My suggestion is that you learn to get over your fear of sweating. There’s nothing objectively harmful about it, so it’s merely a preference that can (and probably should) be changed through gradual exposure. Start slowly and work your way up. If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.
ShardPhoenix, I believe that Alicorn has a form of autism (please correct me if I’m wrong, Alicorn.) Being sensitive to sensory stimuli and having aversions to some of them is common for people who suffer from autism, and I don’t think these aversions are particularly easy to overcome. I’m guessing that Alicorn’s aversion to sweating is in this category. She isn’t just ‘being lazy’ and refusing to attempt to change a preference.
Note to Alicorn: have you ever succeeded in getting rid of a textural or other sensory aversion through gradual exposure?
Note to Alicorn: have you ever succeeded in getting rid of a textural or other sensory aversion through gradual exposure?
My sensory issues do morph over time, but largely outside my control. The closest thing I can think of is that when I was little, I couldn’t stand denim, but then I had a pair of very soft stonewashed jeans that I did like, and thereafter I was able to touch all varieties of denim comfortably. Trying to figure out how to not be bothered by such a thing on purpose would be a little like trying to rewire myself to not mind pain: surely a worthy ultimate goal, but not currently within reach for any practical purpose. It’s too base-level.
That’s what I thought. It’s not a simple matter of habituation, although the fact that your liking the one pair of jeans generalized to all denim suggests it might have to do with what category your mind places different textures into, rather than just how they feel.
Has this ever happened in reverse: there was a texture/other stimulus that didn’t bother you until you encountered a particularly nasty instance of it, and it generalized to all instances?
The reverse hasn’t happened quite that way, no. In general I become more, not less, tolerant over time; sometimes I have temporary episodes where something that’s normally neutral is suddenly abhorrent for no obvious reason, but that passes.
I don’t agree that we should tiptoe around someone’s irrationality (and bend over backwards to try to accommodate it!) just because it has a biological cause, or because it’s something associated with “our kind of people”. If someone with schizophrenia came here and started posting about conspiracy theories, I don’t think the schizophrenia would be a good excuse to put up with that either.
I think we should recognize real differences in feasibility/difficulty/painfulness of actions and actionability of advice when they exist, for biological reasons or any reasons. (Sort of like how you wouldn’t expect basic epistemic rationality advice to make someone with schizophrenia sane.)
We should also recognize the predictable effects of our words on people as they are, predicted using empathy and models based on people’s actual behavior, rather than what we think people should be or non-truthseeking, habitually-used, constantly-surprised models of people. (Noticing when you’re using the latter sort of models is a lot of work, but possible.) This might feel like abandoning all ideas of what people should be and letting them get away with any amount of laziness, and there are potential gains that could be lost that way, but the hard-ass approach loses at least as much (while making you less likable); far better to step back, recognize and (at least temporarily) let go of affective judgments and game-theoretic impulses, and semi-honestly try to figure out what’s actually going on and what gains are possible.
The question I would ask is, does it help Alicorn to phrase your comment the way you did: “If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.” That would antagonize anyone, rationalist or not. If you said that to someone with schizophrenia, the last thing it would do is cure their disease. There are medications for that...and unfortunately, I don’t think there are any medications for autism yet. And if anyone is bending backwards to accommodate it, it’s Alicorn herself; this is something that must be extremely annoying on a day-to-day basis. You, on the other hand, don’t have to change your day-to-day life at all.
That being said, I think your original suggestion (gradual habituation) was a good one. I don’t know if Alicorn’s tried exactly that strategy before, and there’s a possibility it might work.
As near as I can tell from the fact that I am sometimes forced into situations where I have to deal with sweat, gradual habituation does… drumroll… nothing.
I am no psychologist. I thought one of the benefits of gradual habituation was that it was in a controlled setting that subject could end at any time with essentially no consequences. This contrasts “sometimes forced in to situations”, I also have the impression that these forced situations there is no sequential order of events from the least discomfort to the most, in other words no gradualness(Also perhaps these events start at too high of a stimulus level.)
Finding someone capable of setting up a gradual habituation regiem and having the time to follow through with it are the biggest obstacles to experimenting with habituation regiems in my experience.
