I’m looking forward to your post on reducing jealousy. I’ve been interested in polyamory for quite a while now, and I’m already quite convinced that it’s a good idea in theory (i.e. that if we could globally change human psychology such that we become more naturally inclined to polyamory, or at least more capable of it, the world would probably be happier overall; happier than if we globally changed human psychology such that we become more naturally inclined to real monogamy? I don’t know). But I’ve never actually had a chance to try being in a poly relationship and I’m not quite sure I’d actually succeed in being comfortable with it.
Edit: This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns, or at least unrecognized default behaviours, other than just going through your daily routine and making a point of frequently wondering why you’re doing the things you’re doing. (Though even that I don’t do enough.)
This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns, or at least unrecognized default behaviours,
Compare your beliefs and behaviors with those of people who are succeeding at things which you are not. (And which, presumably, most people in your culture also do not succeed at.)
For example, if you (and most people) aren’t wealthy, consider the beliefs and behaviors of those who are.
This doesn’t always give you a route to change, of course. I have noticed that most people who are standout successes in any sort of internet-marketed, information-products business (or at least, the ones I want to emulate) seem to personally (and quite sincerely) value various forms of philanthropy, and many of them claim it’s impossible to be really successful without it, despite the lack of any logical or direct connection between the practice of giving, and their personal getting.
This drove me crazy for years, both because the often-mystical justifications given simply made no sense to me, and because I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of personally wanting to give money or time away without a direct return.
However, I changed something else in my personality earlier this week—a particular incidence of learned helplessness—and afterward, charity suddenly made sense to me in a way that it simply never had before, and I actually found myself being happy about the idea of e.g. contributing to local libraries, and I actually gave some money (out of pocket and spur of the moment) to my regular hair stylist, upon hearing that she’d just been diagnosed with breast cancer and would be struggling financially in a few weeks, post-surgery.
And I felt good about it.
Anyway, this particular change makes me suspect that philanthropy is actually a shibboleth—while it is correlated with success, there is actually a separate trait driving both the charity and the success, and that it has something to do with lacking certain types of “victim” mindset (one of which I got rid of this week).
So I’m now curious whether I could actually refrain from charitable acts and donations and become more successful… even though my preference and active interest now, is to contribute to certain causes. (And not on a utilitarian basis—it’s strictly warm fuzzies—something that, AFAICR, I’ve never experienced before.)
But I’m not sure whether I want to make that particular sacrifice (holding off on the charity until “wealthy”) in the name of science or not, especially since there are so many other potentially confounding variables, and in any case I lack a true control.
Anyway… what was I saying? Oh yeah. Compare your beliefs and thought processes with those of people succeeding at whatever you want to do/be/have, to identify what “non-default” settings they’re using. Pay special attention to how they think, in the sense of types of processing steps and what emotional attitudes they seem to hold, rather than merely what they think, which often sounds like the default wisdom if the person has not, themselves, thought deeply about what they do differently.
IOW, it’s less about “belief” than about “process”. What do they do differently in their heads? That’s where the gold is.
I’ve assumed that part of charity is the feeling that you have more than you need, and this is related to not being panicky—it means a lower mental noise level.
I’ve assumed that part of charity is the feeling that you have more than you need,
I don’t know about that; it’s not like I’ve suddenly decided I have more than I need, and definitely not more than I want. I’m wary of that explanation, because that’s the cached thought that gets circulated around the subject, and it doesn’t actually seem to do anything more than be a stop sign for thinking.
Of course, it could simply be that before, I felt like there wasn’t really any chance that I could get what I want, and give things away. That sounds like a slightly more accurate description.
The thing that makes me question this reasoning, though, is that what I changed didn’t have anything to do with charity or how much I “had” in any explicit way whatsoever. It was simply giving up a pattern of helpless thinking, along the lines of being doomed no matter what I do.
I could just as easily argue that, well, if I’m doomed, then I should give to other people who aren’t. But it apparently didn’t work that way. So, I feel more confident saying that I really have no idea what the hell is going on in this area, than simply acceding to one of the many memes that circulate about it. I would rather experiment on a bunch of people first and see if I can make them change in the same way, before I claim to actually know anything about the process.
