That’s because your using the writing style of modern day popular internet culture and the more technical wikipedia articles are written in the style of a no nonsense academic journal editor (who knows readership would be limited to peers and colleagues). It would be very remarkable if it did.
To be fair, I think using the word “disconfirmed expectancy” to refer to what Kaj is talking about is… plain wrong. An academic style isn’t “no nonsense” if it tries to be inaccurate.
I can’t say I understand what you think something of that sort would actually be. Certainly none of your examples in the OP qualify. Nothing exists which violates the laws of nature, because if it exists, it must follow the laws of nature. Updating our knowledge of the laws of nature is a different matter, but it’s not something that inspires horror.
Right, it’s not that the thing’s existence literally violates the laws of nature, but rather it’s that it’s incompatible with the model of reality that your mind has constructed. So the subjective feeling of it is the fabric of reality being torn apart. Though of course on an objective level, no such thing is happening.
An example that comes to mind would be if a young child was used to their mother always being safe and available, and then the mother died. Previously, “I can always be safe with my mother” was basically an axiomatic assumption for how they oriented towards the world, but then suddenly the person their mind had been treating as invincible and immortal and the cornerstone of safety was gone.
(I read somewhere a quote from someone whose parents had died at an early age, and who described the feeling as a literal one of reality being ripped apart and all of existence feeling wrong ever since. I didn’t save the quote and don’t remember the exact wording, though.)
cognitive dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance is a pretty well understood phenomena.
The wikipedia article is decent and mentions some of the landmark texts for understanding why the associated pain is adaptive for humans, such as:
Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance (1959)
Effect of the Severity of Threat on the Devaluation of Forbidden Behavior (1963)
etc.
Disconfirmed expectancy
I’m not sure this conveys a sense of “utter horror over something whose very existence violates the laws of nature” very well. :)
That’s because your using the writing style of modern day popular internet culture and the more technical wikipedia articles are written in the style of a no nonsense academic journal editor (who knows readership would be limited to peers and colleagues). It would be very remarkable if it did.
To be fair, I think using the word “disconfirmed expectancy” to refer to what Kaj is talking about is… plain wrong. An academic style isn’t “no nonsense” if it tries to be inaccurate.
I can’t say I understand what you think something of that sort would actually be. Certainly none of your examples in the OP qualify. Nothing exists which violates the laws of nature, because if it exists, it must follow the laws of nature. Updating our knowledge of the laws of nature is a different matter, but it’s not something that inspires horror.
Right, it’s not that the thing’s existence literally violates the laws of nature, but rather it’s that it’s incompatible with the model of reality that your mind has constructed. So the subjective feeling of it is the fabric of reality being torn apart. Though of course on an objective level, no such thing is happening.
An example that comes to mind would be if a young child was used to their mother always being safe and available, and then the mother died. Previously, “I can always be safe with my mother” was basically an axiomatic assumption for how they oriented towards the world, but then suddenly the person their mind had been treating as invincible and immortal and the cornerstone of safety was gone.
(I read somewhere a quote from someone whose parents had died at an early age, and who described the feeling as a literal one of reality being ripped apart and all of existence feeling wrong ever since. I didn’t save the quote and don’t remember the exact wording, though.)