Applying this to my own beliefs, I seem to be trapped in an affective death spiral around science and rationality. In fact, just as you described, this spiral has led me to seek out new opportunities to apply and engage with science and rationality, shaping not just my career but the entirety of my life in the process. I have a feeling most folks around here can relate to these statements.
So I wonder, are affective death spirals always a bad thing? More specifically, should they always be avoided? Do seemingly positive affective death spirals carry risk of negative externalities?
One place where my own obsession with science and rationality seems to get in the way of things is in highly emotional interactions with other people. Often, my attempts to apply science and rationality to statements made during a heated argument simply make matters worse. Same goes when consoling a friend or partner about something sad; few in such situations are actually interested in applying the scientific method.
Then again, I also used science and rationality to get out of this pattern. I noticed my default approach wasn’t working, came up with new approaches, and tested them in different situations as they arose. After evaluating the results, admittedly with little in the way of statistical analysis, I landed on a robust system for dealing with highly emotional interpersonal encounters. (The biggest hurdle has been actually remembering to use it rather than defaulting to what feels right according to the affective death spiral around science and rationality which rules my life.)
Edit: I continued onto the next article in this series. I now feel surprisingly prescient and a little silly.
Applying this to my own beliefs, I seem to be trapped in an affective death spiral around science and rationality. In fact, just as you described, this spiral has led me to seek out new opportunities to apply and engage with science and rationality, shaping not just my career but the entirety of my life in the process. I have a feeling most folks around here can relate to these statements.
So I wonder, are affective death spirals always a bad thing? More specifically, should they always be avoided? Do seemingly positive affective death spirals carry risk of negative externalities?
One place where my own obsession with science and rationality seems to get in the way of things is in highly emotional interactions with other people. Often, my attempts to apply science and rationality to statements made during a heated argument simply make matters worse. Same goes when consoling a friend or partner about something sad; few in such situations are actually interested in applying the scientific method.
Then again, I also used science and rationality to get out of this pattern. I noticed my default approach wasn’t working, came up with new approaches, and tested them in different situations as they arose. After evaluating the results, admittedly with little in the way of statistical analysis, I landed on a robust system for dealing with highly emotional interpersonal encounters. (The biggest hurdle has been actually remembering to use it rather than defaulting to what feels right according to the affective death spiral around science and rationality which rules my life.)
Edit: I continued onto the next article in this series. I now feel surprisingly prescient and a little silly.
I also found it a good practice to generate your own answers to how you would escape the happy death spiral, before reading the next article.
My answer:
Remember that powerful theories are the ones that eliminates many options, not ones that explains everything.
I think it is a reasonably good answer as it somewhat contains 3⁄5 of the points
Thinking about the specifics of the causal chain instead of the good or bad feelings;
Not rehearsing evidence; and
Not adding happiness from claims that “you can’t prove are wrong”;