What comes before rationality

I am alarmed and dismayed that no-one has raised the issue of privacy in this thread. Swimmer963, just from glancing through your comments, you're [rot13'd description of Swimmer963 deleted].

I didn't whizz through those to be creepy (actually I was impressed at how you seem to be consistently sensible), but if you're going to share incredibly personal details about "a friend" who was raped, we need to know if this information has been posted with her consent. The above is very easily enough to personally identify you.

On whether or not this will be important or not: [blanked].

EDIT: Deleted precis of Swimmer963's situation; it had served its purpose. EDIT: Deleted some personal information.

4komponisto14y

I think (or, anyway, hope) what you meant to write was "you need her consent before posting", rather than "we need to know whether you obtained her consent [so that we can socially penalize you if it turns out you didn't]."

1AstroCJ14y

Socially penalise, nothing. Something as personal as this, it's deeply unusual not to make it clear that you have permission; my concern is for the privacy of person under discussion.

3Psychohistorian14y

This is an interesting point. However, given that people seldom have interest in random strangers, this really doesn't seem that worrisome. If I were particularly dedicated to finding out, say, the name of the roommate of someone I don't know on the internet's roommate, this'd give me a decentish pointer. It'd still be really hard. If I actually met the subject of this person and wanted to find out personal details about her life, I'd need to know specifically about this post and the author's relation to the subject. Otherwise, it seems quite hopeless. At the very least though, she could have been more vague on their relationship, as it would have minimized any such risk and cost the post nothing.

5saturn14y

If Swimmer963 and her roommate have overlapping social circles, and Swimmer963 talks about posting on LW with her real life acquaintances, it's fairly likely that someone will be able to put two and two together.

2Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 14y

We don't have the same circles, and we're no longer roommates, and I don't talk about Less Wrong with most people, and if any of you did meet her you might find out about it from her first... Nevertheless, I did not think through all of that. I have some problems with privacy, i.e. I don't actually notice situations that involve 'personal' information, whether it's mine or other people's. At least I have the right to post whatever personal stuff I want wherever I want...but I don't have that right for other people. I did change the wording of the original post to 'friend'.

0nick01200014y

Why worry about Google stockpiling your personal information when people are entirely capable of profiling you anyway!

[-]waveman14y130

If she had the sort of childhood you describe, her problems are not with her apparatus of rational thinking, but with her emotional brain. If the problem is not with her cognitive apparatus, it cannot be solved there.

It is very common for people who had toxic childhoods to become very interested in psychology. See for example Alice Miller's book "The Drama of the Gifted Child" which explains that children who grow up in toxic environments often become psychologically "gifted" out of necessity, and end up as psychologists.

Unfortunately while they may gain knowledge, it usually does not help. It does not help any more than knowing that you are frightened of dogs because several dogs bit you as a child. This insight does not solve the problem.

What to do?

Psychotherapy has a very poor track record. There are some good therapists and many poor ones. A lot of therapists are themselves the walking wounded. Irvin Yalom seems to be one of the good ones - see for example "The Gift of Therapy" for how it can work.

Time is a slow and ineffective healer. Many people go to their graves still terribly wounded.

One reason people with traumatic childhood seem to end up i... (read more)

[-]erratio14y110

Anecdotally, most people reading the Sequences will be neither harmed nor helped in the short term, for the same reason that your friend can clinically list off her problems (and probably their most successful interventions) without feeling able to change her reactions - there's a huge leap from absorbing knowledge to working out how to apply it. In the longer term, being exposed to a large volume of persuasive writing about how to own your beliefs and attitudes is helpful (in that it will help people make the shift away from a fixed mindset, which is absolutely essential for real progress), but I have no idea how much.

Personally, I do feel like I've gained benefit from my time here, but I'd be hard-pressed to point to any specific article or technique that caused the change, other than the general atmosphere of challenging one's beliefs.

2rysade14y

This is the story of the last year of my life. Most of the major paradigm shifts in my life I can attribute to either my own ingenuity or schooling, but this site (in a very short time span) has resulted in two shifts by itself.

0atucker14y

I agree that this is really important. Many of the more useful recent changes in my life were the result of the idea that I can look at what's going wrong, and actually do something to try and change it (and see if that works, and keep trying and refining) more than any particular single piece of advice. There was also some impact from different thinking habits (dissolving the question, avoiding generalizing from one example, thinking of goals and then solutions, etc.) which have definitely been widely helpful in my life, but rather than delivering a few large chunks of utility, they gave a bunch of really small ones.