Your suggestion is not helpful. It relies on false assumptions, doesn’t pay attention to the nature of my complaint, violates the spirit of the exercise, and is dismissive of my level of self-knowledge, and that I would respond this way was predictable based on other commenting that has happened in this thread. If you’re not going to pay attention to what kind of advice I’m asking for I don’t know why you’re trying to give me any. (Others’ recommendations have already fared better than yours, and not just because that isn’t difficult to manage, so my request for advice wasn’t fruitless, although it does seem to result in uninformed noise production as a side effect.)
If you want to get fit it’s going to take effort and doing things that you don’t really want to to. Also, it’s a good idea to get over harmful and unnecessary aversions regardless. Also, don’t ask for advice if you can’t take it.
edit: The real issue here is that you don’t have strong enough motivation in the first place. If you can increase that (for example, by visualizing the benefits of being fit vs. the costs of being unfit in the long run), you’ll find it a lot easier to get started without a bunch of borderline-crazy restrictions.
Your advice was not what I asked for. Here are other examples of things that are technically advice, but which are not what I asked for and which am not obliged to accept cheerfully, that share a reference class with what you said:
“If you want to lose weight, you’re going about it the wrong way and putting too many constraints on what you’ll do to achieve it; exercise won’t help, just stop shoving food into your face.”
“You get bored by exercise? That means your brain is defective. Try ten years of therapy and some psychiatric drugs!”
“You’ll stop being bothered by sunshine if you just sit out in it for a couple of hours every day until you tan darker. Also, getting exposure to sunshine is a good idea regardless.”
“If you don’t have enough money to spend on exercise equipment but you’re able to get on the Internet you’re a crap financial planner. Come back when you have your priorities straight. If you want to get fit you’ll have to give up some of your luxuries.”
Much more importantly, though… do you not see the connotation of unpleasant, uncareful other-optimizing, and frequently contempt, in all those statements and what you’ve said to Alicorn, or do you think it’s correct to use that connotation, or that it doesn’t matter and people are wrong to care, or what?
The world is not obligated to be convenient for you.
I assume you state this because you are under the impression that Alicorn believes/acted like/implied the world is obligated to be convenient for Alicorn.
That is not the impression I have obtained by reading the posts in this discussion. What specifically gave you that impression?
Maybe that was slightly misphrased, but she seems to be assuming that if there isn’t a convenient, relatively effortless way to do something, then it’s not worth doing.
Effort is hard enough to judge in person and pretty much impossible over the internet. I have observed more then once in my life people judged as lazy, or many other negative traits, only to have the person years latter discover a perviously unknown medical condition causing the underlying problems. Once it is diagnosed as organ failure, a growth putting pressure in an odd place society stops judging them as lazy or any number of other negative traits.
The initial label of laziness(or other negative trait) was a logical misstep, coming to a conclusion without sufficient evidence.
I didn’t suggest a starvation diet, and sunscreen exists. Besides, my general point is that sometimes you need to try harder instead of giving up due to things that aren’t even harmful, and also realize that irrational psychological flaws are things that should and in many cases can be overcome (I know, I’ve done it), not taken as unshakeable premises.
I understood/understand that was/is your point. I was referring to “select people”, meaning people who are more sensitive to reduced food intake or photo sensitive. People not near the mean of the bell curve.
realize that irrational psychological flaws are things that should and in many cases can be overcome (I know, I’ve done it), not taken as unshakeable premises.
I know I have done it too. However I can not put “psychological flaws” in the right context to understand exactly what you mean by it, since it is not always possible to just try harder to change some physical structures that cause said psychological flaws.
It is awesome when trying harder fixes the problem. The problem is not always not trying hard enough or lack of motivation, it can because an organ is slowly dying in your body, or you produce proteins in a different as of yet unmeasurable way due to a quirk of genetics, or one of many other hard to diagnoses and solve problems.
If you want to engage Alicorn on her level or lack thereof of effort your should be asking for a detailed description of what she has tried and for how long, but I have not observed you doing that.
My suggestion is that you learn to get over your fear of sweating. There’s nothing objectively harmful about it, so it’s merely a preference that can (and probably should) be changed through gradual exposure. Start slowly and work your way up. If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.
