but it takes a lot of knowledge about psychology and evolutionary psychology to make introspection a worthwhile endeavor
This strikes me as dubious, but I'm curious about how it's worked out for you.
I'm not sure which part is the dubious one in your eyes - that evolutionary psychology is needed to understand one's own behavior, or is it my opinion that for the vast majority of people introspection is at best a waste of time and at worst can be a real drawback for their mental health?
It's pretty clear from what is known about psychology, that people who think a lot about themselves aren't very happy in general. That's because they don't actually think in a rational manner and thus won't succeed in identifying and addressing their problems. Instead, they actually do what is known as ruminating - which is more akin to an endlessly looping pattern of thought, that rarely yields any real insights, let alone tangible changes for the better. For a ruminating person it usually feels like they are thinking, but they are really not... it's just one messy out-of-control thought-stream that is endlessly looping. But even without rumination-loops... if you took a hundred people and looked at what they come up with, when they are tasked with some kind of introspection you'd probably get mostly deluded nonsense out of them.
As far as evolutionary psychology goes... well let me give you an example how that can be useful. I'm a young male who's understandably very status-driven in this stage of life, but unlike many people I've been quite aware of this for a long time and way back I've framed it to myself as having a character trait of "a huge ego". I was very aware of how practically everything that I (and others) said carried an undercurrent that was really all about social status. So I had the futile idea that I should somehow extinguish this character trait... which is of course nonsense, because it simply cannot be done. People don't have that kind of malleable access to "character traits", that were deeply ingrained and hardwired by evolution. I felt bad about being status-driven, because it seemed to be such a silly and unworthy thing... and so I was completely wasting my time with the idea that it could somehow be outgrown. And there is a whole array of other evolutionary hardwired things, that people regularly misidentify as something undesirable that they should try to outgrow - when in reality they most certainly can't. Someone wants to stop worrying about social status...? he or she might as well try to disable their breathing reflex.
I think evolutionary psychology includes a lot of guesswork.
Your distinction between rumination and thinking is excellent.
As for your specific example, I don't think evolutionary psychology is needed to realize that concern about status is a common preoccupation, and that there aren't many people (if any) who don't care about it at all, and that therefore, it doesn't make sense to expect oneself to be free of it.
I'm interested in why such an inhuman standard is so popular. I've got two possible angles. I've heard that Wilhelm Reich thought having rules abo...
When I found Less Wrong and started reading, when I made my first post, when I went to my first meetup….
It was a little like coming home.
And mostly it wasn’t. Mostly I felt a lot more out of place than I have in, say, church youth groups. It was hard to pinpoint the difference, but as far as I can tell, it comes down to this: a significant proportion of the LW posters are contrarians in some sense. And I’m a conformist, even if I would prefer not to be, even if that’s a part of my personality that I’m working hard to change. I’m much more comfortable as a follower than as a leader. I like pre-existing tradition, the reassuring structure of it. I like situations that allow me to be helpful and generous and hardworking, so that I can feel like a good person. Emotionally, I don’t like disagreeing with others, and the last thing I have to work hard to do is tolerate others' tolerance.
And, as evidenced by the fact that I attend church youth groups, I don’t have the strong allergy that many of the community seem to have against religion. This is possibly because I have easily triggered mystical experiences when, for example, I sing in a group, especially when we are singing traditional ‘sacred’ music. In a previous century, I would probably have been an extremely happy nun.
Someone once expressed surprise that I was able to become a rationalist in spite of this neurological quirk. I’ve asked myself this a few times. My answer is that I don’t think I deserve the credit. If anything, I ended up on the circuitous path towards reading LessWrong because I love science, and I love science because, as a child, reading about something as beautiful as general relativity gave me the same kind of euphoric experience as singing about Jesus does now. My inability to actual believe in any religion comes from a time before I was making my own decisions about that kind of thing.
I was raised by atheist parents, not anti-theist so much as indifferent. We attended a Unitarian Universalist church for a while, which meant I was learning about Jesus and Buddha and Native American spirituality all mixed together, all the memes watered down to the point that they lost their power. I was fourteen when I really encountered Christianity, still in the mild form of the Anglican Church of Canada. I was eighteen when I first encountered the ‘Jesus myth’ in its full, meme-honed-to-maximum-virulence form, and the story arc captivated me for a full six months. I still cry during every Good Friday service. But I must have missed some critical threshold, because I can’t actually believe in that story. I’m not even sure what it would mean to believe in a story. What does that feel like?
I was raised by scientists. My father did his PhD in physical chemistry, my mother in plant biology. I grew up reading SF and pop science, and occasionally my mother or my father’s old textbooks. I remember my mother’s awe at the beautiful electron-microscope images in my high school textbooks, and how she sat patiently while I fumblingly talked about quantum mechanics, having read the entire tiny physics section of our high school library. My parents responded to my interest in science with pride and enthusiasm, and to my interest in religion with indulgent condescension. That was my structure, my tradition. And yes, that has everything to do with why I call myself an atheist. I wouldn’t have had the willpower to disagree with my parents in the long run.
Ultimately, I have an awfully long way to go if I want to be rational, as opposed to being someone who’s just interested in reading about math and science. Way too much of my motivation for ‘having true beliefs’ breaks down to ‘maybe then they’ll like me.’ This is one of the annoying things about my personality, just as annoying as my sensitivity to religious memes and my inability to say no to anyone. Luckily, my personality also comes with the ability to get along with just about anyone, and in a forum of mature adults, no one is going to make fun of me because I’m wearing tie-dye overalls. No one here has yet made fun of me for my interest in religion, even though I expect most people disagree with it.
And there’s one last conclusion I can draw, albeit from a sample size of one. Not everyone can be a contrarian rationalist. Not everyone can rebel against their parents’ religion. Not everyone can disagree with their friends and family and not feel guilty. But everyone can be rational if they are raised that way.