Have you heard of Capgras syndrome? For people who have this (according to Wikipedia), “their conscious ability to recognize faces was intact, but they might have damage to the system that produces the automatic emotional arousal to familiar faces. This might lead to the experience of recognizing someone while feeling something was not “quite right” about them.” Possibly similar?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
Chelsea can destroy relationships. If Chelsea walks up to some person A and goes “snip snip” on A’s relationship with some other person B, then A no longer emotionally distinguishes B from any demographically similar person that A has never met or seen who lives far away and isn’t related to A’s social network.
So, for example, no one who Chelsea has “snip snipped” with regards to Natalie considers Natalie more interesting or important than some random baby in sub-Saharan Africa who has died of iodine deficiency. Yes, it is mildly saddening to think of any dead baby, but this dead baby is not special to you; why think about or grieve for this dead baby first?
Of course, some kinds of social importance “grow back” immediately. It’s a form of social importance just to be physically nearby—you will care more about someone who dies in front of you than about someone who dies on another continent, even if you have the same facts about each case. Someone biologically related to you, or who is a friend of a friend, will “grow back” a little bit too after the snipping—just like you’d care a little bit about a long-lost sibling you just suddenly discovered you had as compared to an unrelated stranger—but with regular maintenance from Chelsea, native consistency effects (“for the last five years, I have seemed to be the person who does not care about relationships of type X”) will slow and eventually halt this regrowth.
Have you heard of Capgras syndrome? For people who have this (according to Wikipedia), “their conscious ability to recognize faces was intact, but they might have damage to the system that produces the automatic emotional arousal to familiar faces. This might lead to the experience of recognizing someone while feeling something was not “quite right” about them.” Possibly similar?
But apparently Chelsea doesn’t just change how you feel about someone, but how important you think they are?
Chelsea can destroy relationships. If Chelsea walks up to some person A and goes “snip snip” on A’s relationship with some other person B, then A no longer emotionally distinguishes B from any demographically similar person that A has never met or seen who lives far away and isn’t related to A’s social network.
So, for example, no one who Chelsea has “snip snipped” with regards to Natalie considers Natalie more interesting or important than some random baby in sub-Saharan Africa who has died of iodine deficiency. Yes, it is mildly saddening to think of any dead baby, but this dead baby is not special to you; why think about or grieve for this dead baby first?
Of course, some kinds of social importance “grow back” immediately. It’s a form of social importance just to be physically nearby—you will care more about someone who dies in front of you than about someone who dies on another continent, even if you have the same facts about each case. Someone biologically related to you, or who is a friend of a friend, will “grow back” a little bit too after the snipping—just like you’d care a little bit about a long-lost sibling you just suddenly discovered you had as compared to an unrelated stranger—but with regular maintenance from Chelsea, native consistency effects (“for the last five years, I have seemed to be the person who does not care about relationships of type X”) will slow and eventually halt this regrowth.