I wonder if real people could become more luminous by occasionally narrating their thought processes from a third-person perspective, treating themselves like characters that they’re writing. If nothing else, it’ll be a cute gimmick for getting someone to examine their own motivations.
I’m going to try this later today, while exercising. We’ll see how this wild-ass idea fares. (I will define failure as not turning up anything surprising.)
I tried out my idea, and it worked. It wasn’t too spectacular, but it was well worth the effort.
I decided that, in order for this to be a proper test, I would look at something that I wasn’t really comfortable with: my shyness and difficulty in social situations. I figure that there had to be some obvious irrationality clunking around my skull there.
I started describing this guy (myself), and laying out the reasons for his social discomfort in a straightforward exposition dump. Several times, I had to pause and ask myself if the explanations actually made sense—was this true, or an incorrect rationalization by an unreliable narrator? The process was surprisingly adversarial!
I came to two surprising conclusions. First, the deeper cause of a lot of my problems is that I have difficulty quickly finding topics of common interest with most people in most situations, so conversations with strangers tend to end quickly and abruptly, which sucks. A previous thread had advice for improving this skill; I’ll see if I can find it, and give it a try.
Second, there’s an even deeper problem that underlies my shyness: I want to not be disliked by anyone, but that’s paralyzing and leads to crippling shyness. Far better to be more open with my personality, and accept that someone is probably going to be pissed off by any sufficiently cool person. I’m going to try letting my quirkiness out more, since some people seem to find it really charming, and I enjoy it.
Even though this method worked, it seemed pretty much equivalent to the introspection method where you explain something to an imaginary person, while listening to yourself carefully for anything that sounds like bullshit. I think that method is easier since it doesn’t require the third-person pronoun shift, which turned out to be superfluous.
Really, the most important things seem to be:
Come up with an explanation for something, and put it into words. Explain clearly, as if your listener doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
At all times, ask “Is that really true?” Are there any alternate hypotheses? Does it sound like a rationalization? Is it fallacious? Does it sound like motivated stopping? (That’s a really common one, I found.)
Be honest. The truth is valuable. You can do stuff with the truth. When you come across a surprising truth, figure out if it’s useful. It might be!
So, definitely a worthwhile exercise, but the third person narrative gimmick isn’t necessary.
I do something vaguely similar to this: a lot of my introspective thought takes the form of imagined dialogues with someone who I think would take the other side of the argument, or at the very least need convincing. For example, in a lot of my thinking about metaethics recently, (an imaginary construction of) Eliezer gets cast in the dissenting role. This seems to help me avoid arguments I can’t justify, though far from perfectly.
I wonder if real people could become more luminous by occasionally narrating their thought processes from a third-person perspective, treating themselves like characters that they’re writing. If nothing else, it’ll be a cute gimmick for getting someone to examine their own motivations.
I’m going to try this later today, while exercising. We’ll see how this wild-ass idea fares. (I will define failure as not turning up anything surprising.)
That could be interesting. Do report back.
I tried out my idea, and it worked. It wasn’t too spectacular, but it was well worth the effort.
I decided that, in order for this to be a proper test, I would look at something that I wasn’t really comfortable with: my shyness and difficulty in social situations. I figure that there had to be some obvious irrationality clunking around my skull there.
I started describing this guy (myself), and laying out the reasons for his social discomfort in a straightforward exposition dump. Several times, I had to pause and ask myself if the explanations actually made sense—was this true, or an incorrect rationalization by an unreliable narrator? The process was surprisingly adversarial!
I came to two surprising conclusions. First, the deeper cause of a lot of my problems is that I have difficulty quickly finding topics of common interest with most people in most situations, so conversations with strangers tend to end quickly and abruptly, which sucks. A previous thread had advice for improving this skill; I’ll see if I can find it, and give it a try.
Second, there’s an even deeper problem that underlies my shyness: I want to not be disliked by anyone, but that’s paralyzing and leads to crippling shyness. Far better to be more open with my personality, and accept that someone is probably going to be pissed off by any sufficiently cool person. I’m going to try letting my quirkiness out more, since some people seem to find it really charming, and I enjoy it.
Even though this method worked, it seemed pretty much equivalent to the introspection method where you explain something to an imaginary person, while listening to yourself carefully for anything that sounds like bullshit. I think that method is easier since it doesn’t require the third-person pronoun shift, which turned out to be superfluous.
Really, the most important things seem to be:
Come up with an explanation for something, and put it into words. Explain clearly, as if your listener doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
At all times, ask “Is that really true?” Are there any alternate hypotheses? Does it sound like a rationalization? Is it fallacious? Does it sound like motivated stopping? (That’s a really common one, I found.)
Be honest. The truth is valuable. You can do stuff with the truth. When you come across a surprising truth, figure out if it’s useful. It might be!
So, definitely a worthwhile exercise, but the third person narrative gimmick isn’t necessary.
I do something vaguely similar to this: a lot of my introspective thought takes the form of imagined dialogues with someone who I think would take the other side of the argument, or at the very least need convincing. For example, in a lot of my thinking about metaethics recently, (an imaginary construction of) Eliezer gets cast in the dissenting role. This seems to help me avoid arguments I can’t justify, though far from perfectly.
(I may have a metaethics post in the pipeline.)
Winston Churchill was said to occasionally narrate his life in the third person from the perspective of a future historical text.