[-]Kevin14y100

Professional MDMA psychotherapy seems to work really well for these kinds of things, though it is quite hard to come by in legal form. Just taking MDMA and then having an intimate/therapeutic conversation with a close friend might work just as well.

Really. MDMA is way more effective than anything else for this kind of thing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100719082927.htm http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/

(Should be about 10 years before MDMA makes it through the FDA approval process)

A much less effective recommendation is compassion/lovingkindness meditation.

8Marius14y

The study cited does not show that MDMA is the most effective therapy. It shows that MDMA can be useful in patients for whom conventional therapy has failed. There is a difference.

2Kevin14y

(Also meant to link to this but apparently that didn't happen. http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/ ) Yes, that's true. I'm intuitively inferring from the data and personal experience.

3SilasBarta14y

What makes you think the FDA would approve MDMA at all (if that's what you meant)?

2Kevin14y

Statement by the leadership of MAPS at their recent conference that they were solidly on track with regards to the FDA approval process. They are doing it by the book, are getting results showing high safety/efficacy, and the FDA is probably not going to be able to defy the data and keep MDMA illegal.

3Marius14y

MDMA may well turn out to be highly safe and effective, but MAPS is excessively optimistic in this assessment. See, for instance, their characterization of Dr. Halpern's response to the NHS critique as a "careful and well-reasoned response". In many of the instances, Halpern invents defenses to legitimate criticism. For instance: *They reported his study was underpowered. His response should have been a power calculation demonstrating adequate study power; instead he simply noted that his was the largest study yet performed. *NHS noted a lack of followup over time to investigate cognitive decline, and he claimed that the includion of only long-term users solved this problem. It does not, because he looked at current ravers only. Had he looked at "people who raved 5 years ago, regardless of current multidrug use, current death or disability, etc" this would be acceptable. *Asking participants to refrain from taking ecstasy is nonstandard in a medical study. I understand that he did it to distinguish between acute and chronic effects, but it's not nearly as easy as that. *Exclusion of polysubstance users is totally unacceptable in a study of drug safety. If MDMA and cocaine used together lead to more cognitive decline than cocaine alone, then that must be counted as "MDMA causes cognitive decline". In order to obtain FDA approval despite multiple small studies showing a poor safety profile, a much larger and better-designed safety study will be required. Even then, the FDA has a history of rejecting medications that really ought to be approved. See Sugammadex.

[-]Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 14y80

I deleted this post. I will write another post later about why I deleted it.

4rabidchicken14y

Though the privacy concern was valid, the post was really interesting and made me think more carefully about possible negative impacts of rationality. If you ever feel you can write something similar that avoids the concerns people had, that would be great.

2Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 14y

I am planning to rewrite it minus privacy concerns, but it will require more research so I can't do it until the school year is over.

2[anonymous]12y

I'm basically only curious because of the interesting title (found it while I was searching for a different LW post), but did you ever rewrite this?

3Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 12y

Nope. Forgot it existed. Whoops.

4AstroCJ14y

I hope you didn't take my initial comment as being aggressive or judgemental; it was a good post, well written and interesting. I hope, too, that there's no kind of fallout.

8Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 14y

I don't remember what your original comment was. However, when I read the gist of all the privacy comments, I realized I really had not thought about that aspect. Aggressive has nothing to do with it.

[-]magfrump14y50

I have personally had some significant issues getting myself to deal with problems in a constructive way--I was diagnosed with depression several months ago.

I put off seeking treatment, and especially medication, for essentially irrational reasons.

More recently I have started taking Lexapro, and I am MUCH happier. A large part of being able to make that decision came from Less Wrong--the ideas of "happiness set points," beating procrastination, and the idea that using technology to help improve myself is natural and necessary, helped me close th... (read more)

1Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 14y

She is definitely not theist, so that isn't a problem.

[-]handoflixue14y40

Honestly, I've found the single hardest part of overcoming my damage is simply finding something that actually motivates me: For the majority of my life, even now, irrationality is sufficiently successful that I have no reason to "correct" it. I happen to have a strong investment in the identity of "rational", which gave me enough of a push to start reading this site, but I could still easily make excuses as to why I wasn't applying it. It wasn't until I found Something To Protect in my life that I started really taking this stuff serio... (read more)

[-]Armok_GoB14y40

"I have zero examples of people who have used the methods of rationality ... to help with the problems they have that most people don’t have..."

