After I started noticing this, I've been realizing that coffee is not as useful in improving my focus as I thought it was earlier.
"Improving your focus"? Wait, you think that the placebo effect and you self-signaling by adopting the identity of a Hard Worker... weren't "improving your focus"? Compartmentalize the epistemic from the instrumental, dude! Sometimes your instincts, narrative-building instinct included, are a LOT smarter than you can be. Chesterton's Fence: do you have an idea how the "narrativist" instinct might have been advantageous in a similar situation, so that the adaptation is triggering now? If you don't, you might not know enough to handle a manual override!
P.S. Ah, it's already been noted by other commenters. Still, I think that'd be a few Quirrel points minus! You exhibited a textbook bit of Spock Rationality and used it to self-handicap...
P.P.S. Damn, I'm speaking in LW jargon when I'm too lazy for proper English.
P.P.S. Damn, I'm speaking in LW jargon when I'm too lazy for proper English.
At least you used “P.S.” rather than “ETA:”. ;-)
BTW, I guess that part of the reason why this comment was upvoted that high is that it's written in LWese, because the content is just a worn-out cliché (though one I do agree with).
Our internal dialogues are often exactly that: dialogues that suit a narrative. Narrative building (the basis of the narrative fallacy) is often quite detrimental to attempts to think clearly. It is therefore beneficial to detect and correct for biases introduced from narrative building. But it can be hard to distinguish a 'clear' thought from one that is a consequence of a narrative.
I offer a heuristic to make the distinction between a thought which is a direct attempt to model reality and a thought which is based solely on its suitability to a narrative:
Two examples:
1. When buying something: Often times, when I'm standing in a Starbucks line for a coffee and try to imagine why I'm standing there (when I can make my own coffee both at my home and at my office), I am usually returned with a feeling of being part of The People Who Do Things. Or one of being a Hard Worker who needs his Coffee to do his Hard Work with Focus and Determination. It fits too well while introducing a character in a novel. After I started noticing this, I've been realizing that coffee is not as useful in improving my focus as I thought it was earlier.
2. In conversations: This must be very familiar to most people. Anecdotes get highly embellished based on their suitability to a story. Also the way they are usually 'narrated' rather than just 'conveyed'. Realizing this when it happens can be quite useful.
Other examples?