Thanks! This was helpful analysis.
I suspect my slight trigger (1/10) set off other people’s triggers. And I’m more triggered now as a result (but still only like 3⁄10.)
I’d like to save this thread as an example of a broader pattern I think I see on LW, which makes having conversations here more unpleasant than is probably necessary? Not sure though.
I acknowledge that it’s likely somehow because of how I worded things in my original comment. I wish I knew how to fix it.
Yeah I’m not implying that System 2 is useless or irrelevant for actions. Just that it seems more indirect or secondary.
Also please note that overall I’m probably confused about something, as I mentioned. And my comments are not meant to open up conflict, but rather I’m requesting a clarification on this particular sentence and what frame / ontology it’s using:
If you’re experiencing “motivational issues”, then it stands to reason that it might be useful to keep an eye on which thoughts are leading to actions and which are not.
I would like to expand the words ‘thoughts’ and ‘useful’ here.
People seem to be responding to me as though I’m trying to start an argument, and this is really not what I’m going for. Sharing my POV is just to try to help close inferential gap in the right direction.
Hmmm. No.
Basically, as far as I know, System 1 is more or less directly responsible for all actions.
You can predict what actions a person will take BEFORE they are mentally conscious of it at all. You can do this by measuring galvanic skin response or watching their brain activity.
The mentally conscious part happens second.
But like, I’m guessing for some reason, what I’m saying here is already obvious, and Abram just means something else, and I’m trying to figure out what.
My inferential distance from this post is high, I think. So excuse if this question doesn’t even make sense.
If you’re experiencing “motivational issues”, then it stands to reason that it might be useful to keep an eye on which thoughts are leading to actions and which are not.
I think I don’t understand what you mean by ‘thoughts’ ?
I view ‘thoughts’ as not having very much to do with action in general. They’re just like… incidental post-hoc things. Why is it useful to track which thoughts lead to actions? /blink
I also liked reading the handwritten version.
Yeah, I think it’s more the latter.
I would classify situation 3 as a lack of the model-building skill proper, which includes having my models affect me on an alief level. Although introspection would help me notice what my aliefs are to begin with.
When I talk about “model-building skill” I think I mean three separate skills:
Skill A) Model-building skill proper
Skill B) Introspection skill
Skill C) Communication skill
There are probably a lot of people who are decent at model-building proper. (Situation #1)
I’m imagining genius-level programmers. But then when you try to get some insight into what their models actually are or why they do things one way vs another, it’s opaque. They don’t know how to explicate any of it. They get annoyed by having to try to verbalize their models or even know what they are—they’d rather get back to coding and are frustrated having to “waste time” convincing other people.
Then there are other people who might be decent at model-building and introspecting on their models, but when they try to communicate their models to you, it comes out as gibberish (at least to your ears). And asking them questions doesn’t seem to go anywhere. (Situation #2)
Then there’s the situation where people are really articulate and able to communicate very clear, explicit, verbal models—but when it comes to implementing those models on a somatic-emotional level, they run into trouble. But it sounds like they have the model-building skill because they can talk about their models and share genuine insights about them. (Situation #3)
An example is having a bunch of insightful theories about social dynamics, but when actually in a situation where they could put those theories into practice, there is some kind of block. The models are not acting like felt models.
...
I’ve been in Situation #3 and Situation #1 before.
Overcoming Situation #3 is a scary thing. Being able to see, make sense of, and articulate models (from afar) was a way of distancing myself from reality. It was a preemptive defense mechanism. It helped me feel superior / knowledgable / satisfied. And then I continued to sit and watch rather than participate, engage, run experiments, etc. Or I’d play with “toy models” like games or structured activities or imaginings or simulations.
To be fair to toy models, I learned quite a lot / built many useful models from playing games, so I don’t regret doing a lot of that. And, there’s also a lot to be gained from trial by fire, so to speak.
For Situation #1, the solution mostly came from learning to introspect properly and also learning to take myself seriously.
