Awesome. This is exactly what I was expecting from meditation and to hear it confirmed really psyches me up for working hard on it. Thank you for sharing.
A few days into my first vipassana course I started to become more aware of my thoughts, and was unpleasantly surprised to find that a large majority of them were ridiculously self-indulgent. I was running simulations of altered past events and possible future events where everything just happened to fall amazingly in my favor. I got the girl, pummeled the bad guy, etc. I would now call these wireheading patterns, but I didn’t think of them that way at the time.
I’ve become a lot better at this in the last few months, but this used to be my normal mode of thinking. It led me to believe I was incredibly narcissistic, which further led to me developing lots of safety mechanisms to keep that part of me from poisoning my thinking; in some cases, the safety mechanisms are I think too harsh and too self-critical, because there is too much affective negative self-judgment. The big thing I’ve realized from meditation thus far is that the affective judgments aren’t necessary; mindfulness without judgment is enough to avoid harmful attractors.
But I got sidetracked; really, I’m curious, is this a common disposition among Less Wrong rationalists? I didn’t think so as I’d heard of the typical mind fallacy and most people don’t tend to talk about this facet of their thinking very much (maybe because it’s embarrassing). But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
I do something similar—I’ll run through either remembered past or imagined future conversations in my head. For the past ones, I’ll have myself say what I now think I should have said, to try and figure out what would have happened. For the future ones, I sometimes do productive planning (“I want to mention x when this happens”), but I also catch myself simulating other people in a way which is clearly inaccurate but leads to a highly favorable situation (like me saying the “right thing” and someone else swooning).
I have gotten some use out of that last, though. If I’m feeling bad and imagine someone saying just the right thing to me, and then me feeling better, I now know exactly what I want to hear. Then I tell the other person what that thing is, being clear if necessary that it’s not that I don’t know it already, but that hearing it again right now would make me feel a lot better (useful for avoiding defensiveness when the thing is, say, that they love you). There’s a chapter in the Usual Error about this, which is what made me realize that I can just do that and it works. (You can insert a mental “yet” into the sentences about not being purely rational, if you like. Tsuyoku etc.)
Anyway. I think the phenomenon in general is called daydreaming, and it’s normal, even the exaggerated/narcissistic-seeming kind. I feel like I see it referenced/parodied in popular culture a fair bit, and I don’t see why that would be true if lots of people didn’t really do it.
I don’t have a habit of imagining things going better for myself than they really did. It never would have occurred to me that such a habit existed for anyone.
I’m very much more apt to think about things having defects, or to appreciate actual good points.
I should probably do more observation of what I actually spend my mental time on, but I could probably use a little more wireheading (at least of the replaying good memories variety) than I do.
I’m like this—my knee jerk thoughts are often quite arrogant (for example, reading a story about someone smart or attractive and immediately judging myself smarter or more attractive).
Sidenote: For most of my life I’ve managed to combine this over-arrogance with an outward under-confidence, which sucked.
But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
Awesome. This is exactly what I was expecting from meditation and to hear it confirmed really psyches me up for working hard on it. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve become a lot better at this in the last few months, but this used to be my normal mode of thinking. It led me to believe I was incredibly narcissistic, which further led to me developing lots of safety mechanisms to keep that part of me from poisoning my thinking; in some cases, the safety mechanisms are I think too harsh and too self-critical, because there is too much affective negative self-judgment. The big thing I’ve realized from meditation thus far is that the affective judgments aren’t necessary; mindfulness without judgment is enough to avoid harmful attractors.
But I got sidetracked; really, I’m curious, is this a common disposition among Less Wrong rationalists? I didn’t think so as I’d heard of the typical mind fallacy and most people don’t tend to talk about this facet of their thinking very much (maybe because it’s embarrassing). But if it’s more common than I thought, then maybe I wasn’t as incredibly narcissistic as I thought, and maybe this type of wireheading pattern is a typical attractor in mindspace.
I do something similar—I’ll run through either remembered past or imagined future conversations in my head. For the past ones, I’ll have myself say what I now think I should have said, to try and figure out what would have happened. For the future ones, I sometimes do productive planning (“I want to mention x when this happens”), but I also catch myself simulating other people in a way which is clearly inaccurate but leads to a highly favorable situation (like me saying the “right thing” and someone else swooning).
I have gotten some use out of that last, though. If I’m feeling bad and imagine someone saying just the right thing to me, and then me feeling better, I now know exactly what I want to hear. Then I tell the other person what that thing is, being clear if necessary that it’s not that I don’t know it already, but that hearing it again right now would make me feel a lot better (useful for avoiding defensiveness when the thing is, say, that they love you). There’s a chapter in the Usual Error about this, which is what made me realize that I can just do that and it works. (You can insert a mental “yet” into the sentences about not being purely rational, if you like. Tsuyoku etc.)
Anyway. I think the phenomenon in general is called daydreaming, and it’s normal, even the exaggerated/narcissistic-seeming kind. I feel like I see it referenced/parodied in popular culture a fair bit, and I don’t see why that would be true if lots of people didn’t really do it.
I don’t have a habit of imagining things going better for myself than they really did. It never would have occurred to me that such a habit existed for anyone.
I’m very much more apt to think about things having defects, or to appreciate actual good points.
I should probably do more observation of what I actually spend my mental time on, but I could probably use a little more wireheading (at least of the replaying good memories variety) than I do.
I’m like this—my knee jerk thoughts are often quite arrogant (for example, reading a story about someone smart or attractive and immediately judging myself smarter or more attractive).
Sidenote: For most of my life I’ve managed to combine this over-arrogance with an outward under-confidence, which sucked.
I’m also curious about this.