It feels like you’re obsessed with the specific words I’ve used to express a line of introspection/deciding/planning, as if I’m going to verbally ask myself a question, and parts of me will react very superficially to the phrasing. I don’t think I need to worry about it, because when I think about something in depth, I really think about it. If I’m really thinking, then it doesn’t matter what words I use to describe the topic.
However, I am in general willing to experiment with priming tricks, because it’s true that I can’t afford to think deeply all the time. I haven’t found any such trick yet that I can definitely say works.
You quoted a phrase “I’m mostly limited …” from my claim that social constraints and programming matter as much as brain architecture, but didn’t respond to the substance. I’ll assume this means that you agree. Do you have any advice on exploiting those factors? What you’ve given here is based only on evopsych brain-architecture guesses (a “hardware advantage” reachable by well-phrased self questioning)?
It feels like you’re obsessed with the specific words I’ve used to express a line of introspection/deciding/planning, as if I’m going to verbally ask myself a question, and parts of me will react very superficially to the phrasing.
Not quite—I’m also saying that people’s choice of words is rarely random or superficial, and tends to reflect the deeper processes by which they are reasoning… and vice versa. (i.e., the choice of words tends to have non-random, non-superficial effects on the thinking process).
Note that how a question is phrased makes a big difference to survey results, so if you think this somehow doesn’t apply to you, then you are mistaken.
It only feels like such things don’t apply to ourselves, like the people in the “Mindless Eating” popcorn experiments who insist that the size of the popcorn container had nothing to do with how much they ate. They (and you) only think this because of the limited point of view from which the observation is made.
I haven’t found any such trick yet that I can definitely say works.
Of course—for the same reason that people don’t think the size of the container makes any difference to how much they eat. It’s easy to write off unconscious influences.
That being said, choice of questions makes a big difference to answers, but it’s not solely a matter of priming. After all, if you use the words “What do I want?” and go on internally translating that in the same way as you asked, “What will make me happy?”, then of course nothing will change!
So, it’s not merely the surface linguistics that matter, but the deep structure of how you ask yourself, and the kind of thinking you intend to apply. Based on the challenge you described, my guess is that the surface structure of your questions is in fact a reflection of how you’re doing the questioning… because for most people, most of the time, it is.
You quoted a phrase “I’m mostly limited …”
The reason I quoted “I’m mostly limited” is because I wanted to highlight that the thought process you appeared to be using was one in which you already assume you’re limited, before you even know what it is that you want! (It sounded to me as though you were implying that it doesn’t matter if you know what you want, because you’re not really going to get it anyway—and that wasn’t just from that one phrase; that was just the easiest one to highlight.)
This sort of assumption is not a trivial matter; it is inherent to how we limit ourselves. When we make an assumption, our brains do not challenge the assumption, they instead filter out disconfirming evidence. That applies even to things like thinking you’re not good at knowing what you want!
social constraints and programming matter as much as brain architecture,
Social constraints aren’t that important, since people with the appropriate programming can work around them. And choosing effective questions to ask yourself falls under the heading of “programming”, in the verb sense of the word.
Do you have any advice on exploiting those factors? What you’ve given here is based only on evopsych brain-architecture guesses (a “hardware advantage” reachable by well-phrased self questioning)?
I have tons of “programming” tricks, especially ones for removing social programming. Teaching them, however, is a non-trivial task, for reasons I’ve explained here before.
One of the key problems is that people confabulate things and then deny having done so. Alicorn’s notion of “luminosity” is closely akin to the required skill, but it is very easy for people to convince themselves they are doing it when they are actually not even close. What’s more, unless somebody is seriously motivated to learn, they won’t be able to pick it up from a few text comments.
(Contra to MoR!Harry’s statement that admitting you’re wrong is the hardest thing to learn, IMO the hardest thing to learn is to take seriously the idea that you don’t already know the answers to what’s going on in your head… on an emotional and experiential basis, rather than merely an intellectual abstraction that you don’ t really believe. Or, to put it another way, most people claim to “believe” the idea, while still anticipating as if they already know how things in their head work.)
Anyway, for that reason, I mostly don’t bother discussing such things on LW in the abstract, as it quickly leads to attempts to have an intellectual discussion about experiential phenomena: dancing about architecture, so to speak.
Instead, I usually try to limit myself to throwing out cryptic hints so that people with the necessary motivation and/or skill can reconstruct the bigger picture for themselves, a bit like Harry and the “42” envelope. ;-)
While it’s true that I can’t rule out things that I can’t detect, I can’t really believe in them, either.
I understand where you’re coming from. You’ve tried much harder than most people do to understand your own emotions and motivations, and you’re pretty sure you’ve actually done so. I agree that there are many people who think they have, but haven’t. Similarly, sometimes people think they’re really trying, but aren’t.
I’m impressed with how much you know about my thoughts :)
I won’t suggest that we’re fundamentally different in any way, but I do sometimes wonder if there are significant architectural emotion/motivation differences in “normal” people, other than the obvious (male/female).
The popcorn container example doesn’t surprise me or change my views in any way—but cool.
