That’s sort of Welcome (Back) Post. My mistakes analysis. Or confession.
I probably solved a problem that iirc I had my whole life: being VERY upset by losing at all, like, school grades, losing games (even to AI) etc. By posting on LW I could ever get down votes. And did. But I was trying post still, I had ideas I wanted to publish.
And as a full surprise, reinforcement turned out to work such way, that if you overcome it in end-step of thought-action sequence, it will just strike your earlier steps. Eg I became less able to think about posting. And I didn’t noticed that before it was too late.
And I didn’t even asked about not downvoting me, because, obviously it will look like “can you vote me higher than other users unrelated to posts quality because of these fully trust based reasons how I suffer so much!”. And wouldn’t it be so wrong and selfish, when I so much liked using downvotes myself?
(of course, as I now understand after thinking about it, I could and should just write out these reasoning fully, maybe someone else had an obvious to him solution)
And so, in fact previous 1.5 years my brain avoided thinking about something that can lead to posting on LW, like having mathy thoughts, or opening the site.
And the problem could be solved if I just managed to not be upset because of downvotes. And yet, even though I acquired good enough general emotional control to fully turn off almost any emotion just few months after stopping posting, being upset by loses was very resistant to that. And I could not introspect why. And now it looks like I finally solved this my whole life problem.
Such happened iirc that when I was little kid, I heard a lot of speech like “boys should not be afraid of pain, should not cry about it”. But pain was just the worst thing in my utility function at all, and if somebody advices you into doing exactly reverse thing of your utility function, then it be good idea doing not by their advices, but doing exactly reverse thing of their advices. So I decided to frantically avoid ever doing anything remotely painful, remotely bad-feeling AT ALL.
And hence I could not use my emotional control to make it less painful because it could make higher a probability of happening painful-at-all thing.
Then I noticed that my intuitive expectations about “will I be upset by losing” changed and I immediately tried to get as much profit from this luck as I could. I several times applied emotional control, to be sure that I will not lose this opportunity.
And the problem… Was that I was not sure in my intuition. I needed some way to test it without additional negative reinforcement of important things. And desirable without any consequences at all. And there was such a way!
To explain, I wasn’t playing very much of games. Partially, because easy levels were too easy and in hard levels I could lose. But some time ago I was interested to see, how changed my skills of Scrabble, when now I have much higher vocabulary than me as a kid. I played in 1 lvl of AI. And it was incredibly easy. So I tried just 1 lvl higher. And completely losed. And in distinction with me as a kid I was not having tears, screaming, growling, waving hands, throwing things. Not even thinking enraged thoughts. But it didn’t matter really much, I just felt how my wish to ever play high levels of Scrabble vanishes to zero. And I couldn’t do anything with that.
And now I checked how much of that I will feel when losing? And… Immediately understood that I VASTLY overcorrected. Because I felt nothing at all, not even slightly.
So, I hope now I will be able post my ideas without such enormous psychological obstacles. Because in the last 1.5y I wasn’t trying to write my ideas or even think about it, and so had much more ideas than before. More than it is possible to write them, I just don’t know which ideas LW consider new and useful relatively to myself. I am going to try to write a mix of detailed myself-best, detailed LW-prediction-best, short namings of first 20 best, and probably something which I just like to write for positive reinforcement. And update my beliefs by reactions added to parts of my posts.
(a lot of things with this post seem very off, as on level of general narrative as on level of grammar. Maybe I lost any skill of writing anything except of maximally short notes to myself. Or… maybe I just became to much quibbling, 1.5y ago I wouldn’t be able to write whole post in non native language and notice it only after seeming a lot of offness. I will try to fix it tomorrow with fresh eyes, but post already now to avoid not moving forward because of too much perfecting things, especially because it is fast takes form)
Update: I am certainly lost some writing skills… Or, more precisely, I can’t at the same time use my old writing skills and successfully think new thoughts, they are too distant in mental space. That makes things harder, I am not sure what to do with that.
One of very important problems here is that my old wring skills are to tightly weaven as a habit. Do someone know solution for such problems?
Somehow I manage to be dismissing/condescending even to myself. Like “oh, this old just didn’t thought about writing his reasoning to LW”. When actually systematically it turns out that I or someone else thought, even tried, but. This. Thought. Had. Failed. To. Work.
That’s sort of Welcome (Back) Post. My mistakes analysis. Or confession.