Once I honestly felt like I had meaningful things to share with other people, it became easier to bother trying. (It’s hard to do this if you’re surrounded by people who have high standards for “interesting” or “useful.” Being around people who were more appreciative helped me overcome some stuck beliefs around my personal worth.)
I also had a block around “convincing other people of anything.” So while I could voice models, I couldn’t use them to “convince people” to change anything about their lives or way of being. It made me a worse teacher and also meant my models always came across as “nice/cool but irrelevant.” And not in a way that was easy for anyone to detect properly, especially myself.
#trauma #therapy
The SNS is in control of fight or flight responses. Activation results in things like increased heart rate / blood pressure, dilated pupils, faster breathing, and slowed digestion.
The DVC plays a role in the freeze response that exists in many vertebrates. In vertebrates, the freeze response results in immobility. In humans, the freeze response is associated with de-activated language centers in the brain (based on MRI research on trauma flashbacks). From my own extrapolations, it also seems associated with dissociation / depersonalization (sometimes) and lessened ability to orient to one’s surroundings.
The dorsal branch of the vagus originates in the dorsal motor nucleus and is considered the phylogenetically older branch.[3] This branch is unmyelinated and exists in most vertebrates. This branch is also known as the “vegetative vagus” because it is associated with primal survival strategies of primitive vertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians.[3] Under great stress, these animals freeze when threatened, conserving their metabolic resources.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Polyvagal_theory
The vagus systems acts by inhibiting the SNS.
In other words, a traumatic incident involves “fully pushing the gas pedal while simultaneously fully pushing the brake.” On the one hand, the body is trying to engage fight or flight, but in cases where neither fighting nor fleeing feel like options, the body then tries to engage freeze.
So, according to The Body Keeps the Score, cortisol is a hormone that signals the body to STOP releasing stress hormones. In people with PTSD, cortisol levels are low. And stress hormones fail to return to baseline after the threat has passed, meaning they experience a prolonged stress response.
The concept of “learned helplessness” is very likely related to the experience of trauma. (Interestingly, the Wikipedia article doesn’t even mention the word “trauma.”)
From the “Early Key Experiments” section on the Learned Helplessness Wiki page:
American psychologist Martin Seligman initiated research on learned helplessness in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania as an extension of his interest in depression.[4][5] This research was later expanded through experiments by Seligman and others. One of the first was an experiment by Seligman & Maier: In Part 1 of this study, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put in a harnesses for a period of time and were later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of “yoked pairs”. Dogs in Group 2 were given electric shocks at random times, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. Each dog in Group 3 was paired with a Group 2 dog; whenever a Group 2 dog got a shock, its paired dog in Group 3 got a shock of the same intensity and duration, but its lever did not stop the shock. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. Thus, for Group 3 dogs, the shock was “inescapable”.
In Part 2 of the experiment the same three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus (a chamber containing two rectangular compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). All of the dogs could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low partition to the other side. The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned this task and escaped the shock. Most of the Group 3 dogs – which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks – simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.[4]
It seems very likely they ended up traumatizing the dogs in that experiment by caging them up and then electrocuting them. The dogs subsequently don’t “flee” even when the cage is open. They’ve ingrained their freeze response.
Similarly in humans, traumatized people become trapped within their own mental constraints when faced with a triggering situation. They rationalize why they can’t change things, but the rationalization is likely “after-the-fact”. They’re frozen on a nervous-system level (which happens first), and they’re justifying the freeze with stories (which happens after).
Not to say that the stories are irrelevant or don’t affect things. I think they do.
[ My use of the word “body” is a bit shifty here. I might mean something like System 1 (Kahneman) or Self 2 (Inner Game of Tennis) or whatever part of you stores “feeling beliefs” (Bio-Emotive) or “core beliefs / belief reports” (Connection Theory). When I say “body” in quotes, this is what I mean. Whatever I mean, it probably involves the limbic system. ]
I don’t fully understand what’s going on here, but here’s a couple super-bad made-up stories with a bunch of missing gears:
Story #1: The “body”, feeling trapped, keeps trying to relive the experience in an effort to “finally find some way out”. Similar to the function of dreaming, which is to try to “rehearse” some event but try out a bunch of variations quickly.
