I guess i don't "want" myself to do anything. I don't decide what is right in advance because if i do anything to predetermine my answer before a question arises then i'm starting off with a bias.
In a way what i'm saying is 1+1 could equal 2 tomorrow (which it can't) and I will still probably get the answer right because i didn't decide to stick with the answer 1+1=2 before the question was asked (therefore before this mysterious universe switched the answer).
I'll sound completely biased and unbelievable when i say this but i'll say it anyway- in my experience of breaking down my expectations for who "Dan" is and what "Dan does" i've made really good choices for the good of everyone around me. People around me have a model of what Dan apparently is which is empathetic, nice, generous etc. I'm always the first to point out a bias such as racism or nonfactual emotional opinions etc. I don't have to see myself as any of those things though. All I have to do is keep asking questions properly and at the right time and then output a response. No i'm not a calculator but the results are good according to everyone I meet and interact with.
"The point is to make them so good that you wouldn't disagree to begin with"
The problem with that is if you fix an answer like cement in to your brain based on one set of data- even if the data changes later you will have this cement lump in your head saying it's "so good that you wouldn't disagree" and so you don't recalculate. I mean why would you calculate an answer you already know?
What you really need to do is not make accurate biases to pre-determine or influence your answer but work on removing all your layers so you make the calculations properly and unbiased. That way you won't have to worry about if you dance or not- which ever one is right will be determined when the question comes up. Again this isn't just a theory of what i think you should do- this is what i do so don't tell me it isn't possible.
+1 for sharing; you seem the sort of person my post is aimed at: so averse to being constrained by self-image that you turn a blind eye when it affects you. It sounds to me like you that you are actively trying to suppress having beliefs about yourself:
People around me have a model of what Dan apparently is which is empathetic, nice, generous etc. I'm always the first to point out a bias such as racism or nonfactual emotional opinions etc. I don't have to see myself as any of those things though.
I've been there, and I can think of a number of possible...
Related to: Cached selves, Why you're stuck in a narrative, The curse of identity
Outline: Some back-story, Pondering the mechanics of self-image, The role of narrative, Narrative as a medium for self-communication.
tl;dr: One can have a self-image that causes one to neglect the effects of self-image. And, since we tend to process our self-images somewhat in the context of a narrative identity, if you currently make zero use of narrative in understanding and affecting how you think about yourself, it may be worth adjusting upward. All this seems to have been the case for me, and is probably part of what makes HPMOR valuable.
Some back-story
Starting when I was around 16 and becoming acutely annoyed with essentialism, I prided myself on not being dependent on a story-like image of myself. In fact, to make sure I wasn't, I put a break command in my narrative loop: I drafted a story in my mind about a hero who was able to outwit his foes by being less constrained by narrative than they were, and I identified with him whenever I felt a need-for-narrative coming on. Batman's narrator goes for something like this in the Dark Knight when he <select for spoiler-> abandons his heroic image to take the blame for Harvey Dent's death.
I think this break command was mostly a good thing. It helped me to resolve cognitive dissonance and overcome the limitations of various cached selves, and I ended up mostly focussed on whether my beliefs were accurate and my desires were being fulfilled. So I still figure it's a decent first-order correction to being over-constrained by narrative.
But, I no longer think it's the only decent solution. In fact, understanding the more subtle mechanics of self-image — what affects our self schemas, what they affect, and how — was something I neglected for a long time because I saw self-image as a solved problem. Yes, I developed a cached view of myself as unaffected by self-image constraints. I would have been embarassed to notice such dependencies, so I didn't. The irony, eh?
I'm writing this because I wouldn't be surprised to find others here developing, or having developed, this blind spot...
Pondering the mechanics of self-image
At some point in your life, you may have taken on a job or a project without knowing that after doing it for a month, it would negatively affect your self-image in some way. There may have been things that you always found very easy to do which, after some aspect of your self-image changed, you suddenly found yourself avoiding or struggling with.
It would be nice to be able to predict and maybe even control that sort of thing in advance. In general, I'd like a deeper understanding of the following questions:
If you've never sat to ask yourself these questions genuinely, I might suggest stopping here and thinking about them for a while. Simply taking the time to ponder these issues has lead me to many helpful realizations. For example:
I don't have anything like an inclusive, general theory of self-image, and I have lots of hanging questions. Can I come up with a reasonably finite exhaustive list of features to track in my own self-image, for practical gains? Does such a list exist for people in general? But even without these, asking myself the old 1-4 once in a while gives me something to think about.
The role of narrative
In my experience, personally and with others, the answers to questions 1-4 are not automatically transparent, even if we can find partial answers by asking them directly. So what other questions can we ask ourselves to understand our self-images?
It seems to be common lore that our self-images have something to do with narrative identity. I take this to mean that we process our self-images somewhat in terms of features and schemas that we also use to process common stories.
So, I've tried working through the following series of questions to get in touch with what aspects of my personal narrative cause me to experience shame, pride, indignation, and nurturance. I like to lay them all out like this to signal to myself what they're for and that I want to do them all:
Consequences. By asking myself these questions, I've come to some realizations that didn't result from asking myself the more direct questions 1-4. For example:
Does anyone have similar experiences they'd like to share? Or very dissimilar experiences? Or questions I could add to this list? Or well-reproduced psych references? HPMOR references are also highly encouraged, especially since I still haven't read it, and in light of this post, I probably should!
Narrative as a medium for self-communication
Like any method of affecting oneself, narrative is something one can over-use. But I think I personally have been over-cautious about this, to the point of neglecting it as an option and ignoring it as an unconscious constraint. To the extent that I now use it, I think of it as a way of communicating with myself, not to be used for trickery or over-selling a point.
To draw an analogy, if you tell your 2-year-old child "You trigger in me feelings of paternal nurturance", while this may be true, it's not communication. Hugging the child is communication. It's a language she'll understand. In fact, it's probably how you should teach her what "nurturance" means. In particular, it's not a trick, and it's not over-selling.
Likewise, when I'm convinced enough that something is true — like for once I should really try not feeling annoyed with a postmodernist to see if we can communicate — and it's time to tell that to my limbic system with some conviction, maybe it's worth speaking a language my emotional brain understands a little better, and maybe sometimes that language is narrative. Maybe I'll write myself a poem about patience. Maybe I already have ;)