The trap that most self-help falls into is that when somebody identifies the last critical node to change in their own process, they go straight to the man-with-hammer mode, propounding that one change as the Most Important Thing, when in fact it might merely be the first step for someone who still has problems at other nodes in the process.
I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of personally wanting to give money or time away without a direct return. However, I changed something else in my personality earlier this week—a particular incidence of learned helplessness—and afterward, charity suddenly made sense to me in a way that it simply never had before
Can you elaborate on what you changed? I’d love to know how it made sense to you.
Pay special attention to how they think, in the sense of types of processing steps and what emotional attitudes they seem to hold
I wish I could do this more, but how do you get accurate information on how people think? Even if they self-report honestly, without censoring themselves, they may not know exactly what they’re doing and they may be biased in their interpretations.
Can you elaborate on what you changed? I’d love to know how it made sense to you.
What I gave up on was a pattern of catastrophizing—treating setbacks as huge terrible burdens—and feeling out of control. It’s hard to describe, really, because it is now in the “doesn’t make any sense to me” category. ;-) It was tied in with family loyalty—i.e., that if I actually took personal responsibility and didn’t consider setbacks permanent, then I would be being disloyal to my father and mother (who each had their own forms of this behavior) and that I would lose my love & connection from them. (Despite them both being long-dead.)
Upon letting go of this thought process, I found that various things in my behavior changed as a side effect. For example, I realized that I could actually make all my decisions not on the basis of their likely negative impacts, but instead on their positive impacts.
Hm, come to think of it, the realizations about charity didn’t happen until the day after that subsequent realization, so it’s very possible that it’s the real key factor. Making a decision about charity under a negative decision regime is an obvious no-go—the detriments are obvious, compared to the complete lack of apparent detriments to not giving, absent special circumstances. OTOH, under a benefit-oriented decision regime, there are warm-fuzzy benefits to be had, and less obvious benefit to hoarding.
Previously, it had never occurred to me to think of charity in terms of warm fuzzies in the first place, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have allowed it to be the basis of an actual decision to act. I just happened to be thinking at one point about going to the library, and I happened to remember what some of my mentors had said about giving was, “give to your source of spiritual renewal”, and it occurred to me that of all the things I could think of, libraries would have to qualify as a lifelong source of “spiritual” renewal for me.
And then I went, “wow, I could actually do that… I think I would actually dig hanging out with Friends of the Library, getting involved, donating money...” And I felt a warm-fuzzy of being a part of library-ness, and a sense of ownership—like, I would be able to walk into a library and feel like I owned it, kind of. Very awesome.
No wonder charitable campaigns based on ownership (e.g. of buildings) and participation (e.g. we’ll send you pictures and letters of “your” child) are so successful—it appears that some of the emotional circuits for giving are wired here.
Anyway… now that I’m thinking about it in this way, it seems like the critical factor is making decisions based on the benefits rather than the detriments of the options, and that seems likely something that would influence wealth acquisition and entrepreneurial behavior as well. It’s likely that the specific thing I eliminated (the family loyalty to helplessness) was simply something that kept me from routinely making decisions on a benefit-oriented basis. (Because to do such, requires a non-victim outlook.)
All that having been said, I still would prefer to do some experiments, but now at least I have a much more specific hypothesis to test.
I wish I could do this more, but how do you get accurate information on how people think? Even if they self-report honestly, without censoring themselves, they may not know exactly what they’re doing and they may be biased in their interpretations.
You have to listen to them in the process of thinking, and especially pay attention to how they correct the thinking of others.
These are both things that are best done live, or by observing recordings of them interacting with or coaching other people. A speech or talk or book won’t tell you much unless you can read between the lines of a story with enough information.
For example, before I started making lots of self-help products, I had a belief that making a product was a hard and complicated thing that had to be done just so. This, even after I heard Matt Furey talk a lot about how easy it was. However, on a teleseminar where he was giving a talk, he started on a side story about how he was going up to Missouri to see this eye doctor, and while there he was going to stop at this other guy’s martial arts studio and give a class, and the guy was going to charge people a bunch to come, and give Matt some of the money, but maybe while he was there he would film it, and charge people to see it live over the internet, and sell the DVDs later… and I just had an epiphany.
That epiphany was, “I’m making this way too hard.”
