One thing that helped me with this from an intellectual point of view was realising that this problem centers around an unprovable proposition. The proposition? That I am not a moron.
The problem’s straightforward. Suppose I come up with an argument that purports to show that I’m not such a moron after all. Who’s going to evaluate whether the argument is valid or not? Well, if it’s not me, the moron—the idiot who doesn’t know how to get stuff right. What am I doing trusting him?
Suppose instead someone else comes along and reassures me that I’m not a moron. Well, that’s nice, but someone has to validate whether or not they mean what they say, or whether they have good reason to be right about that or not. Who’s going to do that? You’re right—it’s me, the moron who has no idea.
So logically I can reach no answer regardless of whether I come up with a reason, or someone else does. Hey, if I’m a moron, I’m going to be wrong about this, aren’t I?
Nowadays, when I see the moron argument, I recognise it and say to myself—yes, yes—the moron argument. I know I can’t logically solve that—it’s insoluble. And I stop trying to think about it.
This of course doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes do things that make me want the floor to swallow me up. Everybody does those things, and learning something when it happens is wise. But falling into the moron argument afterwards is—unhelpful—a known waste of CPU cycles better spent elsewhere.
There is an analogous situation that occurs with social status—perhaps I could call it the ‘loser’ argument. The same problem applies—once you wonder if you’re too much of a loser to know how much of a loser you are, you have a logically impossible problem to solve, and the only way to win that argument is to acknowledge that logic is powerless against it, smile and walk away.
I wouldn’t say so much that the problem is logically insoluble...it’s more a matter of negative biasing, where the very act of thinking about a negative-laden topic like “am I a moron?” will color all of your thoughts darker. Therefore it’s unlikely that you’ll actually be able to solve the problem through logic, since the more you ponder on it, the more your cognition will be unreliable.
If you can’t trust your evaluation of the moron argument, how can you trust your evaluation of the argument that your moron argument is logically insoluble; or, for that matter, any argument at all?
I agree that it would be better to realize the low utility in thinking about these types of arguments and file them away to a dusty box in a tiny little nook in the back of your mind. However, I wouldn’t go as far as dusting it off and smacking a “logically insoluble” tag on it; it just seems like an attempt to rationalize with a pseudo logical hack.
And I would consider a test of my “moron”-ness to be very useful if I didn’t deem the argument to be a useless waste of thought, just as any other indicator of new knowledge would be useful. If it turns out I’m a moron, then I’m a moron; wait a minute, now I’m even less of a moron because now I know more than before! But saying it’s impossible to know because logic is a little iffy.
Related:
Robert: You’re gonna be okay.
Catherine: I am?
Robert: Yes. I promise you. The simple fact that we can talk about this together is a good sign.
Catherine: A good sign?
Robert: Yeah.
Catherine: How could it be a good sign?
Robert: Because crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.
Catherine: They don’t?
Robert: No. They’ve got better things to do. Take it from me. A very good sign that you’re crazy is an inability to ask the question, “Am I crazy?”
I ask myself if I’m crazy all the time. This trait does not go away when I’m having actual serious impairment.
In a manic episode, the answer is “Ahahaha, I’m not crazy, I’m finally seeing everything clearly! It’s BEAUTIFUL”.
During a schizophrenic episode, the question usually doesn’t make any sense—“how can you even define crazy? I just say I’m crazy because that OTHER self disagrees with me. Well, what if NOW is when I’m seeing clearly? But what if she really IS my friend, and I’m just hallucinating that she’s trying to kill me? I don’t want to wake up and find out I killed my best friend in a fit of paranoid schizophrenia O.O”
Depressive episodes, the answer is “yep, I’m a horrible insane broken shell that can’t do anything right. Might as well give up. World would be better off without me.”
When I’m actually feeling sane, the answer is a nice, calm “of course I’m sane. I’m calm about the question and not attaching any particular importance to it”.
One can read a lot in to that last answer, vis-a-vis the above dialogue...
Apologies, I should have thought about the about possible interpretations of such a dialogue; I meant it more as a “feel good” kind of thing rather than a factual assessment about the nature of mentally unstable people. Thinking about it, “crazy” definitely does not map easily into “moron”, and my usage of the above dialogue was intended to convey the notion that logically thinking about whether or not you are a moron is a good sign that you are probably not a moron.
But I think your comment brings up another interesting point. Would it be right to say that your emotional states are changing your definition of “crazy”? That, when you are in a different mental state, “crazy” is referencing an entirely different object? That when you are asking the question “am I crazy” you are actually asking an entirely different question? I would think that if you keep entering these manic states of mind, your normal cached version of “crazy” would slowly be chipped away and eventually you wouldn’t even be able to access it anymore. Then you really have the inability to ask the question.
I’m not defending the use of the above dialogue though. It’s clear to me that it’s usefulness is outweighed by the possible negative interpretations.
“Would it be right to say that your emotional states are changing your definition of “crazy”?
No. Each emotional state has it’s own separate definition of “crazy”, which doesn’t seem very prone to change (i.e. much as calm-self would love to rewrite manic-self to view traffic as dangerous, my manic self still feels it is invincible)
However, I can pass along information and algorithms between selves. My calm self has an algorithm that says “If you are tempted to walk in to traffic for any reason, you are probably not sane.” My manic self can run this algorithm, and she will go “huh, calm self views this as a crazy idea, even though I am invincible. There’s a small chance calm self is right, so I’ll avoid traffic. Plus, it will make calm-self happier with me, and I like it when calm-self can relax and not try to kill me with drugs.”