Often, reliving trauma doesn’t actually end up with a different outcome, however. In many cases, the traumatized person ends up reinforcing the original trauma narrative.
Somatic Experiencing is a therapy modality that tries to relive a trauma with a new narrative where the person is not helpless, and it does it by engaging the “body” (rather than the intellect).
Story #2: The “body” has a bunch of trapped “energy” from the original trauma, and the “energy” needs a way to release.
The person usually fails to find a way to release the energy without the help of therapy or ritual or some kind of processing technique.
The Bio-Emotive process releases “energy” in the form of sobbing and vocalizing. It engages the emotional system through simple language (“I feel sad and helpless”). It engages the meaning-making / narrative system through simple story (“He left me to die”). There can be a large, loud emotional and physical release from this process.
( Lots of approaches have been developed for dealing with trauma, but I’m mentioning two as direct examples of how my Stories might fit given current practices. )
---
I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’m about to give a talk on trauma, so I’ve been re-reading sections of Waking the Tiger and The Body Keeps the Score.
I highly recommend the latter book as a pretty comprehensive view of where we are on trauma research lately. The former book is by Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Experiencing therapy and figured out a lot of stuff through trial-and-error with his clients. His language is less “science-y sounding” or something, but it contains helpful exercises and the correct “mindset” for being with trauma.
This post is relevant to my post on Dependability.
I’m at MAPLE in order to acquire a certain level of integrity in myself.
The high-reaching goal is to acquire a level of integrity that isn’t much-influenced by short/medium-term incentives, such that I can trust myself to be in integrity even when I’m not in an environment that’s conducive for that.
But that’s probably a long way off, and in the meantime, I am just working on how to be the kind of person that can show up on time to things and say what needs to be said when it’s scary and take responsibility for my mistakes and stuff.
I thumbs-up anyone who attempts to become more in integrity over time! Seems super worthwhile.
I’m realizing that I need to make the following distinction here:
Village 1) There is a core of folks in the village that are doing a hard thing (Mission). and also their friends, family, and neighbors who support them and each other but are not directly involved in the Mission.
Village 2) There is a village with only ppl who are doing the direct Mission work. Other friends, family, etc. do not make their homes in the village.
I weakly think it’s possible for 1 to be good.
I think 2 runs into lots of problems and is what my original comment was speaking against.
[ comment copied from Facebook / I didn’t read the full article before making this comment ]
i am somewhat anti-”Mission-centered Village.”
i think entanglement between mission and livelihood already causes problems. (you start feeling that the mission is good b/c it feeds you, and that an attack on the mission is an attack on your ability to feed yourself / earn income)
entanglement between mission and family/home seems like it causes more of those problems. (you start feeling that if your home is threatened in any way, this is a threat to the mission, and if you feel that your mission is threatened, it is a threat to your home.)
avoiding mental / emotional entanglement in this way i think would require a very high bar: a mind well-trained in the art of { introspection / meditation / small-identity / surrender / relinquishment } or something in that area. i suspect <10 ppl in the community to meet that bar?
[ comment copied from Facebook / I didn’t read the full article before making this comment ]
agree with a lot of this, esp the part about not trying to welcome everyone / lower barrier to entry to the point that there’s no commitment involved
i think a successful village will require a fair amount of commitment and sacrifice, in terms of time, effort, opportunity cost, and probably money
if everyone is looking to maximize their own interests, while pursuing a village, i think this will drain resources to the point that nothing gets done or things fall apart. a weak structure will beget a fragile village. and i think a fragile village can easily be net harmful.
at the same time, it’s good to be considerate to people who can’t contribute a whole lot due to disability or financial insecurity.
