Vaniver comments on SotW: Be Specific - Less Wrong

37 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 April 2012 06:11AM

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Tags: sotw prize specific concreteness abstraction exprize

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Comment author: ciphergoth 03 April 2012 06:51:45AM 6 points [-]

CBT focusses on the immediate causes, not the long-standing causes. "I'm feeling anxious because I've just got an email from my boss and it makes me worry that he's angry", not "I'm feeling anxious because of my troubled relationship with my nursery carers".

Comment author: Vaniver 04 April 2012 07:43:13PM 2 points [-]

Right. The full example he gave is:

Contrast also "It bothers me when you leave soda cans on the table" vs. "You're such a slob, stop being such a slob." Or contrast: "I'm upset" -> "I'm upset because I think the other person is looking down on me" -> "I'm upset because the person's tone of voice sounds like people who looked down on me in high school". This is related to the incredibly important skill, search for the historical causes of your thoughts, rather than their justifications.

The arrows implied a progression to me, and the mention of "historical causes" in that context seems like "original causes" rather than "examples of this occurring in the past."

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