Jason Gross

• Jason Gross 22 Jul 2019 5:25 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rae­mon’s Short­form Feed

  I’m want­ing to la­bel these as (1) ὠ3 (smile); (2) ἶA (cookie); (3) ἱF (star)

  Dunno if this is use­ful at all

• Jason Gross 22 Jul 2019 5:20 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rae­mon’s Short­form Feed

  This has been true for years. At least six, I think? I think I started us­ing Google scholar around when I started my PhD, and I do not re­call a time when it did not link to pdfs.

• Jason Gross 22 Jul 2019 5:17 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rae­mon’s Short­form Feed

  I dunno how to think about small in­stances of willpower de­ple­tion, but burnout is a very real thing in my ex­pe­rience and shows up prior to any sort of con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing of it. (And push­ing through it works, but then re­sults in more ex­treme burn out af­ter.)

  Oh, wait, willpower de­ple­tion is a real thing in my ex­pe­rience: if I am sleep de­prived, I have to hit the “get out of bed” but­ton in my head harder/​more times be­fore I ac­tu­ally get out of bed. This is sep­a­rate from feel­ing sleepy (it is true even when I have trou­ble fal­ling back asleep). It might be me­di­ated by dis­trac­tion, but that seems like quib­bling over words.

  I think in gen­eral I tend to take out­side view on willpower. I no­tice how I tend to ac­com­plish things, and then try to ad­just in­cen­tive gra­di­ents so that I nat­u­rally do more of the things I want. As was said in some CFAR unit, IIRC, if my pro­cess in­volves rou­tinely us­ing willpower to ac­com­plish a par­tic­u­lar thing, I’ve already lost.

• Jason Gross 22 Jul 2019 5:11 UTC

  11 points

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rae­mon’s Short­form Feed

  Peo­ple who feel defen­sive have a harder time think­ing in truth­seek­ing mode rather than “keep my­self safe” mode. But, it also seems plau­si­bly-true that if you naively re­in­force feel­ings of defen­sive­ness they get stronger. i.e. if you make say­ing “I’m feel­ing defen­sive” a get out of jail free card, peo­ple will use it, in­ten­tion­ally or no

  Emo­tions are in­for­ma­tion. When I feel defen­sive, I’m defend­ing some­thing. The proper ques­tion, then, is “what is it that I’m defend­ing?” Per­haps it’s my sense of self-worth, or my right to ex­ist as a per­son, or my sta­tus, or my self-image as a good per­son. The fol­low-up is then “is there a way to pro­tect that and still seek the thing we’re af­ter?” “I’m feel­ing defen­sive” isn’t a “‘get out of jail free’ card”, it’s an in­vi­ta­tion to go meta be­fore con­tin­u­ing on the ob­ject level. (And if peo­ple use “I’m feel­ing defen­sive” to ac­com­plish this, that seems ba­si­cally fine? “Thank you for nam­ing your defen­sive­ness, I’m not in­ter­ested in look­ing at it right now and want to con­tinue on the ob­ject level if you’re will­ing to or else end the con­ver­sa­tion for now” is also a perfectly valid re­sponse to defen­sive­ness, in my world.)

• Jason Gross 26 May 2019 2:07 UTC

  5 points

  on: Micro feed­back loops and learning

  I imag­ine one thing that’s im­por­tant to learn­ing through this app, which I think may be un­der-em­pha­sised here, is that the feed­back al­lows for mind­ful play as a way of en­gag­ing. I imag­ine I can ap­proach the pretty graph with cu­ri­os­ity: “what does it look like if I do this? What about this?” I imag­ine that an app which re­placed the pretty graphs with just the words “GOOD” and “BAD” would nei­ther be as en­joy­able nor as effec­tive (though I have no data on this).

