The fabrication of options is, I claim, one example of flinching. It’s one of the things we do, as humans, when we feel ourselves about to be forced into choosing an uncomfortable path. There’s a sense of “surely not” that sends our minds in any other available direction, and if we’re not careful—if we do not actively hold ourselves to a certain kind of stodgy actuarial insistence-on-clarity-and-coherence—we’ll more than likely latch onto a nearby pleasant fiction without ever noticing that it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
One of my rationalist vices is that I will, on reading a sentence like this, flinch away from it being true about me, and fabricate the option to decide that (starting from now) I will “simply choose not to flinch away” in those situations.
Now, I’m not saying it never works to just decide to do better, but it commonly at least requires both (a) noticing it and (b) having some local slack to process the flinch and then still move toward the thing.
I think a better default for me is to try to be conscious of the flinch. I can overcome it if I have the strength/slack in the moment. And if not, I will unfortunately just ride the flinch (as I have been doing, but formerly I may not have been aware of it).
One of my rationalist vices is that I will, on reading a sentence like this, flinch away from it being true about me, and fabricate the option to decide that (starting from now) I will “simply choose not to flinch away” in those situations.
Now, I’m not saying it never works to just decide to do better, but it commonly at least requires both (a) noticing it and (b) having some local slack to process the flinch and then still move toward the thing.
I think a better default for me is to try to be conscious of the flinch. I can overcome it if I have the strength/slack in the moment. And if not, I will unfortunately just ride the flinch (as I have been doing, but formerly I may not have been aware of it).