I have. Extremely much so. Although I REALLY don't want to discus my problems publicly like this, I can't find any other way to communicate the necessary information: I used to be extremely irrational with a large number of mental-illness-calibre delusions, and now I am, despite the occasionall bizarre failure mode and despite still being mentally ill in non epistemological ways, I'm catching up with LW in terms of sanity.

[-]pjeby14y40

I'm not clear on the goal of your post -- it doesn't seem to make a statement or ask a specific question, either -- but if you are asking for practical advice for your friend, I would highly recommend the book "Recovering From Co-Dependency: It's Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood," by Weiss and Weiss. I've personally found it to be an invaluable resource, and IME it's just the thing for an analytical person interested in psychology to get an initial grip on actually doing something about their issues.

The book is written primarily as a bri... (read more)

1taryneast14y

For anybody having difficulty finding that on amazon, it's actually: Recovery from Co-Dependency: It's Never Too Late to Reclaim Your Childhood and Becoming the Way We Are (took me a little bit of fiddling to find). The two Pamela Levin books seem to be out of print now, but the co-dependancy one is available. BTW - looks interesting, thanks :)

1pjeby14y

I got my (used) copies via Amazon: Cycles of Power Becoming The Way We Are Sorry about that; the subtitle on the back cover of Weiss&Weiss actually reads "it's never too late to have a happy childhood", even though the front is different.

0taryneast14y

Thanks for the new links :) Also - strangely, the word amazon had a real problem with was "recovering" instead of "recovery".... I think I've grown too dependent on google's smart search-words! ;)

[-]TheOtherDave14y40

In my own life, the thing that seems to help most is paying attention to what I'm doing.

Not so much in terms of analyzing patterns, though there's nothing wrong with that, but in terms of attending to the individual events and being aware of how I am reacting and what I am reacting to, and doing so insofar as possible without imposing my expectations or my judgments on what I perceive.

Mostly, what seems to be going on is that when I don't really pay attention, my brain happily fills in the resulting gaps in my awareness with all kinds of cached/default a... (read more)

5handoflixue14y

I've found that sort of self-awareness is incredibly helpful. My newest trick has been asking WHY I'm violating my previous plans - for instance, if I plan to diet, and end up over-eating, I'll ask myself, in the moment, why I'm doing this. It helps me form better plans in the future, as I can better predict my own future reasoning. For instance, I might over-eat because I got lost in work for eight hours and then realized I was utterly ravenous, or I might realize that I enjoy the pleasure of food more than I enjoy the idea of losing weight and drop the idea entirely :)

[-]byrnema14y40

Some of the even more drastic failures are described in the book The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz.

There's no way I'm reading that book. Knowing about and thinking about the bizarre ways people abuse children is the worst thing about reality for me. It's why I don't read online local news anymore -- the media thinks such stuff is fascinating but I guess they don't expect people to actually think about what the story is about? But still these sad little stories (sometimes only 8 words long) make their way into whatever I'm reading and ruin my day.

Does anyone else share my sensitivity? Does anyone have any advice?

[-]mutterc14y120

My technique for keeping from being depressed by news: remember that, if it's newsworthy, it's rare.

"In sports, half the teams won their games today. All of the players are millionaires, most of whom have no major drug problems." - Dogbert

5Kaj_Sotala14y

I've suffered of the same. There were a couple of real reports about child abuse that I once read which not only completely ruined my mood, but would also threaten to ruin my mood if I ever remembered them afterwards. Since they were rather shocking ones, I still can't help occasionally recalling them, even though I read them maybe five years ago. This hasn't been helped by the fact that if I see a headline about a child abuse case so that the actual article is, say, only a mouse click away, I get this morbid curiosity and have to read it. I was also rather strongly distraught on a couple of occasions when some online friends mentioned (non-abusively) spanking their kids, to the extent that I had to take a break from the conversation to calm down. Over the years my tolerance has grown, but I'm not sure of what exactly it's been that did it. Partially it's been just adaptation - running into a shocking concept often enough that it's started to feel less serious. This isn't specific only to child abuse: I've always reacted strongly to any reports of people suffering. My getting more able to accept that it's happening has been a part of an overall process of getting more used to the idea of people suffering. It's involved stuff like shifting my emotional utility function away from states of the world and towards my own behavior. Also learning to recognize on an emotional level that the map isn't the territory - I'm allowed to not feel bad about horrible things happening as long as it doesn't make me ignore them, because horrible things won't stop happening just because I feel bad about them. Of course I've always known this on an intellectual level, but accepting this on an emotional level is much harder and something I still need to work on. Reading Ken Wilber's No Boundary and doing some of the exercises outlined there helped considerably.

