I wanted to do the 5-second decomposition on what I think is one of the most important quality of a rationalist: s/he is able to say “oops!”, but I found that it’s probably a rationalist primitive. Anyway, here’s my attempt:
notice the feeling of being wrong, or of having something screwed up, etc
don’t deny it, stay with the feeling, let it be present in your mind
notice that you’re still alive, that just because you admit it, nothing changed in the world: you already screwed up, you already experienced the consequences of your failure
say oops!
get on with your life (correct the mistake / revise your belief / etc)
You’re right, they don’t even need to be strong emotions: like in the case of positive-affect induced biases building incrementally over time, as in the affective death spirals.
I wanted to do the 5-second decomposition on what I think is one of the most important quality of a rationalist: s/he is able to say “oops!”, but I found that it’s probably a rationalist primitive. Anyway, here’s my attempt:
notice the feeling of being wrong, or of having something screwed up, etc
don’t deny it, stay with the feeling, let it be present in your mind
notice that you’re still alive, that just because you admit it, nothing changed in the world: you already screwed up, you already experienced the consequences of your failure
say oops!
get on with your life (correct the mistake / revise your belief / etc)
It also seems to me that a general structure for the application of rationality follows a path like this:
notice a trigger: usually automatically activated bias has an unpleasant feeling attached to it
insert a space of rest so that the bias doesn’t get automatically triggered
execute instead the rational behaviour
I really like this breakdown. I do think the first item can be generalized:
since positive-affect feelings like righteousness are also useful hooks.
You’re right, they don’t even need to be strong emotions: like in the case of positive-affect induced biases building incrementally over time, as in the affective death spirals.