Could you give two concrete examples, 1) of someone using this advice and 2) of the same initial person not using this advice, which demonstrates how the first person is better off? This post is very nice, but also very meta.
It’s hard to get super concrete since I’m sort of wildly theorizing about what happens downstream of people changing the way they conceive of themselves. But the first thing that I’m hoping falls out of this is being able to integrate the other end of the spectrum at all.
Consider e.g. marriage/handfasting/long-term romantic commitment, and for the sake of neatness let’s say we have a diachronic and an episodic who are in a relationship together.
In the version where they don’t receive this advice, or think that it’s stupid, or have some other block against integrating it, what I expect is something like a persistent communication mismatch where the diachronic partner is trying to build scaffolds and the episodic partner is trying to dismantle cages. The diachronic partner wants commitment, reliability, and predictability, and is trying to extend those things to the episodic partner in hopes of getting them back in return—their feelings are enduring and unchanging (or slowly changing), and they want reassurance that yes, here’s something we can build together.
Meanwhile, the episodic partner wants … permission to exist? Permission to grow and change and not be constrained by the version of who they used to be? And so they’re confused and dismayed by attempts to contractualize feelings, or make costly precommitments, and they’re scared about the looming sense that this is how it’ll be forever,my partner’s never going to evolve and I have to just decide whether this is good enough.
Whereas if both partners can receive this set of concepts, and make moves to integrate in the way I’m recommending, then I imagine the diachronic person sort of loosening up, and the episodic person sort of calming down, and both of them entering into more of a cooperative partnership, with the understanding that both of them are going to become different people over time, but that they want to experience that growth together, and support one another through it.
The idea here is that the diachronic person shifts the target of their love from “my partner now” to “the thing that caused my partner to grow into who they are now, and will also cause them to grow into something differently awesome in the future.” They repose their trust in the process rather than the product. And the episodic person shifts their understanding of the contract from something that will trap and constrain them to something that serves as a solid foundation upon which more can be built, or a home base from which adventures can be launched. They recognize the difference between a request to [never change and always feel the same feelings] and a request to [stay in contact while continuing to evolve].
And sure, that won’t solve everything, and for some partners that won’t be enough to bridge the gap. I can imagine, for instance, feeling so episodic that even being fallen in love with for my process of growth induces some panic and desire-to-escape, because what if I don’t feel like growing next year?
But I imagine it would help, at least.
Attempting a totally separate concrete example, let’s take two people (one diachronic, one episodic) who are both in their third year of a pre-med major in college, and are experiencing strong internal conflict and desire-to-quit.
The stereotypical diachronic just puts their head down and keeps their nose to the grindstone, because they made a commitment, dammit, and they’re the type of person who sees things through (straw Hufflepuff, maybe?). The stereotypical episodic just skips out and burns all their bridges, dropping the major and shifting into—I dunno—a coding bootcamp?
And maybe both of these strategies are ultimately the right move for those people, and there’s no problem. But if I were to try to loosen up the identity label, and get each of them feeling more capable of wearing the other’s hat …
I’d try to get the diachronic person to see that there’s a difference between a goal and the expression of that goal. That what they’d really committed to was something like “do well in school” or “finish what you start” or maybe “learn a skill that helps people,” and that there might well be other ways of achieving satisfaction on those axes that were less costly. I’d try to get them to see their actions as experiments in a bigger, broader picture, and show them that they could continue to maintain a consistent and non-hypocritical self-image by shifting to a different set of classes or changing their extracurriculars or letting off the pressure in some other way.
By the same token, I’d try to get the episodic person to focus, not on the knee-jerk desire to run, but on what’s causing it. To treat their deeper goalset as being relatively stable, and ask the question “what long-term steady desires are not being met? What important pieces of my utility function are being threatened?” I’d try to get them to see themselves as strategic rather than random, and to interpret their discomfort as a signal containing information that can be unpacked, rather than just a question that gets a “yes” or “no” answer.
This seems to belong to a family of personal narratives invented by people at CFAR (some combination of Andrew Critch and Valentine Smith?).
Here’s a post about a narrative that says that you’re immune to narratives.
There’s also the “Fully General Meta-Narrative” that says that you can get the benefits of any particular narrative without actually employing the narrative. (For example, if you’re tired, there’s probably a narrative that will give you a second wind. The Fully General Meta-Narrative says you can just get a second wind when you want to. I hope I’m remembering this correctly.)
