I agree with Blueberry. This reads like a reflective account of how I (and many others, I’d bet) have always learned and navigated the regularities in my life. Why would you have fused this kind of procedural knowledge with belief? Did you focus on it so hard that you forgot to think about truth? This is the part where I feel like I’m missing something. In my case, I developed efficient action systems in order to free up mental cycles, precisely so that I would have as many free cycles as possible to think about computer programming, reality, and truth.
Did you focus on it so hard that you forgot to think about truth?
No. The problem is that when I thought about truth an action popped out. It only mattered when a scenario called for The Truth. Then I entered the Matrix looking for actions and passwords relating to The Truth. The Truth was a valid relative statement with regards to a scenario or question. The idea that “The sky is blue” was true in the scenario of “Being asked for the color of the sky.”
This was abstracted to allow the color that I saw in the sky to apply to other objects I saw in life. I could look at the sky, see the color, associate the Action “Label the color blue” with the Situation “I need to label the color of the sky” and reuse the association for the Situation “I need to label the color of the ocean.”
This has nothing to do with Reality. If I grew up in a world where the sky was never visible I would still be happy as a clam calling the sky blue (or green) because this was the correct action. If you phrased the question in terms of a prediction (“What do you predict for the color of the sky?”) it would be internally translated into the Situation “I need a prediction for the color of the sky.” I would look up the right answer relative to your expectations and return the result. The answer would have nothing to do with me predicting the color of the sky. It had everything to do with my expectation of you predicting the color of the sky.
I don’t know. It is hard for me to remember the driving reasons why. I don’t think approval was really the target so much as low stress was. I would rather be left alone than praised a whole bunch.
“Achievement” really doesn’t seem to describe my younger self well either. “Achievement” is an action without a matching scenario. As a description, it would be too vague to be of much use. Specifically, the action “Achieve a goal” is impossible to perform without more information.
I agree with Blueberry. This reads like a reflective account of how I (and many others, I’d bet) have always learned and navigated the regularities in my life. Why would you have fused this kind of procedural knowledge with belief? Did you focus on it so hard that you forgot to think about truth? This is the part where I feel like I’m missing something. In my case, I developed efficient action systems in order to free up mental cycles, precisely so that I would have as many free cycles as possible to think about computer programming, reality, and truth.
No. The problem is that when I thought about truth an action popped out. It only mattered when a scenario called for The Truth. Then I entered the Matrix looking for actions and passwords relating to The Truth. The Truth was a valid relative statement with regards to a scenario or question. The idea that “The sky is blue” was true in the scenario of “Being asked for the color of the sky.”
This was abstracted to allow the color that I saw in the sky to apply to other objects I saw in life. I could look at the sky, see the color, associate the Action “Label the color blue” with the Situation “I need to label the color of the sky” and reuse the association for the Situation “I need to label the color of the ocean.”
This has nothing to do with Reality. If I grew up in a world where the sky was never visible I would still be happy as a clam calling the sky blue (or green) because this was the correct action. If you phrased the question in terms of a prediction (“What do you predict for the color of the sky?”) it would be internally translated into the Situation “I need a prediction for the color of the sky.” I would look up the right answer relative to your expectations and return the result. The answer would have nothing to do with me predicting the color of the sky. It had everything to do with my expectation of you predicting the color of the sky.
Would you say this behavior was primarily driven by other-approval-seeking (as opposed to achievement for achievement’s sake)?
I don’t know. It is hard for me to remember the driving reasons why. I don’t think approval was really the target so much as low stress was. I would rather be left alone than praised a whole bunch.
“Achievement” really doesn’t seem to describe my younger self well either. “Achievement” is an action without a matching scenario. As a description, it would be too vague to be of much use. Specifically, the action “Achieve a goal” is impossible to perform without more information.