Hmm I wonder if there’s something about meditation in a monastic setting where all the rules need to be strived to be followed that does something.
Because I’m pretty sure a number of the residents of the monastery here have become much more reliable after a year or two of being here.
It might be context-dependent too, but I seem to not be worried about that problem as much for me. I feel above-average at the generalization skill and think I can take some useful things out of a specific context into other contexts.
I don’t think I’ve properly conveyed what I mean by Dependability, judging by the totality of the comments. Or, maybe I’ve conveyed what I mean by Dependability, but I did not properly explain that I want to achieve it in a specific way. I’m looking to gain the skill through compassion and equanimity. A monastic lifestyle seems appropriate for this.
I also did not at all explain why I’m specifically disadvantaged in this area, compared to the average person. And I think that would bring clarity too, if I explained that.
I will try to explain where my disagreement is.
1. Concept space is huge. There are more concepts than there are words for concepts. (There are many possible frames from which to conceptualize a concept too, which continues to explode the number of ways to think about any given concept.)
2. Whenever I try to ‘coin’ a term, I’m not trying to redefine an old concept. I have a new concept, often belonging in a particular new frame. This new concept contains a lot of nuance and specificity, different from any old words or concepts. I want to relay MY concept, which contains and implies a bunch of models I have about the world. Old words would fail to capture any of this—and would also fail to properly imply that I want to relay something confusingly but meaningfully precise.
3. I’m not ‘making up’ these concepts from nothing. I’m not ‘thinking of ways to add complexity’ to concepts. My concepts are already that complex. I’m merely sharing a concept I already have, that is coming forth from my internal, implicit models—and I try to make them explicit so others can know what concepts I already implicitly, subconsciously use to conceptualize the world. And my concepts are unique because the set of models I have are different from yours. And when I feel I’ve got a concept that feels particularly important in some way, I want to share it.
4. I want to understand people’s true, implicit concepts—which are probably always full of nuance and implicit models. I am endlessly interested in people’s precise, unique concepts. It’s like getting a deep taste of someone’s worldview in a single bite-sized piece. I like getting tastes of people’s worldviews because everyone has a unique set of models and data, and that complexity is reflected in their concepts. Their concepts—which always start implicit and nonverbal, if they can learn to verbalize them and communicate them—are rich and layered. And I want them. (Also I think it is a very, very valuable skill to be able to explicate your implicit concepts and models. LessWrong seems like a good place to practice.)
5. “But what about building upon human knowledge, which requires creating a shared language? What about figuring out which concepts are best and building on those?” I agree this is a good goal to have. The platform of LessWrong is already built to prune concept space (with multiple ways for concepts to be promoted or demoted).
But I do think this goal is “at odds” with my goal of sharing my concepts, learning others’ concepts, and diving into the depths of concept space. What I want here is to be in the “whiteboarding” phase where lots of ideas and thoughts are allowed to surface, and maybe it’s their first time really seeing the light, but I get feedback, and other people have associated thoughts and share those. And it’s a generative sort of phase, rather than a pruning phase.
It seems plausible my posts should stay in my ‘blog’ and off the front page? I don’t fully understand the point of front page vs blog personally. But I’d be happy to keep my posts in the corner of “my blog” and do the ‘whiteboarding’ thing there.
If any of the mods want to discuss this dilemma with me (I’d prefer doing this offline), I’d be into getting more opinions on this.
There’s some overlap with conscientiousness, but dependability doesn’t include being organized, being efficient, caring about achievement or perfection, being hardworking, being careful, being thorough, or appearing competent.
Grit seems important for trying and follow-through in particular!
I guess I disagree :P
I see great need for some way to indicate “not-an-accident but also not necessarily conscious or endorsed.” And ideally the term doesn’t have a judgmental or accusatory connotation.
This seems pretty hard to do actually. Maybe an acronym?
Alice lied (NIANOA) to Bob about X.
Not Intentionally And Not On Accident