• Jason Gross 7 May 2018 20:44 UTC

  13 points

  on: Fuzzy Boundaries, Real Concepts

  Another counter-ex­am­ple for con­sent: be­ing on a crowded sub­way with no room to not touch peo­ple (if there’s some­one next to you who is un­com­fortable with the lack of space). I like your defi­ni­tion, though, and want to try to make a bet­ter one (and I ac­knowl­edge this is not the point of this post). My stab at a re­fine­ment of “con­sent” is “re­spect for an­other’s choices”, where “dis­re­spect” is “de­liber­ately(?) do­ing some­thing to un­der­mine”. I think this has room for things like pre­con­sent (you can choose to do some­thing you dis­pre­fer) and crowded sub­ways. It al­lows for pul­ling peo­ple out of the way of traf­fic (ei­ther they would choose to have you save their life, or you are know­ingly be­ing pa­ter­nal­is­tic and putting their life above their con­sent and choices).

• Jason Gross 17 Apr 2018 3:41 UTC

  3 points

  on: The In­tel­li­gent So­cial Web

  What is the in­ter­nal ex­pe­rience of play­ing the role? Where does it come from? Is there even a co­her­ent cat­e­gory of in­ter­nal ex­pe­rience that lines up with this, or is it a pat­tern that shows up only in ag­gre­gate?

  [The rest of this com­ment is mostly me mus­ing.] For ex­am­ple, when peo­ple in a room laugh or smile, I fre­quently find my­self laugh­ing or smil­ing with them. I have yet to find a con­sis­tent pre­cur­sor to this ac­tion; some­times it feels forced and a bit shaky, like I’m in­se­cure and fear a cer­tain im­pact or per­cep­tion of me. But of­ten it’s not that, and it seems to just be au­to­matic, in the way that yawns are con­ta­geous. It seems to me like creep­iness might work the same way; I see peo­ple sub­tly cringe, and I mimic that, and then when some­one men­tions that per­son, I sub­tly cringe, and the ex­pe­rience of cring­ing like that is the ex­pe­rience of hav­ing a felt sense that this per­son is creepy. I’m cu­ri­ous about other in­stances, and what the in­ter­nal ex­pe­rience is in those, and if there’s a pat­tern to them.

