I wonder which of these cases this comment of yours is:
consider “seeing someone get unexpectedly punched hard in the stomach”. That makes me cringe a bit, still, even as an adult.
One thing is, I think the brain invests like 10,000× more neurons into figuring out whether a thought is good vs bad (positive vs negative valence) as figuring out whether a thought is or is not a good time to cringe. So I think the valence calculation can capture subtleties and complexities that the simpler cringe calculation can’t. This especially includes things properly handling complex thoughts with subordinate clauses and so on. For example, in the thought “I’ll do X in order to avoid Y”, the more negative the valence of Y is, the more positive the valence of the whole thought is. So the hypothesis “our brains are unable to learn a strong valence-difference between two vaguely-related situations” is (even?) more implausible than the hypothesis “our brains are unable to learn a strong stomach-cringe-appropriateness-difference between two vaguely-related situations”.
Another thing is, I obviously do think there are specific evolved mechanisms at play here, even if I didn’t talk about them in this post.
Another thing is, occasionally lightly tensing my stomach, in situations where I don’t need to, just isn’t the kind of high-stakes mistake that warrants a strong update in any brain learning algorithm. Like, if some flash in the corner of your eye has a 2% chance of preceding getting hit in the stomach, it’s still the right move to cringe every time—I’m happy to trade 50 false positives where I tense my stomach unnecessarily, in exchange for 1 true positive where I protect myself from serious injury. So presumably the brain learning algorithm is tuned to update only very weakly on false positives. Now, I don’t normally see people get punched in the stomach, up close and personal. I can’t even remember the last time that happened. If I saw that every day, I might well get desensitized to it. I do seem to be pretty well desensitized to seeing people get punched on TV.
One thing is, I think the brain invests like 10,000× more neurons into figuring out whether a thought is good vs bad (positive vs negative valence) as figuring out whether a thought is or is not a good time to cringe. So I think the valence calculation can capture subtleties and complexities that the simpler cringe calculation can’t. This especially includes things properly handling complex thoughts with subordinate clauses and so on. For example, in the thought “I’ll do X in order to avoid Y”, the more negative the valence of Y is, the more positive the valence of the whole thought is. So the hypothesis “our brains are unable to learn a strong valence-difference between two vaguely-related situations” is (even?) more implausible than the hypothesis “our brains are unable to learn a strong stomach-cringe-appropriateness-difference between two vaguely-related situations”.
Another thing is, I obviously do think there are specific evolved mechanisms at play here, even if I didn’t talk about them in this post.
Another thing is, occasionally lightly tensing my stomach, in situations where I don’t need to, just isn’t the kind of high-stakes mistake that warrants a strong update in any brain learning algorithm. Like, if some flash in the corner of your eye has a 2% chance of preceding getting hit in the stomach, it’s still the right move to cringe every time—I’m happy to trade 50 false positives where I tense my stomach unnecessarily, in exchange for 1 true positive where I protect myself from serious injury. So presumably the brain learning algorithm is tuned to update only very weakly on false positives. Now, I don’t normally see people get punched in the stomach, up close and personal. I can’t even remember the last time that happened. If I saw that every day, I might well get desensitized to it. I do seem to be pretty well desensitized to seeing people get punched on TV.