Something I struggle with in the adaptation-executor-vs-fitness-maximiser is not dismissing too much as just ‘misfiring adaptation’ and allowing that some of my intuitive behaviour is sensible. I’m particularly prone to doing this with productivity: “ah, a part of me that is fairly well described as being agent-y, is being stymied by a non-agenty part that just interacts with shiny things! I should make sure that in-so-far as I have shininess in my vicinity, it should mostly be attached to things the agenty part of me wants to interact with!”
I don’t know if that is something this sequence will cover, but I hope so!
The word “just” in “just interacts with shiny things” is giving your parts too little credit, I think. There are a lot of flavors of being attracted to shiny things and some of them look like genuinely poor impulse control but some of them look like trying to avoid feeling pain, or perhaps trying to avoid existing in some sense. Your description isn’t detailed enough for me to say more, though.
Clearly this wasn’t the best description, because the comment was supposed to not be giving the part in quotes much credit. So as you say, the word ‘just’ is needlessly dismissive, but I am dismissing the part of me that is so dismissive!
Some of the topics I was planning on will be related, though there might not be a direct commentary on it.
What are some specific things your paragraph in quotes refers to? I don’t see that problem description as fitting nicely into, ” not dismissing too much as just ‘misfiring adaptation’ and allowing that some of my intuitive behaviour is sensible ”, so an example would help.
You’re right, that isn’t very clear. By the way, the thought in this example is not that I definitely dismiss unfairly in this case, the idea is that I’m doing it in an unnuanced way that doesn’t take into account possible reasons the impulse can’t be ignored. The ‘silly shiny things’ attitude is not able to tease apart when my behaviour is sensible from when it’s not.
As a hopefully clearer example, say I’m trying to get some work done, but I’m just sending stupid messages and gifs to whatsapp groups instead. This could be a case where I should be getting the work done and should turn off notifications on my phone, but it could be an unresolved fear of the consequences of failure. It could also be that I’m exhausted and there’s no point working. It could even be that I feel isolated and need some interaction!
Does that make the case I’m talking about a bit clearer?
As a hopefully clearer example, say I’m trying to get some work done, but I’m just sending stupid messages and gifs to whatsapp groups instead. This could be a case where I should be getting the work done and should turn off notifications on my phone, but it could be an unresolved fear of the consequences of failure. It could also be that I’m exhausted and there’s no point working. It could even be that I feel isolated and need some interaction!
You might also think your work is stupid and pointless on top of all the other stuff, cf. the Procrastination Equation; that part’s important too, because you might also have narratives around the kind of work that you “should” be doing, underneath which are fears that if you don’t do the work you “should” be doing then something terrible will happen.
I think have a bug of this form, and it’s been an issue for me for a long time.
When it’s school break or a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I find that it’s peaceful for me to study mathematics because I feel like I’m not being forced to study certain things. But as soon as school starts, and I take a math class where the material starts to become unfamiliar to me , and there’s no motivation being provided for the material as to why we are doing what we we’re doing, it feels forced and so I become stymied by listening to music and browsing articles on psychology/cognitive science, reddit ,or lesswrong to figure out this burnout , and then bouncing back to thinking whether I should suppress my curiosity to do well in the class , or should I let my curiosity run free but in return not doing so great in the class.
Because if I don’t suppress my curiosity and hence flow with mathematics, then I feel like I’ll run the risk of diverging away from the course material, which in turn I’ll do badly on exams because I didn’t focus on the required topics enough.
I’ve taken some proof based courses like real analysis, so it’s not like I don’t know how to prove some things in a typical traditional math undergrad course . It’s just that I feel guilty not focusing on my school , so I retreat to listening to music or reading psychology or browsing lesswrong articles to escape from these negative feelings on whether I should focus exclusively on the math in the class or playing with math I find interesting but at the risk of performing poorly in my class. I know these two activities don’t have to be mutually exclusive: you can play with math you find interesting that’s been assigned by the professor. However, the math assigned by the professor might not be interesting sometimes at first, so I burnout from being bombarded by “should” statements.
Any input/advice/guidance from anyone here would be greatly appreciated. I’ve been having trouble fixing this bug alone.
