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Morendil comments on Highlights and Shadows - Less Wrong
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I, too, used to feel like I was able to distinguish which concerns of my interlocutors' were "real" and which were "merely" worries behind which a "real problem" lay hidden.
Then I observed that this led to giving bad advice and stopped endorsing the thought. What I now endorse is whatever concerns people report they have I will treat as valid concerns, if I take on an advisory role.
Correct me if I am wrong, but did you mean that real is a lullaby word?
(Fun fact: I almost wrote "essentially" there. That would have been awkward.)
Often, and particularly when applied to a mental construct, e.g. "problem".
Misleading quote. If you follow the context you will observe that I saw a potential ambiguity in what CronoDAS is asking. Literally 'remove the worry' or remove that which is to be worried about. The fact that 'get a job' was considered a response makes it unreasonable to for me to assume he was only talking about the worry. I chose to ask him to tell me rather than presume I knew what he meant.
It is ironic that in this instance you are responding to what you think I mean based on your preconceptions ("I, too, used to"...) and not what I wrote. I reject your presumption. In fact, if anything I suspect I err too far on the side of literal interpretation rather than the side of translating from spoken word to probable mental state.
I do not read CronoDAS' comment as ambiguous. The sentence parses as "I want to turn of my shame (of X) and worries (about Y)". The request for advice is about the feelings, it's not directly about the situation that (putatively) gives rise to the feelings. The turn of phrase "I want to turn off" is unusual and very direct, that strikes me as a big clue to focus on the feelings themselves.
I'll confess that "I, too" was an instance of mind reading on my part. My apologies. The word "real", especially when used in the phrase "real problem", is so often linked to mind-reading in my experience that I jumped to conclusions.
I agree that mindreading sucks, in particular it causes problems when people with different types of personality try to mind-read each other. Without a lot of experience that get it wrong, a lot. That's bad if you happen to be of a less prolific personality type.
Now, even if CronoDAS accepts 'change the environment, including your bank balance' as an acceptable way to reduce financial worries what I would still focus on first is the shame.
I rank shame a close second behind frontal lobotomies in preventing healthy proactive problem solving. Shame is the kind of thing that will make you prefer to avoid solving a problem because even thinking about solving the problem makes your brain 'hurt'. Since severe toxic shame is the kind of thing that makes it hard to solve problems like toxic shame my suggestion would be to start with getting something to improve brain chemistry enough that he can break free of shame without fighting himself every step of the way.
I wouldn't classify my feelings as severe shame...
Unfortunately, that's not good evidence, because people with severe shame would mostly say the same thing. For one thing, there's not a generally accepted and calibrate-able shame scale. For another, admitting to shame (even to one's self) can also be shameful. ;-)
But even more to the point, one of the things that shame does is create self-induced limitations on one's behavior and thinking that prevent the shame from rising to intolerable levels under normal circumstances. As soon as you get near the boundaries of the shame, you mysteriously lose interest and turn away, before you feel anything particularly strongly.
So, instead of looking for shame as a symptom, what you'd want to look at would be what you don't think you can do, or don't perceive as desirable, despite it being generally considered desirable... and then see whether those things give rise to feelings of shame.
Think of it as an experiment in Bayesian updating to detect whether your mind has been invisibly tampered with, by observing what other people appear to be positively motivated by, that does not motivate you. ;-)
Thanks PJ. I was debating whether to say it but this was my reasoning exactly. Shame is a real bitch, especially once it's had a chance to build up some learned helplessness.
Many people rationalize away desires for certain goals (e.g. status gaining goals) and settle in their current positions. Assuming the rationalizing individuals maintain a positive mean happiness level in their current state, what's the rationale in making them discover/realize suppressed or latent desires?
You seem to be making the assumption that discovering a suppressed desire necessarily has negative utility. What's your rationale for that? ;-)
You also seem to be assuming I actually recommended that everybody look for their hidden or suppressed desires, which I didn't. However, if you elevate epistemic rationalism to the point of religion, ISTM that then you should want to know about all your suppressed desires, so you can feel the correct level of pain or pleasure involved. ;-)
Personally, I don't agree with that philosophy, but I still come to a somewhat-similar conclusion from an instrumentally-rational POV, due to the fact that you can't really suppress desires. They're still there, you just make your mental gears grind a whole lot more, working to keep you from consciously paying attention to it... which is pretty wasteful and inefficient.
Also, you can want something and accept that you're not going to get it, that there are things that are worth more to you, etc. etc., and those states of mind are not nearly as painful or frustrating as pretending you don't want what you actually do want. It is not necessarily the case that pain results from a desire plus the inability to fulfill it, or even an expectation that you will never fulfill it.
The pain that we assume to be associated with desire is actually generated by a different emotion, which we might call "attachment": the belief that things will be bad if we don't get what we want.
To frame it mathematically, a desire brings positive hedons for its fulfillment, and does nothing otherwise; an attachment brings anti-hedons for non-fulfillment, and nothing else. The two are largely independent, but people often assume them to be one and the same thing, because we can and do have them both in relation to the same thing.
So, adding desires is not a problem. It's adding attachments that's bad.
But discovering existing attachments isn't bad, because they still cause ongoing pain and dissatisfaction, even when you've "rationalized them away". The rationalization just provides you with an excuse to avoid the subject as much as possible... not a way to disconnect the pain from the subject. (Uncovering attachments, on the other hand, gives you the option to get rid of them.)
Yup, I made my statement on that assumption, but know that expected negative utility isn't always the case. Just sometimes it's not clear whether discovering suppressed desires yields positive expected utility.
Good point, didn't think of that.
But I am not convinced that rationalizing/cognitive dissonance doesn't help ease (or eliminate) feelings of dissatisfaction induced by attachments in all cases. I think realizing a desire can play a causal role in building attachment for that desire.
It might be necessary, but it's not sufficient. If you have a general belief that life is bad whenever you don't have everything you want, then yes, definitely. On the other extreme, if you believe that life is just fine as it is, then it's equally clearly no.
(Also, don't forget that attachment can exist without desire -- I can be attached to getting something done on time, that I don't actually want to do in the first place!)
In general, children are more likely to believe that it's bad to not have what they want, now, than adults are. And in general, we might say that being less attached to things is correlated with maturity. So, if you're going to extrapolate what an older, wiser you would do, it's probably best to assume less likelihood of having attachment, rather than more. (Note too that there are things you can do to lessen your attachments, but I'm not aware of anything that can cause you to add one, in the absence of generalized must-get-what-i-want beliefs.)
This is like saying, "I'm not convinced that painkillers don't help ease or eliminate the symptoms of cancer" -- it's probably true, and even more probably irrelevant. ;-)
However, we have far more effective (and painless) treatments for attachment than we do for cancer, and they are even easier, more effective, and faster-acting than rationalization.