I probably solved a problem that iirc I had my whole life: being VERY upset by losing at all, like, school grades, losing games (even to AI) etc. By posting on LW I could ever get down votes. And did. But I was trying post still, I had ideas I wanted to publish.
And as a full surprise, reinforcement turned out to work such way, that if you overcome it in end-step of thought-action sequence, it will just strike your earlier steps. Eg I became less able to think about posting. And I didn’t noticed that before it was too late.
And I didn’t even asked about not downvoting me, because, obviously it will look like “can you vote me higher than other users unrelated to posts quality because of these fully trust based reasons how I suffer so much!”. And wouldn’t it be so wrong and selfish, when I so much liked using downvotes myself?
(of course, as I now understand after thinking about it, I could and should just write out these reasoning fully, maybe someone else had an obvious to him solution)
And so, in fact previous 1.5 years my brain avoided thinking about something that can lead to posting on LW, like having mathy thoughts, or opening the site.
And the problem could be solved if I just managed to not be upset because of downvotes. And yet, even though I acquired good enough general emotional control to fully turn off almost any emotion just few months after stopping posting, being upset by loses was very resistant to that. And I could not introspect why. And now it looks like I finally solved this my whole life problem.
Such happened iirc that when I was little kid, I heard a lot of speech like “boys should not be afraid of pain, should not cry about it”. But pain was just the worst thing in my utility function at all, and if somebody advices you into doing exactly reverse thing of your utility function, then it be good idea doing not by their advices, but doing exactly reverse thing of their advices. So I decided to frantically avoid ever doing anything remotely painful, remotely bad-feeling AT ALL.
And hence I could not use my emotional control to make it less painful because it could make higher a probability of happening painful-at-all thing.
Then I noticed that my intuitive expectations about “will I be upset by losing” changed and I immediately tried to get as much profit from this luck as I could. I several times applied emotional control, to be sure that I will not lose this opportunity.
And the problem… Was that I was not sure in my intuition. I needed some way to test it without additional negative reinforcement of important things. And desirable without any consequences at all. And there was such a way!
To explain, I wasn’t playing very much of games. Partially, because easy levels were too easy and in hard levels I could lose. But some time ago I was interested to see, how changed my skills of Scrabble, when now I have much higher vocabulary than me as a kid. I played in 1 lvl of AI. And it was incredibly easy. So I tried just 1 lvl higher. And completely losed. And in distinction with me as a kid I was not having tears, screaming, growling, waving hands, throwing things. Not even thinking enraged thoughts. But it didn’t matter really much, I just felt how my wish to ever play high levels of Scrabble vanishes to zero. And I couldn’t do anything with that.
And now I checked how much of that I will feel when losing? And… Immediately understood that I VASTLY overcorrected. Because I felt nothing at all, not even slightly.
So, I hope now I will be able post my ideas without such enormous psychological obstacles. Because in the last 1.5y I wasn’t trying to write my ideas or even think about it, and so had much more ideas than before. More than it is possible to write them, I just don’t know which ideas LW consider new and useful relatively to myself. I am going to try to write a mix of detailed myself-best, detailed LW-prediction-best, short namings of first 20 best, and probably something which I just like to write for positive reinforcement. And update my beliefs by reactions added to parts of my posts.
(a lot of things with this post seem very off, as on level of general narrative as on level of grammar. Maybe I lost any skill of writing anything except of maximally short notes to myself. Or… maybe I just became to much quibbling, 1.5y ago I wouldn’t be able to write whole post in non native language and notice it only after seeming a lot of offness. I will try to fix it tomorrow with fresh eyes, but post already now to avoid not moving forward because of too much perfecting things, especially because it is fast takes form)
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” (Seneca)
Update: I am certainly lost some writing skills… Or, more precisely, I can’t at the same time use my old writing skills and successfully think new thoughts, they are too distant in mental space. That makes things harder, I am not sure what to do with that.
One of very important problems here is that my old wring skills are to tightly weaven as a habit. Do someone know solution for such problems?
Somehow I manage to be dismissing/condescending even to myself. Like “oh, this old just didn’t thought about writing his reasoning to LW”. When actually systematically it turns out that I or someone else thought, even tried, but. This. Thought. Had. Failed. To. Work.
I actually HAD wrote a post with a significant part of my reasoning: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=mv3YpuL6tDTtTF7Dv