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.
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.