• Jason Gross 21 Feb 2018 9:06 UTC

  72 points

  on: Circling

  Be­cause I haven’t seen much in the way con­crete com­ments on ev­i­dence that cir­cling is real, I’m go­ing to share a slightly out­dated list of the con­crete things I’ve got­ten from prac­tic­ing cir­cling:
  - a sense of what bound­aries are, why they’re im­por­tant, and how to source them in­ter­nally
  - my rate of re­solv­ing emo­tion­ally-charged con­flict over text went from < 1% to ≈80%-90% in the first month or three of me start­ing cir­cling
  - a tool (“Cu­ri­os­ity”) for tak­ing any con­ver­sa­tion and mak­ing it gen­uinely in­ter­est­ing and likely deeper for me
  - con­fi­dence and abil­ity to con­nect more deeply with any­one who seems open to con­nect­ing more deeply with me
  - the su­per­power of be­ing able to de­scribe to other peo­ple what I imag­ine they feel in their bod­ies in cer­tain situ­a­tions, and be right, even when they couldn’t’ve gen­er­ated the de­scrip­tions
  - em­pa­thy of the “I’m with you in what you’re feel­ing” sort rather than the “I have a con­scious model of how you work and what’s go­ing on with you and can pre­dict what you’ll do” sort
  - a lan­guage for talk­ing about how I re­act in situ­a­tions on a re­la­tional level
  - a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what seems to be my deep­est fear (oth­ers go­ing away, and it be­ing my fault)
  - knowl­edge that I’m afraid of my own anger and that I deal with this by not trust­ing peo­ple in ways that al­low them to make me an­gry
  - an un­der­stand­ing of how ask­ing “are you okay with the ex­is­tence of my at­trac­tion to you?” dis­em­pow­ers me and gives an­other power over me they may not want; the abil­ity and pres­ence of mind to not do this any­more
  - the abil­ity to fa­cil­i­tate re­s­olu­tion to an emo­tional con­flict over text even when both I and the other party are trig­gered/​defen­sive/​in a big ex­pe­rience
  - un­der­stand­ing of what it feels like to “col­lapse”, and a vague sense of how to play with that edge
  - more fa­cil­ity with plac­ing my at­ten­tion where I choose
  - more re­spect for silence
  - a deep com­fort with pro­longed eye con­tact
  - knowl­edge that I seem to flinch a bit in­side most times that I talk about sex­u­al­ity or sex, es­pe­cially in re­gards to my­self
  - knowl­edge that I strug­gle most with the ques­tion “am I wel­come here?”
  - a the­ory of what makes peo­ple emo­tion­ally tired, which seems to res­onate with ev­ery­one I share it with
  - strong opinions on com­mu­ni­ca­tion
  - the abil­ity to gen­er­ate ≈non-vi­o­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the in­side
  - bet­ter in­tro­spec­tive ac­cess on an emo­tional level
  - new friends
  - abil­ity and com­fort with sit­ting with my own ex­pe­rience and emo­tions for longer
  - de­creas­ing the time from when I first in­ter­act with some­one to when in­ter­ac­tion with them blows up, if it’s go­ing to, I think be­cause I’m push­ing more of my edges and I see things more clearly and so all the knobs that I’m turn­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion I’m turn­ing *re­ally strongly* in the wrong di­rec­tion
  - maybe a tiny hint of how peo­ple re­late to this thing called “com­mu­nity”?
  - the abil­ity to listen to nu­ances in “no”s, and not au­to­mat­i­cally in­ter­pret “no” as “no, I don’t want to in­ter­act with you now or ever again”
  - in­creased fa­cil­ity in get­ting in touch with is own anger in a healthy way by ask­ing what it’s pro­tec­tive of
  - in­creased fa­cil­ity in en­gag­ing with oth­ers in their anger by seek­ing an un­der­stand­ing of what they’re stand­ing for
  - the ex­pe­rience of be­ing able to de­cide that I wanted to go to sleep, roughly on time, with­out fight­ing my­self, for the first time that I can re­call in my life
  

  Things that I’m cur­rently play­ing with in cir­cling, as of a cou­ple of months ago:
  - “am I wel­come here?”
  - “what if some­one goes away, and it’s my fault?”
  - What does it look like to find my­self at­trac­tive or im­por­tant, or to mat­ter to my­self?
  - What does it look like and feel like to be held emo­tion­ally?
  - What’s up for me around touch and phys­i­cal af­fec­tion?
  - Am I ter­rified of hav­ing power over peo­ple?
  - How can I be less care­ful, and more okay/​ac­cept­ing?
  - What does it look like to do things from a place of de­sire rather than a place of “should”?
  - What am I at­tached to and how does at­tach­ment get in the way of what I want?
  

  ~~~~
  

  I’ve some­times said that cir­cling seems to me like “metacog­ni­tive defen­sive driv­ing” (to ex­tend the metaphor of metacog­ni­tive blindspots and metacog­ni­tive mir­rors); there’s a way in which cir­cling seems to al­low my S1 to com­mu­ni­cate very di­rectly with an­other per­son’s S1, in situ­a­tions where our S2′s get tripped up and have trou­ble com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and in such a way that it seems to by­pass most is­sues of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and get di­rectly to the heart of the mat­ter. Even when I can’t see the ways that my cog­ni­tion is im­paired, cir­cling fre­quently lets me by­pass that or ad­dress it di­rectly.
  

  I also want to add an­other per­spec­tive on NVC/​ own­er­ship lan­guage. I like us­ing own­er­ship lan­guage in part be­cause it tends to trip me up in all the places where I’m try­ing to do some­thing other than com­mu­ni­ca­tion with my words, and thus it helps me to un­der­stand my­self bet­ter.