So, Matt saying over and over again that “product creation is easy” and “making money is easy” did little to change my thinking. Sure, now, years later, when I hear somebody successful saying something I don’t believe or agree with, I pay close attention and I think hard about it—which is why that “give to your source of spiritual renewal” was something that had been on my mind for a long time.
But even so, the example or experience (even vicarious) of how your model thinks is much more powerful than the mere description of it. The thing that impressed me in Matt’s story was not that he was doing all those things, but that he was doing them on the spur of the moment—it was simply, “well, I’m going to be in town, so I thought maybe I’d do this”. It was the first time I’d realized how easy it actually could be to make products, and money.
Shortly thereafter, I went out and made my first audio product, and netted about $7K in the next 3 months from it. That experience got me comfortable with the idea of being able to produce monthly workshops, recordings, etc., and ultimately let me quit my day job.
My financial results plateaued, however, and I have been looking for the next mental breakthrough of that variety. Many of my mentors have suggested that each new order of magnitude in financial success requires a different mental adjustment. The good news, I suppose, is that the benefits of each shift expand polynomially. (Which I think may be the word people really mean when they say “exponentially”. ;-) )
Anyway… now that I’m thinking about it in this way, it seems like the critical factor is making decisions based on the benefits rather than the detriments of the options, and that seems likely something that would influence wealth acquisition and entrepreneurial behavior as well. It’s likely that the specific thing I eliminated (the family loyalty to helplessness) was simply something that kept me from routinely making decisions on a benefit-oriented basis. (Because to do such, requires a non-victim outlook.)
That reminds me a lot of the difference between positive motivation and negative motivation… you’re focusing on what you want to get, rather than what you want to avoid.
how do you get accurate information on how people think?
Some people, though, are VERY open about their thought process & beliefs, such as the Buffett & Munger duo; also Winston Churchill—a lot of what he wrote about includes himself as a player on the game board. These people are pretty open and honest, and there are others like them.
If whoever you’re trying to learn from is highly private or secretive (Steve Jobs comes to mind) you’re stuck with second-hand information, though good journalists are able to collect meaningful data samples on pretty much anyone famous.
Edit/add: due to a misread I answered on ‘how to detect unknown unknowns’
This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns
Maybe not a real strategy. Read what interesting and/or bright people write, That covers a lot and help with uncovering things that some others already know.
For daily behavior you might check the quirkology book or more of the writings of Richard Wiseman.
To really discover unknown unknowns, like from Eliezers famous question on what strange thing an AI might tell us, I don’t see a super general way. Being curious still goes a long way. Thats how I ended up with my current collection of non-standard habits and ideas.
I’m looking forward to your post on reducing jealousy. I’ve been interested in polyamory for quite a while now, and I’m already quite convinced that it’s a good idea in theory (i.e. that if we could globally change human psychology such that we become more naturally inclined to polyamory, or at least more capable of it, the world would probably be happier overall; happier than if we globally changed human psychology such that we become more naturally inclined to real monogamy? I don’t know). But I’ve never actually had a chance to try being in a poly relationship and I’m not quite sure I’d actually succeed in being comfortable with it.
Edit: This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns, or at least unrecognized default behaviours, other than just going through your daily routine and making a point of frequently wondering why you’re doing the things you’re doing. (Though even that I don’t do enough.)
Compare your beliefs and behaviors with those of people who are succeeding at things which you are not. (And which, presumably, most people in your culture also do not succeed at.)
For example, if you (and most people) aren’t wealthy, consider the beliefs and behaviors of those who are.
This doesn’t always give you a route to change, of course. I have noticed that most people who are standout successes in any sort of internet-marketed, information-products business (or at least, the ones I want to emulate) seem to personally (and quite sincerely) value various forms of philanthropy, and many of them claim it’s impossible to be really successful without it, despite the lack of any logical or direct connection between the practice of giving, and their personal getting.
This drove me crazy for years, both because the often-mystical justifications given simply made no sense to me, and because I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of personally wanting to give money or time away without a direct return.
However, I changed something else in my personality earlier this week—a particular incidence of learned helplessness—and afterward, charity suddenly made sense to me in a way that it simply never had before, and I actually found myself being happy about the idea of e.g. contributing to local libraries, and I actually gave some money (out of pocket and spur of the moment) to my regular hair stylist, upon hearing that she’d just been diagnosed with breast cancer and would be struggling financially in a few weeks, post-surgery.