In this language, you’re proposing a narrative that says that you can employ any object-level narrative you wish.
Oh, interesting. To the best of my knowledge, the invention of the terms diachronic and episodic has nothing at all to do with CFAR. Or are you pointing more at the “taking [some framework] as a given, try to do something useful through narrative manipulation” bit? I agree that that does seem to be pointing in the same basic direction, or to be based on similar assumptions, although I didn’t intend for my post to be making claims that are quite as strong or confident as the things you linked.
I remember at the start of each year of high-school having the experience of realising just how stupid and ignorant I had been the previous year. And each year, I was surprised to have the same experience. This revealed to me, I think, that I’m more episodic than diachronic in that I dissociate from my past selves.
I appreciate the advice here to have a more diachronous meta-personality. To implement this, I intend to double-down on keeping a journal. I’ve struggled with this habit before, but upon rereading journal entries from a year ago, I have received insights into how to improve my life in the present.
Sweet! This is presumptuous of me, but—based on my past experiences, I recommend solving the doubling-down with some kind of system or strategy rather than sheer willpower. Like putting the pen by your toothbrush so you remember before going to bed, or something like that.
Thanks for the tip. I am sensitive to the limits of my own willpower.
A strategy that was working for me was keeping my daily tasks/to-do lists and my journal in the same book. That way, I needed to check into my book in order to do my work, and would be able to intersperse journaling in between lists as the urge arose.
I am curious how you find this fits into immunity to change in the book “Right weight, Right mind”
I am definitely more episodic but I found that process seemed to tie episodic instances of running the process to diachronic permanence. Sort of a way of externally tying together the present (and future) to the past.
All I know of immunity to change is the techniquified version that people use as like a worksheet for behavior change. Would you be willing to elaborate? Particularly on “tie episodic instances … to diachronic permanence”?
Could you give two concrete examples, 1) of someone using this advice and 2) of the same initial person not using this advice, which demonstrates how the first person is better off? This post is very nice, but also very meta.
It’s hard to get super concrete since I’m sort of wildly theorizing about what happens downstream of people changing the way they conceive of themselves. But the first thing that I’m hoping falls out of this is being able to integrate the other end of the spectrum at all.
Consider e.g. marriage/handfasting/long-term romantic commitment, and for the sake of neatness let’s say we have a diachronic and an episodic who are in a relationship together.
In the version where they don’t receive this advice, or think that it’s stupid, or have some other block against integrating it, what I expect is something like a persistent communication mismatch where the diachronic partner is trying to build scaffolds and the episodic partner is trying to dismantle cages. The diachronic partner wants commitment, reliability, and predictability, and is trying to extend those things to the episodic partner in hopes of getting them back in return—their feelings are enduring and unchanging (or slowly changing), and they want reassurance that yes, here’s something we can build together.
Meanwhile, the episodic partner wants … permission to exist? Permission to grow and change and not be constrained by the version of who they used to be? And so they’re confused and dismayed by attempts to contractualize feelings, or make costly precommitments, and they’re scared about the looming sense that this is how it’ll be forever, my partner’s never going to evolve and I have to just decide whether this is good enough.
Whereas if both partners can receive this set of concepts, and make moves to integrate in the way I’m recommending, then I imagine the diachronic person sort of loosening up, and the episodic person sort of calming down, and both of them entering into more of a cooperative partnership, with the understanding that both of them are going to become different people over time, but that they want to experience that growth together, and support one another through it.
The idea here is that the diachronic person shifts the target of their love from “my partner now” to “the thing that caused my partner to grow into who they are now, and will also cause them to grow into something differently awesome in the future.” They repose their trust in the process rather than the product. And the episodic person shifts their understanding of the contract from something that will trap and constrain them to something that serves as a solid foundation upon which more can be built, or a home base from which adventures can be launched. They recognize the difference between a request to [never change and always feel the same feelings] and a request to [stay in contact while continuing to evolve].
And sure, that won’t solve everything, and for some partners that won’t be enough to bridge the gap. I can imagine, for instance, feeling so episodic that even being fallen in love with for my process of growth induces some panic and desire-to-escape, because what if I don’t feel like growing next year?
