...I don't think "don't engage the problem at all" is really a viable option. Once you've taken the red pill, you can't really go back up the rabbit hole, right?

You don't have to fall down it and smash out your brains at the bottom either.

I... don't think that metaphor actually connects to any choices you can actually make.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against ignoring things. There are so many things you could pay attention to and the vast majority simply aren't worth it.

But when you find yourself afraid, or uneasy, or upset, I don't think you should ignore it. I don't think you really can.

There's got to be some thought or belief that's disturbing you (usually, caveats, blah blah), and you've got to track it down and nail it to the ground. Maybe it's a real external problem you've got to solve, maybe it's a flawed belief you've got to convincingly disprove to yourself, or at least honestly convince yourself that the problem belongs to the huge class of things that aren't worth worrying about.

But if that's the correct solution to a problem, just convincing yourself it aint worth worrying about, you've still got to arrive at that conclusion as an actual belief, by actually thinking about it. You can't just decide to believe it, cuz that'd just be belief in belief, and that doesn't really seem to work, emotionally, even for people who haven't generalized the concept of belief in belief.

Anyway, the more I've had to practice articulating what was bothering me (that about our/my values logically auto-cannibalizing themselves), the more I've come to actually believe that it's not worth worrying about. (It no longer feels particularly likely to really mean much, and then even if it did why would it apply to me?)

So when you said:

I prefer to just [A] look directly at the problem instead of [B] haring off after solutions I know I can't find, and then [C] Ignore it.

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I was doing when I wrote this post. Just that in order to effectively reach [C:Ignore], you've got to properly do [A:look at problem] first, and [B: try looking for solutions] is part of that.