And I felt good about it.
Anyway, this particular change makes me suspect that philanthropy is actually a shibboleth—while it is correlated with success, there is actually a separate trait driving both the charity and the success, and that it has something to do with lacking certain types of “victim” mindset (one of which I got rid of this week).
So I’m now curious whether I could actually refrain from charitable acts and donations and become more successful… even though my preference and active interest now, is to contribute to certain causes. (And not on a utilitarian basis—it’s strictly warm fuzzies—something that, AFAICR, I’ve never experienced before.)
But I’m not sure whether I want to make that particular sacrifice (holding off on the charity until “wealthy”) in the name of science or not, especially since there are so many other potentially confounding variables, and in any case I lack a true control.
Anyway… what was I saying? Oh yeah. Compare your beliefs and thought processes with those of people succeeding at whatever you want to do/be/have, to identify what “non-default” settings they’re using. Pay special attention to how they think, in the sense of types of processing steps and what emotional attitudes they seem to hold, rather than merely what they think, which often sounds like the default wisdom if the person has not, themselves, thought deeply about what they do differently.
IOW, it’s less about “belief” than about “process”. What do they do differently in their heads? That’s where the gold is.
I’ve assumed that part of charity is the feeling that you have more than you need, and this is related to not being panicky—it means a lower mental noise level.
I don’t know about that; it’s not like I’ve suddenly decided I have more than I need, and definitely not more than I want. I’m wary of that explanation, because that’s the cached thought that gets circulated around the subject, and it doesn’t actually seem to do anything more than be a stop sign for thinking.
Of course, it could simply be that before, I felt like there wasn’t really any chance that I could get what I want, and give things away. That sounds like a slightly more accurate description.
The thing that makes me question this reasoning, though, is that what I changed didn’t have anything to do with charity or how much I “had” in any explicit way whatsoever. It was simply giving up a pattern of helpless thinking, along the lines of being doomed no matter what I do.
I could just as easily argue that, well, if I’m doomed, then I should give to other people who aren’t. But it apparently didn’t work that way. So, I feel more confident saying that I really have no idea what the hell is going on in this area, than simply acceding to one of the many memes that circulate about it. I would rather experiment on a bunch of people first and see if I can make them change in the same way, before I claim to actually know anything about the process.
The trap that most self-help falls into is that when somebody identifies the last critical node to change in their own process, they go straight to the man-with-hammer mode, propounding that one change as the Most Important Thing, when in fact it might merely be the first step for someone who still has problems at other nodes in the process.
Can you elaborate on what you changed? I’d love to know how it made sense to you.
I wish I could do this more, but how do you get accurate information on how people think? Even if they self-report honestly, without censoring themselves, they may not know exactly what they’re doing and they may be biased in their interpretations.
What I gave up on was a pattern of catastrophizing—treating setbacks as huge terrible burdens—and feeling out of control. It’s hard to describe, really, because it is now in the “doesn’t make any sense to me” category. ;-) It was tied in with family loyalty—i.e., that if I actually took personal responsibility and didn’t consider setbacks permanent, then I would be being disloyal to my father and mother (who each had their own forms of this behavior) and that I would lose my love & connection from them. (Despite them both being long-dead.)
Upon letting go of this thought process, I found that various things in my behavior changed as a side effect. For example, I realized that I could actually make all my decisions not on the basis of their likely negative impacts, but instead on their positive impacts.
Hm, come to think of it, the realizations about charity didn’t happen until the day after that subsequent realization, so it’s very possible that it’s the real key factor. Making a decision about charity under a negative decision regime is an obvious no-go—the detriments are obvious, compared to the complete lack of apparent detriments to not giving, absent special circumstances. OTOH, under a benefit-oriented decision regime, there are warm-fuzzy benefits to be had, and less obvious benefit to hoarding.
Previously, it had never occurred to me to think of charity in terms of warm fuzzies in the first place, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have allowed it to be the basis of an actual decision to act. I just happened to be thinking at one point about going to the library, and I happened to remember what some of my mentors had said about giving was, “give to your source of spiritual renewal”, and it occurred to me that of all the things I could think of, libraries would have to qualify as a lifelong source of “spiritual” renewal for me.