I feel like I’m pretty flexible in what I want—that is, I can ask what it is I currently want, but I also ask what I maybe should want, because I’ve had some success simply provisionally choosing to care more or less about particular things. I sometimes find out that I couldn’t actually maintain that level of (dis)interest, and I take this as evidence (not certainty; just some evidence) that such a (lack of) desire is a fixed part of my personality.
It feels like you’re obsessed with the specific words I’ve used to express a line of introspection/deciding/planning, as if I’m going to verbally ask myself a question, and parts of me will react very superficially to the phrasing. I don’t think I need to worry about it, because when I think about something in depth, I really think about it. If I’m really thinking, then it doesn’t matter what words I use to describe the topic.
However, I am in general willing to experiment with priming tricks, because it’s true that I can’t afford to think deeply all the time. I haven’t found any such trick yet that I can definitely say works.
You quoted a phrase “I’m mostly limited …” from my claim that social constraints and programming matter as much as brain architecture, but didn’t respond to the substance. I’ll assume this means that you agree. Do you have any advice on exploiting those factors? What you’ve given here is based only on evopsych brain-architecture guesses (a “hardware advantage” reachable by well-phrased self questioning)?
Not quite—I’m also saying that people’s choice of words is rarely random or superficial, and tends to reflect the deeper processes by which they are reasoning… and vice versa. (i.e., the choice of words tends to have non-random, non-superficial effects on the thinking process).
Note that how a question is phrased makes a big difference to survey results, so if you think this somehow doesn’t apply to you, then you are mistaken.
It only feels like such things don’t apply to ourselves, like the people in the “Mindless Eating” popcorn experiments who insist that the size of the popcorn container had nothing to do with how much they ate. They (and you) only think this because of the limited point of view from which the observation is made.
Of course—for the same reason that people don’t think the size of the container makes any difference to how much they eat. It’s easy to write off unconscious influences.
That being said, choice of questions makes a big difference to answers, but it’s not solely a matter of priming. After all, if you use the words “What do I want?” and go on internally translating that in the same way as you asked, “What will make me happy?”, then of course nothing will change!
So, it’s not merely the surface linguistics that matter, but the deep structure of how you ask yourself, and the kind of thinking you intend to apply. Based on the challenge you described, my guess is that the surface structure of your questions is in fact a reflection of how you’re doing the questioning… because for most people, most of the time, it is.
The reason I quoted “I’m mostly limited” is because I wanted to highlight that the thought process you appeared to be using was one in which you already assume you’re limited, before you even know what it is that you want! (It sounded to me as though you were implying that it doesn’t matter if you know what you want, because you’re not really going to get it anyway—and that wasn’t just from that one phrase; that was just the easiest one to highlight.)
This sort of assumption is not a trivial matter; it is inherent to how we limit ourselves. When we make an assumption, our brains do not challenge the assumption, they instead filter out disconfirming evidence. That applies even to things like thinking you’re not good at knowing what you want!
Social constraints aren’t that important, since people with the appropriate programming can work around them. And choosing effective questions to ask yourself falls under the heading of “programming”, in the verb sense of the word.
I have tons of “programming” tricks, especially ones for removing social programming. Teaching them, however, is a non-trivial task, for reasons I’ve explained here before.
One of the key problems is that people confabulate things and then deny having done so. Alicorn’s notion of “luminosity” is closely akin to the required skill, but it is very easy for people to convince themselves they are doing it when they are actually not even close. What’s more, unless somebody is seriously motivated to learn, they won’t be able to pick it up from a few text comments.
(Contra to MoR!Harry’s statement that admitting you’re wrong is the hardest thing to learn, IMO the hardest thing to learn is to take seriously the idea that you don’t already know the answers to what’s going on in your head… on an emotional and experiential basis, rather than merely an intellectual abstraction that you don’ t really believe. Or, to put it another way, most people claim to “believe” the idea, while still anticipating as if they already know how things in their head work.)
Anyway, for that reason, I mostly don’t bother discussing such things on LW in the abstract, as it quickly leads to attempts to have an intellectual discussion about experiential phenomena: dancing about architecture, so to speak.
Instead, I usually try to limit myself to throwing out cryptic hints so that people with the necessary motivation and/or skill can reconstruct the bigger picture for themselves, a bit like Harry and the “42” envelope. ;-)
While it’s true that I can’t rule out things that I can’t detect, I can’t really believe in them, either.
I understand where you’re coming from. You’ve tried much harder than most people do to understand your own emotions and motivations, and you’re pretty sure you’ve actually done so. I agree that there are many people who think they have, but haven’t. Similarly, sometimes people think they’re really trying, but aren’t.
I’m impressed with how much you know about my thoughts :)
I won’t suggest that we’re fundamentally different in any way, but I do sometimes wonder if there are significant architectural emotion/motivation differences in “normal” people, other than the obvious (male/female).
The popcorn container example doesn’t surprise me or change my views in any way—but cool.
I feel like I’m pretty flexible in what I want—that is, I can ask what it is I currently want, but I also ask what I maybe should want, because I’ve had some success simply provisionally choosing to care more or less about particular things. I sometimes find out that I couldn’t actually maintain that level of (dis)interest, and I take this as evidence (not certainty; just some evidence) that such a (lack of) desire is a fixed part of my personality.