Today I observed a curious phenomenon. I was in the kitchen. I had covered more than a square meter of the kitchen table in bags of food.
Then somebody came in and said, “That is a lot of food”. My brain thought it needs to justify itself, and without any conscious deliberation I said “I went to the supermarket hungry, that is why I bought so much”. The curious thing is that is completely wrong. Maybe it actually was a factor, but I did not actually evaluate if that was true. Anecdotally this seems to be a thing that happens, so it is a very plausible, even probable explanation.
My epistemics response: . . . “Ahhhhh”. My statement was generated by an algorithm that optimized for what would be good to say taking into account only the social context. Trying to justify myself to that particular person. It was not generated by analyzing reality. And the worst thing is that I did this automatically, without thinking. And came close to not even noticing that this is going on.
New plan. Have an alarm-word that I can say out loud when this happens. This would then naturally lead to me reexplaining myself to the other person. Also, it would probably help with focusing on whatever caused the alert. It could help as a signal to yourself, that now it is time to investigate this, and it would also provide social justification to go on a brief sidetrack during a conversation. Maybe this won’t work but seems worth trying. I’d like to avoid this happening again. How about “Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”? If you want, let’s say it together ten times to better remember. Ideally visualizing yourself doing an epistemic misstep. Or even better, do an epistemic misstep (without forcing it too hard) and then catch yourself:
Epistemic Alert Beep Beep
Today I observed a curious phenomenon. I was in the kitchen. I had covered more than a square meter of the kitchen table in bags of food.
Then somebody came in and said, “That is a lot of food”. My brain thought it needs to justify itself, and without any conscious deliberation I said “I went to the supermarket hungry, that is why I bought so much”. The curious thing is that is completely wrong. Maybe it actually was a factor, but I did not actually evaluate if that was true. Anecdotally this seems to be a thing that happens, so it is a very plausible, even probable explanation.
My epistemics response: . . . “Ahhhhh”. My statement was generated by an algorithm that optimized for what would be good to say taking into account only the social context. Trying to justify myself to that particular person. It was not generated by analyzing reality. And the worst thing is that I did this automatically, without thinking. And came close to not even noticing that this is going on.
New plan. Have an alarm-word that I can say out loud when this happens. This would then naturally lead to me reexplaining myself to the other person. Also, it would probably help with focusing on whatever caused the alert. It could help as a signal to yourself, that now it is time to investigate this, and it would also provide social justification to go on a brief sidetrack during a conversation. Maybe this won’t work but seems worth trying. I’d like to avoid this happening again. How about “Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”? If you want, let’s say it together ten times to better remember. Ideally visualizing yourself doing an epistemic misstep. Or even better, do an epistemic misstep (without forcing it too hard) and then catch yourself:
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”
“Epistemic Alert Beep Beep”