And then I went, “wow, I could actually do that… I think I would actually dig hanging out with Friends of the Library, getting involved, donating money...” And I felt a warm-fuzzy of being a part of library-ness, and a sense of ownership—like, I would be able to walk into a library and feel like I owned it, kind of. Very awesome.
No wonder charitable campaigns based on ownership (e.g. of buildings) and participation (e.g. we’ll send you pictures and letters of “your” child) are so successful—it appears that some of the emotional circuits for giving are wired here.
Anyway… now that I’m thinking about it in this way, it seems like the critical factor is making decisions based on the benefits rather than the detriments of the options, and that seems likely something that would influence wealth acquisition and entrepreneurial behavior as well. It’s likely that the specific thing I eliminated (the family loyalty to helplessness) was simply something that kept me from routinely making decisions on a benefit-oriented basis. (Because to do such, requires a non-victim outlook.)
All that having been said, I still would prefer to do some experiments, but now at least I have a much more specific hypothesis to test.
You have to listen to them in the process of thinking, and especially pay attention to how they correct the thinking of others.
These are both things that are best done live, or by observing recordings of them interacting with or coaching other people. A speech or talk or book won’t tell you much unless you can read between the lines of a story with enough information.
For example, before I started making lots of self-help products, I had a belief that making a product was a hard and complicated thing that had to be done just so. This, even after I heard Matt Furey talk a lot about how easy it was. However, on a teleseminar where he was giving a talk, he started on a side story about how he was going up to Missouri to see this eye doctor, and while there he was going to stop at this other guy’s martial arts studio and give a class, and the guy was going to charge people a bunch to come, and give Matt some of the money, but maybe while he was there he would film it, and charge people to see it live over the internet, and sell the DVDs later… and I just had an epiphany.
That epiphany was, “I’m making this way too hard.”
So, Matt saying over and over again that “product creation is easy” and “making money is easy” did little to change my thinking. Sure, now, years later, when I hear somebody successful saying something I don’t believe or agree with, I pay close attention and I think hard about it—which is why that “give to your source of spiritual renewal” was something that had been on my mind for a long time.
But even so, the example or experience (even vicarious) of how your model thinks is much more powerful than the mere description of it. The thing that impressed me in Matt’s story was not that he was doing all those things, but that he was doing them on the spur of the moment—it was simply, “well, I’m going to be in town, so I thought maybe I’d do this”. It was the first time I’d realized how easy it actually could be to make products, and money.
Shortly thereafter, I went out and made my first audio product, and netted about $7K in the next 3 months from it. That experience got me comfortable with the idea of being able to produce monthly workshops, recordings, etc., and ultimately let me quit my day job.
My financial results plateaued, however, and I have been looking for the next mental breakthrough of that variety. Many of my mentors have suggested that each new order of magnitude in financial success requires a different mental adjustment. The good news, I suppose, is that the benefits of each shift expand polynomially. (Which I think may be the word people really mean when they say “exponentially”. ;-) )
That reminds me a lot of the difference between positive motivation and negative motivation… you’re focusing on what you want to get, rather than what you want to avoid.
Some people, though, are VERY open about their thought process & beliefs, such as the Buffett & Munger duo; also Winston Churchill—a lot of what he wrote about includes himself as a player on the game board. These people are pretty open and honest, and there are others like them.
If whoever you’re trying to learn from is highly private or secretive (Steve Jobs comes to mind) you’re stuck with second-hand information, though good journalists are able to collect meaningful data samples on pretty much anyone famous.
Edit/add: due to a misread I answered on ‘how to detect unknown unknowns’
Maybe not a real strategy. Read what interesting and/or bright people write, That covers a lot and help with uncovering things that some others already know. For daily behavior you might check the quirkology book or more of the writings of Richard Wiseman. To really discover unknown unknowns, like from Eliezers famous question on what strange thing an AI might tell us, I don’t see a super general way. Being curious still goes a long way. Thats how I ended up with my current collection of non-standard habits and ideas.
I’m not sure if you switch tack halfway though, but the original read “unknown knowns”.
I actually misread that.
For unknown knows there is some fun in reading about foreign cultures. And the description of foreigners about your own.