But I imagine it would help, at least.
Attempting a totally separate concrete example, let’s take two people (one diachronic, one episodic) who are both in their third year of a pre-med major in college, and are experiencing strong internal conflict and desire-to-quit.
The stereotypical diachronic just puts their head down and keeps their nose to the grindstone, because they made a commitment, dammit, and they’re the type of person who sees things through (straw Hufflepuff, maybe?). The stereotypical episodic just skips out and burns all their bridges, dropping the major and shifting into—I dunno—a coding bootcamp?
And maybe both of these strategies are ultimately the right move for those people, and there’s no problem. But if I were to try to loosen up the identity label, and get each of them feeling more capable of wearing the other’s hat …
I’d try to get the diachronic person to see that there’s a difference between a goal and the expression of that goal. That what they’d really committed to was something like “do well in school” or “finish what you start” or maybe “learn a skill that helps people,” and that there might well be other ways of achieving satisfaction on those axes that were less costly. I’d try to get them to see their actions as experiments in a bigger, broader picture, and show them that they could continue to maintain a consistent and non-hypocritical self-image by shifting to a different set of classes or changing their extracurriculars or letting off the pressure in some other way.
By the same token, I’d try to get the episodic person to focus, not on the knee-jerk desire to run, but on what’s causing it. To treat their deeper goalset as being relatively stable, and ask the question “what long-term steady desires are not being met? What important pieces of my utility function are being threatened?” I’d try to get them to see themselves as strategic rather than random, and to interpret their discomfort as a signal containing information that can be unpacked, rather than just a question that gets a “yes” or “no” answer.
Does that help?
That’s very helpful, thank you. I very much appreciate you taking the time to elaborate and explain your point to that extent.
This seems to belong to a family of personal narratives invented by people at CFAR (some combination of Andrew Critch and Valentine Smith?).
Here’s a post about a narrative that says that you’re immune to narratives.
There’s also the “Fully General Meta-Narrative” that says that you can get the benefits of any particular narrative without actually employing the narrative. (For example, if you’re tired, there’s probably a narrative that will give you a second wind. The Fully General Meta-Narrative says you can just get a second wind when you want to. I hope I’m remembering this correctly.)
In this language, you’re proposing a narrative that says that you can employ any object-level narrative you wish.
Could you explain or link to something about the “Fully General Meta-Narrative”?
Oh, interesting. To the best of my knowledge, the invention of the terms diachronic and episodic has nothing at all to do with CFAR. Or are you pointing more at the “taking [some framework] as a given, try to do something useful through narrative manipulation” bit? I agree that that does seem to be pointing in the same basic direction, or to be based on similar assumptions, although I didn’t intend for my post to be making claims that are quite as strong or confident as the things you linked.
I remember at the start of each year of high-school having the experience of realising just how stupid and ignorant I had been the previous year. And each year, I was surprised to have the same experience. This revealed to me, I think, that I’m more episodic than diachronic in that I dissociate from my past selves.
I appreciate the advice here to have a more diachronous meta-personality. To implement this, I intend to double-down on keeping a journal. I’ve struggled with this habit before, but upon rereading journal entries from a year ago, I have received insights into how to improve my life in the present.
Sweet! This is presumptuous of me, but—based on my past experiences, I recommend solving the doubling-down with some kind of system or strategy rather than sheer willpower. Like putting the pen by your toothbrush so you remember before going to bed, or something like that.
Thanks for the tip. I am sensitive to the limits of my own willpower.
A strategy that was working for me was keeping my daily tasks/to-do lists and my journal in the same book. That way, I needed to check into my book in order to do my work, and would be able to intersperse journaling in between lists as the urge arose.
I am curious how you find this fits into immunity to change in the book “Right weight, Right mind”
I am definitely more episodic but I found that process seemed to tie episodic instances of running the process to diachronic permanence. Sort of a way of externally tying together the present (and future) to the past.
All I know of immunity to change is the techniquified version that people use as like a worksheet for behavior change. Would you be willing to elaborate? Particularly on “tie episodic instances … to diachronic permanence”?
Strong empathy with:
I also described this feeling as “philosophies are sharp”. I hadn’t considered an oscillation model.
Updated more towards large unpleasant emotions can come from bad epistemics.
(This comment should be on another post; I don’t know how it got here.)