of the label. “American” for instance, is a dangling node, like “blegg” or “rube”. If you want to associate yourself with Bud Light, football, silicon valley, and bald eagles, that’s a great word to use to describe yourself. If not, then using an adjective like “weird” can specify that not all these necessarily apply.
However, we could take this a step further. If I call myself a “nerdy American”, then your brain jumps to all the associations the two words have in common, and lowers the ones that are unique to “American”. Perhaps the concept of “American ingenuity”, or “silicon valley” come to mind, or maybe just D&D. It’s not quite a boolean operation of the two words, but more of a Bayesian update strengthening some associations and weakening others.
But the really interesting thing is when we use this to shape identity. To my knowledge, all people form some sort of identity, largely by associating themselves with certain traits or groups of traits, just as we associate various clusters of traits with others. We also seem to distance our self-image from other things. (A skeptic, for example, may strongly distance themselves from anti-vaxers, for instance.) So, I don’t really see ChristianKl’s worry that “disassociation” might be damaging here. Dissociating from everything might be harmful, but these are really micro-dissociations, if they are dissociations at all. They can be used either to remove some associations, or add others, or do a mix of the two. Perhaps it would be useful to make a list of useful adjectives, for these various purposes.
I’m not even sure it’s psychologically possible to associate one’s self with everything, and not have any of these “micro-dissociations”. Perhaps this would lead to huge amounts of empathy for everyone, but at the very least we probably don’t want to identify with serial killers too strongly. Perhaps I have my biology wrong here, but getting a tiny bursts of neurotransmitters every time we think or hear a label is probably how our Systems 1′s actually work, and deliberately strengthening or weakening certain associations is probably a big part of the mechanics of how we train our System 1′s. I’m being highly speculative here though, so if anyone knows better than I do, I would appreciate a correction.
Why this works is actually more interesting, for me, than that it works. There seem to be 2 distinct use cases: signaling to others, and self-signaling (ie, identity forming).
When signaling to others, we might not want to fully identify with some tribe if we don’t fully agree with all the associations of the label. “American” for instance, is a dangling node, like “blegg” or “rube”. If you want to associate yourself with Bud Light, football, silicon valley, and bald eagles, that’s a great word to use to describe yourself. If not, then using an adjective like “weird” can specify that not all these necessarily apply.
However, we could take this a step further. If I call myself a “nerdy American”, then your brain jumps to all the associations the two words have in common, and lowers the ones that are unique to “American”. Perhaps the concept of “American ingenuity”, or “silicon valley” come to mind, or maybe just D&D. It’s not quite a boolean operation of the two words, but more of a Bayesian update strengthening some associations and weakening others.
But the really interesting thing is when we use this to shape identity. To my knowledge, all people form some sort of identity, largely by associating themselves with certain traits or groups of traits, just as we associate various clusters of traits with others. We also seem to distance our self-image from other things. (A skeptic, for example, may strongly distance themselves from anti-vaxers, for instance.) So, I don’t really see ChristianKl’s worry that “disassociation” might be damaging here. Dissociating from everything might be harmful, but these are really micro-dissociations, if they are dissociations at all. They can be used either to remove some associations, or add others, or do a mix of the two. Perhaps it would be useful to make a list of useful adjectives, for these various purposes.
I’m not even sure it’s psychologically possible to associate one’s self with everything, and not have any of these “micro-dissociations”. Perhaps this would lead to huge amounts of empathy for everyone, but at the very least we probably don’t want to identify with serial killers too strongly. Perhaps I have my biology wrong here, but getting a tiny bursts of neurotransmitters every time we think or hear a label is probably how our Systems 1′s actually work, and deliberately strengthening or weakening certain associations is probably a big part of the mechanics of how we train our System 1′s. I’m being highly speculative here though, so if anyone knows better than I do, I would appreciate a correction.