My suggestion is that if it feels effortful to do well enough in the class to get the grade you want, then drop it. School is terrible. If you want to optimize for credentials then you can do it by taking the easiest classes that allow you to graduate in the major you want, and you can optimize for credentials completely separately from your actual learning.
Something I struggle with in the adaptation-executor-vs-fitness-maximiser is not dismissing too much as just ‘misfiring adaptation’ and allowing that some of my intuitive behaviour is sensible. I’m particularly prone to doing this with productivity: “ah, a part of me that is fairly well described as being agent-y, is being stymied by a non-agenty part that just interacts with shiny things! I should make sure that in-so-far as I have shininess in my vicinity, it should mostly be attached to things the agenty part of me wants to interact with!”
I don’t know if that is something this sequence will cover, but I hope so!
The word “just” in “just interacts with shiny things” is giving your parts too little credit, I think. There are a lot of flavors of being attracted to shiny things and some of them look like genuinely poor impulse control but some of them look like trying to avoid feeling pain, or perhaps trying to avoid existing in some sense. Your description isn’t detailed enough for me to say more, though.
Clearly this wasn’t the best description, because the comment was supposed to not be giving the part in quotes much credit. So as you say, the word ‘just’ is needlessly dismissive, but I am dismissing the part of me that is so dismissive!
(I added some more detail in another comment)
Some of the topics I was planning on will be related, though there might not be a direct commentary on it.
What are some specific things your paragraph in quotes refers to? I don’t see that problem description as fitting nicely into, ” not dismissing too much as just ‘misfiring adaptation’ and allowing that some of my intuitive behaviour is sensible ”, so an example would help.
You’re right, that isn’t very clear. By the way, the thought in this example is not that I definitely dismiss unfairly in this case, the idea is that I’m doing it in an unnuanced way that doesn’t take into account possible reasons the impulse can’t be ignored. The ‘silly shiny things’ attitude is not able to tease apart when my behaviour is sensible from when it’s not.
As a hopefully clearer example, say I’m trying to get some work done, but I’m just sending stupid messages and gifs to whatsapp groups instead. This could be a case where I should be getting the work done and should turn off notifications on my phone, but it could be an unresolved fear of the consequences of failure. It could also be that I’m exhausted and there’s no point working. It could even be that I feel isolated and need some interaction!
Does that make the case I’m talking about a bit clearer?
You might also think your work is stupid and pointless on top of all the other stuff, cf. the Procrastination Equation; that part’s important too, because you might also have narratives around the kind of work that you “should” be doing, underneath which are fears that if you don’t do the work you “should” be doing then something terrible will happen.
I think have a bug of this form, and it’s been an issue for me for a long time.
When it’s school break or a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I find that it’s peaceful for me to study mathematics because I feel like I’m not being forced to study certain things. But as soon as school starts, and I take a math class where the material starts to become unfamiliar to me , and there’s no motivation being provided for the material as to why we are doing what we we’re doing, it feels forced and so I become stymied by listening to music and browsing articles on psychology/cognitive science, reddit ,or lesswrong to figure out this burnout , and then bouncing back to thinking whether I should suppress my curiosity to do well in the class , or should I let my curiosity run free but in return not doing so great in the class.
Because if I don’t suppress my curiosity and hence flow with mathematics, then I feel like I’ll run the risk of diverging away from the course material, which in turn I’ll do badly on exams because I didn’t focus on the required topics enough.
I’ve taken some proof based courses like real analysis, so it’s not like I don’t know how to prove some things in a typical traditional math undergrad course . It’s just that I feel guilty not focusing on my school , so I retreat to listening to music or reading psychology or browsing lesswrong articles to escape from these negative feelings on whether I should focus exclusively on the math in the class or playing with math I find interesting but at the risk of performing poorly in my class. I know these two activities don’t have to be mutually exclusive: you can play with math you find interesting that’s been assigned by the professor. However, the math assigned by the professor might not be interesting sometimes at first, so I burnout from being bombarded by “should” statements.
Any input/advice/guidance from anyone here would be greatly appreciated. I’ve been having trouble fixing this bug alone.
My suggestion is that if it feels effortful to do well enough in the class to get the grade you want, then drop it. School is terrible. If you want to optimize for credentials then you can do it by taking the easiest classes that allow you to graduate in the major you want, and you can optimize for credentials completely separately from your actual learning.