ShardPhoenix, I believe that Alicorn has a form of autism (please correct me if I’m wrong, Alicorn.) Being sensitive to sensory stimuli and having aversions to some of them is common for people who suffer from autism, and I don’t think these aversions are particularly easy to overcome. I’m guessing that Alicorn’s aversion to sweating is in this category. She isn’t just ‘being lazy’ and refusing to attempt to change a preference.
Note to Alicorn: have you ever succeeded in getting rid of a textural or other sensory aversion through gradual exposure?
My sensory issues do morph over time, but largely outside my control. The closest thing I can think of is that when I was little, I couldn’t stand denim, but then I had a pair of very soft stonewashed jeans that I did like, and thereafter I was able to touch all varieties of denim comfortably. Trying to figure out how to not be bothered by such a thing on purpose would be a little like trying to rewire myself to not mind pain: surely a worthy ultimate goal, but not currently within reach for any practical purpose. It’s too base-level.
That’s what I thought. It’s not a simple matter of habituation, although the fact that your liking the one pair of jeans generalized to all denim suggests it might have to do with what category your mind places different textures into, rather than just how they feel.
Has this ever happened in reverse: there was a texture/other stimulus that didn’t bother you until you encountered a particularly nasty instance of it, and it generalized to all instances?
The reverse hasn’t happened quite that way, no. In general I become more, not less, tolerant over time; sometimes I have temporary episodes where something that’s normally neutral is suddenly abhorrent for no obvious reason, but that passes.
I don’t agree that we should tiptoe around someone’s irrationality (and bend over backwards to try to accommodate it!) just because it has a biological cause, or because it’s something associated with “our kind of people”. If someone with schizophrenia came here and started posting about conspiracy theories, I don’t think the schizophrenia would be a good excuse to put up with that either.
I think we should recognize real differences in feasibility/difficulty/painfulness of actions and actionability of advice when they exist, for biological reasons or any reasons. (Sort of like how you wouldn’t expect basic epistemic rationality advice to make someone with schizophrenia sane.)
We should also recognize the predictable effects of our words on people as they are, predicted using empathy and models based on people’s actual behavior, rather than what we think people should be or non-truthseeking, habitually-used, constantly-surprised models of people. (Noticing when you’re using the latter sort of models is a lot of work, but possible.) This might feel like abandoning all ideas of what people should be and letting them get away with any amount of laziness, and there are potential gains that could be lost that way, but the hard-ass approach loses at least as much (while making you less likable); far better to step back, recognize and (at least temporarily) let go of affective judgments and game-theoretic impulses, and semi-honestly try to figure out what’s actually going on and what gains are possible.
The question I would ask is, does it help Alicorn to phrase your comment the way you did: “If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.” That would antagonize anyone, rationalist or not. If you said that to someone with schizophrenia, the last thing it would do is cure their disease. There are medications for that...and unfortunately, I don’t think there are any medications for autism yet. And if anyone is bending backwards to accommodate it, it’s Alicorn herself; this is something that must be extremely annoying on a day-to-day basis. You, on the other hand, don’t have to change your day-to-day life at all.
That being said, I think your original suggestion (gradual habituation) was a good one. I don’t know if Alicorn’s tried exactly that strategy before, and there’s a possibility it might work.
As near as I can tell from the fact that I am sometimes forced into situations where I have to deal with sweat, gradual habituation does… drumroll… nothing.
I am no psychologist. I thought one of the benefits of gradual habituation was that it was in a controlled setting that subject could end at any time with essentially no consequences. This contrasts “sometimes forced in to situations”, I also have the impression that these forced situations there is no sequential order of events from the least discomfort to the most, in other words no gradualness(Also perhaps these events start at too high of a stimulus level.)
Finding someone capable of setting up a gradual habituation regiem and having the time to follow through with it are the biggest obstacles to experimenting with habituation regiems in my experience.
I did not submit “help me figure out how to deal with sweat” as a True Rejection Challenge, so this line of advice is neither on-topic nor welcome.
Your suggestion is not helpful. It relies on false assumptions, doesn’t pay attention to the nature of my complaint, violates the spirit of the exercise, and is dismissive of my level of self-knowledge, and that I would respond this way was predictable based on other commenting that has happened in this thread. If you’re not going to pay attention to what kind of advice I’m asking for I don’t know why you’re trying to give me any. (Others’ recommendations have already fared better than yours, and not just because that isn’t difficult to manage, so my request for advice wasn’t fruitless, although it does seem to result in uninformed noise production as a side effect.)