One thing that helped me with this from an intellectual point of view was realising that this problem centers around an unprovable proposition. The proposition? That I am not a moron.
The problem’s straightforward. Suppose I come up with an argument that purports to show that I’m not such a moron after all. Who’s going to evaluate whether the argument is valid or not? Well, if it’s not me, the moron—the idiot who doesn’t know how to get stuff right. What am I doing trusting him?
Suppose instead someone else comes along and reassures me that I’m not a moron. Well, that’s nice, but someone has to validate whether or not they mean what they say, or whether they have good reason to be right about that or not. Who’s going to do that? You’re right—it’s me, the moron who has no idea.
So logically I can reach no answer regardless of whether I come up with a reason, or someone else does. Hey, if I’m a moron, I’m going to be wrong about this, aren’t I?
Nowadays, when I see the moron argument, I recognise it and say to myself—yes, yes—the moron argument. I know I can’t logically solve that—it’s insoluble. And I stop trying to think about it.
This of course doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes do things that make me want the floor to swallow me up. Everybody does those things, and learning something when it happens is wise. But falling into the moron argument afterwards is—unhelpful—a known waste of CPU cycles better spent elsewhere.
There is an analogous situation that occurs with social status—perhaps I could call it the ‘loser’ argument. The same problem applies—once you wonder if you’re too much of a loser to know how much of a loser you are, you have a logically impossible problem to solve, and the only way to win that argument is to acknowledge that logic is powerless against it, smile and walk away.
I wouldn’t say so much that the problem is logically insoluble...it’s more a matter of negative biasing, where the very act of thinking about a negative-laden topic like “am I a moron?” will color all of your thoughts darker. Therefore it’s unlikely that you’ll actually be able to solve the problem through logic, since the more you ponder on it, the more your cognition will be unreliable.
If you can’t trust your evaluation of the moron argument, how can you trust your evaluation of the argument that your moron argument is logically insoluble; or, for that matter, any argument at all?
I agree that it would be better to realize the low utility in thinking about these types of arguments and file them away to a dusty box in a tiny little nook in the back of your mind. However, I wouldn’t go as far as dusting it off and smacking a “logically insoluble” tag on it; it just seems like an attempt to rationalize with a pseudo logical hack.
And I would consider a test of my “moron”-ness to be very useful if I didn’t deem the argument to be a useless waste of thought, just as any other indicator of new knowledge would be useful. If it turns out I’m a moron, then I’m a moron; wait a minute, now I’m even less of a moron because now I know more than before! But saying it’s impossible to know because logic is a little iffy.
Related:
-- Proof (movie)
I ask myself if I’m crazy all the time. This trait does not go away when I’m having actual serious impairment.
In a manic episode, the answer is “Ahahaha, I’m not crazy, I’m finally seeing everything clearly! It’s BEAUTIFUL”.
During a schizophrenic episode, the question usually doesn’t make any sense—“how can you even define crazy? I just say I’m crazy because that OTHER self disagrees with me. Well, what if NOW is when I’m seeing clearly? But what if she really IS my friend, and I’m just hallucinating that she’s trying to kill me? I don’t want to wake up and find out I killed my best friend in a fit of paranoid schizophrenia O.O”
Depressive episodes, the answer is “yep, I’m a horrible insane broken shell that can’t do anything right. Might as well give up. World would be better off without me.”
When I’m actually feeling sane, the answer is a nice, calm “of course I’m sane. I’m calm about the question and not attaching any particular importance to it”.
One can read a lot in to that last answer, vis-a-vis the above dialogue...
Apologies, I should have thought about the about possible interpretations of such a dialogue; I meant it more as a “feel good” kind of thing rather than a factual assessment about the nature of mentally unstable people. Thinking about it, “crazy” definitely does not map easily into “moron”, and my usage of the above dialogue was intended to convey the notion that logically thinking about whether or not you are a moron is a good sign that you are probably not a moron.
But I think your comment brings up another interesting point. Would it be right to say that your emotional states are changing your definition of “crazy”? That, when you are in a different mental state, “crazy” is referencing an entirely different object? That when you are asking the question “am I crazy” you are actually asking an entirely different question? I would think that if you keep entering these manic states of mind, your normal cached version of “crazy” would slowly be chipped away and eventually you wouldn’t even be able to access it anymore. Then you really have the inability to ask the question.
I’m not defending the use of the above dialogue though. It’s clear to me that it’s usefulness is outweighed by the possible negative interpretations.
No. Each emotional state has it’s own separate definition of “crazy”, which doesn’t seem very prone to change (i.e. much as calm-self would love to rewrite manic-self to view traffic as dangerous, my manic self still feels it is invincible)
However, I can pass along information and algorithms between selves. My calm self has an algorithm that says “If you are tempted to walk in to traffic for any reason, you are probably not sane.” My manic self can run this algorithm, and she will go “huh, calm self views this as a crazy idea, even though I am invincible. There’s a small chance calm self is right, so I’ll avoid traffic. Plus, it will make calm-self happier with me, and I like it when calm-self can relax and not try to kill me with drugs.”