orthonormal comments on The Meditation on Curiosity - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 October 2007 12:26AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (93)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: pjeby 01 February 2010 08:58:29PM 5 points [-]

I find this self-dialog very interesting; in certain aspects it resembles the sort of self-dialog I teach people to use to throw off more mundane fears and mental/emotional blocks, outdated moral injunctions, etc.

There are a few places in what you're doing where a more focused approach would be helpful, though. For example, I would define an outcome and a test procedure: what are you attempting to change, and how will you know if you changed it? This alone will help you trim distractions a bit.

Also, generally speaking, the key to getting rid of an irrational belief is to clearly identify the past negative consequences associated with disbelief in that belief. Your expectations of what will happen in the future are usually either an irrelevant speculative extrapolation by your logical mind, or a simple projection from emotional memory... And it's the latter category that's relevant, as long as you focus on identifying the "near", sensory memory of the events your future prediction is based on.

In particular, you are looking for memories involving the loss of either personal status/significance, the loss of connective bonding, the loss of perceived safety, or the loss of available novelty/stimulation, (with these latter two being far less common), associated with either you or someone else failing to believe (or act upon) the belief in question.

The neurological phenomenon known as "reconsolidation" explains why access to the original memory is useful; it's simplest to remove an emotional attachment to a thought or belief by reinterpreting the original memory that triggers the emotions, rather than to build elaborate reroutings of thought "downstream" of the source.

Once you've identified the specific memory you're using to form your emotional/intuitive judgment (creating the fear), you can use further questioning to cast doubt on your original interpretation of events, consider other possible interpretations, wonder whether the situation is different, etc... and in the process, this sets up alternative lines of thought linked from the original memory, allowing you to have a different emotional probability distribution, so to speak.

I'm being necessarily terse here, as I know of at least two whole books that have been written on minor variations of this basic process: "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie, and "Recreating Your Life" by Morty Lefkoe, each proposing a different sequence and set of questions, but essentially following the same general process I've just described. I've also done workshops on my own set of variations, with slightly different scopes of applicability than either of their methods.

Either book, however, is quite good with respect to having lots of example dialogues to show how to apply their processes in practice, and either one would, I think be helpful in focusing your approach to this, or any other attempt to change an emotional belief or judgment.

Comment author: MrHen 01 February 2010 09:58:26PM 4 points [-]

There are a few places in what you're doing where a more focused approach would be helpful, though. For example, I would define an outcome and a test procedure: what are you attempting to change, and how will you know if you changed it? This alone will help you trim distractions a bit.

Agreed. I posted Easy Predictors as an attempt to get input from the community about easy to test predictor beliefs but didn't get much of a response. I am keeping track of smaller things that have easy turnaround times to see if it is possible to do this sort of thing informally.

This does not apply to outcomes of belief creation, however. Is there a good way to test things like that? Or am I misinterpreting your suggestion? Or... ?

The rest of your comment is interesting to me because it directly focuses on the prediction of trauma due to dropping Theism (and related subjects). I hadn't really thought about the details of the fallout beyond key trouble spots. Is this a fair two-sentence reduction of your suggestions?

Looking at similar past events that carry the same emotional trauma due to dropped beliefs can give me the ability to question the validity of my fear of the future by comparing and contrasting the differences. In addition, this process may reveal a solution to the projected trauma by preventing it from happening or weakening its impact.

Am I close?

Comment author: orthonormal 02 February 2010 01:56:04AM 1 point [-]

Mr. Hen, I'm going to break custom and say something that may be regarded as poisoning the well. It's my conclusion that P.J. Eby is more or less a quack trying to drum up support for his psychological services, and that (in such an important matter as this) you shouldn't be trying to understand his jargon, let alone trying to take his advice.

His persistent trumpeting of perceptual control theory, which couples grandiose claims of precision with a complete lack of experimental support, is telling, and it's not the only red flag I've seen...

Comment author: MrHen 02 February 2010 02:42:58AM 1 point [-]

I am still willing to at least listen and dialog with pjeby, but I find it interesting that this comment is at +3 so quickly. Thank you for the warning (and concern). It does have an impact. (The karma swing helped.)

Comment author: pjeby 02 February 2010 04:10:21AM 7 points [-]

trying to drum up support for his psychological services

Right, that's why I recommended two books written by other people. You have brilliantly exposed my clever scheme:

  1. Offer assistance, while recommending books by other authors
  2. ????
  3. Profit!!!
Comment author: wedrifid 02 February 2010 09:29:51AM *  3 points [-]

Mr. Hen, I'm going to break custom and say something that may be regarded as poisoning the well.

I should note, now that the parent is at -1, that my vote does not represent disapproval of well poisoning, just disagreement in this instance. Pjeby's practical advice seems well founded to me and I believe it will benefit those willing to receive it.

I probably agree with you when it comes to the rigid use of PCT models and of his custom jargon. I find PJ's practical experience more useful than his abstract theorizing. I would not vote except, as you say, the matter is important. Even more so when someone's reputation is at stake.