If you want to get fit it’s going to take effort and doing things that you don’t really want to to. Also, it’s a good idea to get over harmful and unnecessary aversions regardless. Also, don’t ask for advice if you can’t take it.
edit: The real issue here is that you don’t have strong enough motivation in the first place. If you can increase that (for example, by visualizing the benefits of being fit vs. the costs of being unfit in the long run), you’ll find it a lot easier to get started without a bunch of borderline-crazy restrictions.
Your advice was not what I asked for. Here are other examples of things that are technically advice, but which are not what I asked for and which am not obliged to accept cheerfully, that share a reference class with what you said:
“If you want to lose weight, you’re going about it the wrong way and putting too many constraints on what you’ll do to achieve it; exercise won’t help, just stop shoving food into your face.”
“You get bored by exercise? That means your brain is defective. Try ten years of therapy and some psychiatric drugs!”
“You’ll stop being bothered by sunshine if you just sit out in it for a couple of hours every day until you tan darker. Also, getting exposure to sunshine is a good idea regardless.”
“If you don’t have enough money to spend on exercise equipment but you’re able to get on the Internet you’re a crap financial planner. Come back when you have your priorities straight. If you want to get fit you’ll have to give up some of your luxuries.”
So, to sum up, go away.
and 3. there are essentially true to first order. The world is not obligated to be convenient for you.
Taken as a purely factual statement, (1) appears to be simply false for some people.
Much more importantly, though… do you not see the connotation of unpleasant, uncareful other-optimizing, and frequently contempt, in all those statements and what you’ve said to Alicorn, or do you think it’s correct to use that connotation, or that it doesn’t matter and people are wrong to care, or what?
My reply to the edited post:
I assume you state this because you are under the impression that Alicorn believes/acted like/implied the world is obligated to be convenient for Alicorn.
That is not the impression I have obtained by reading the posts in this discussion. What specifically gave you that impression?
Maybe that was slightly misphrased, but she seems to be assuming that if there isn’t a convenient, relatively effortless way to do something, then it’s not worth doing.
Effort is hard enough to judge in person and pretty much impossible over the internet. I have observed more then once in my life people judged as lazy, or many other negative traits, only to have the person years latter discover a perviously unknown medical condition causing the underlying problems. Once it is diagnosed as organ failure, a growth putting pressure in an odd place society stops judging them as lazy or any number of other negative traits.
The initial label of laziness(or other negative trait) was a logical misstep, coming to a conclusion without sufficient evidence.
edit: The whole post I responded to was:
The negative consequence of following through with 1 or 3 can be so high for select people that they are not worth doing.
Following through with 1 may cause weight loss but may also cause diminished intelligence, diminished energy, malnutrition, again with select people.
Following through on 3 may cause cancer or increase the risk of cancer to high levels, again with select people.
This statement is true, however the cost may be too high with known methods. Hence this exercise to produce new methods to experiment with.
I didn’t suggest a starvation diet, and sunscreen exists. Besides, my general point is that sometimes you need to try harder instead of giving up due to things that aren’t even harmful, and also realize that irrational psychological flaws are things that should and in many cases can be overcome (I know, I’ve done it), not taken as unshakeable premises.
I understood/understand that was/is your point. I was referring to “select people”, meaning people who are more sensitive to reduced food intake or photo sensitive. People not near the mean of the bell curve.
I know I have done it too. However I can not put “psychological flaws” in the right context to understand exactly what you mean by it, since it is not always possible to just try harder to change some physical structures that cause said psychological flaws.
It is awesome when trying harder fixes the problem. The problem is not always not trying hard enough or lack of motivation, it can because an organ is slowly dying in your body, or you produce proteins in a different as of yet unmeasurable way due to a quirk of genetics, or one of many other hard to diagnoses and solve problems.
If you want to engage Alicorn on her level or lack thereof of effort your should be asking for a detailed description of what she has tried and for how long, but I have not observed you doing that.
As a borderline crazyperson, I take offense to this.