1byrnema14y

Thanks, I'll try reading through that book. A comparison of Eastern and Western perspectives would be interesting in any case. I also found Michael Vassar's comment enlightening: "Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding" by Kahlil Gibran was life-changing for me. I interpreted it as whenever I am saddened by something, it's a signal that I need to face a truth about it. It helped in many aspects of my life; for example, in helping me to realize (at a level of emotional acceptance) that I can't force people to be or feel the way I want them to. But it it didn't seem to help in other cases, such as this one, where even after I accepted the truth of the situation ('yes, I understand this happens and it's part reality'), the pain didn't go away. I think Michael's comment may be the other half of it. I know that child abuse causes me pain, so I will prevent it as I can, but find a detachment to be liberated from being distressed about what is beyond my control. There is also a comfort in affirming that I would change it if I could, as would others -- my emotional utility function has shifted from the actual state of reality towards approving of and finding a protected place for these values I have that I find are important to me. It is the Serenity Prayer, I guess, from a fresh direction -- as this meditation is also the kind of thing that has been revisited so many times it loses its meaning. I'll think about fitting this second piece into my thoughts and see if it helps in a practical way with my problem.

-7rabidchicken14y

-8nick01200014y

[-]Psychohistorian14y30

I don’t know how the LessWrong community would treat people like my friend, or whether introducing her to the Sequences would help. It’s not an experiment I want to try unless I have some concrete evidence that it will help.

I don't see much of a need for evidence before introducing someone to the sequences. I teach private test prep and will routinely refer my students to the sequences for reading practice. I sincerely believe it helps, but I'm highly confident I will never be able to obtain reliable evidence to that effect. I am quite confident, however, it does little or no harm.

So unless it'd be costly to get her to read the sequences, how could they hurt?

2MinibearRex14y

One obvious case would be this. If she has trouble trusting people already, learning a whole bunch of new problems about them might worsen it. On the other hand, she is a psych student, so I assume she already knows a lot of that stuff.

[-]rabidchicken14y30

Reading the sequences inspired me to test my beliefs, including my negative beliefs about humans that mostly stem from my relationship with my parents. Sometimes I discovered that my pessimism did not go away or got worse, but on average it receded, since I was so far below the LW norm already.

I don't know how this would specifically apply to someone who has been sexually abused. But If humans really are better than her cached beliefs, applying the methods of rationality to them should make her happier. There is very little concrete evidence when it comes to predicting human minds, but rationality should always lead you to a more logical conclusion based off of your priors.

[-]JGWeissman14y20

Every boyfriend is narcissistic or has borderline personality disorder.

This could be a result of privileging the hypothesis, considering these possibilities without enough evidence to properly suggest them, possibly because studying psychology makes them salient. An approach to getting this point across might be to show her An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem, and really work through the examples of interpreting medical tests. Then apply that concept to diagnosing narcissism. Find out how frequent it is in the population, and how likely a narciss... (read more)

4NancyLebovitz14y

That's possible, and it's also possible that she's getting involved with that sort of man, either because she's attracted to them or because they're attracted to her and she doesn't have the tools needed to turn them down.

1Jonathan_Graehl14y

Both occurred to me. Your suggestion fits the conventional plot better. I have no direct experience myself, but I hear it in stories all the time.

0rysade14y

I would NOT suggest analyzing either statistical evidence or assuming that she is perhaps right about her exes. The odds are of course not with her when we ask if she has had multiple boyfriends with borderline or narcissism. What we are more likely to find is that she has the same issues many of us here on this site do, which is that she is partially mind-blind and is taking shots in the dark as we all would if we were too close to the situation

[-]Jonathan_Graehl14y10

It’s not an experiment I want to try unless I have some concrete evidence that it will help.

Status quo bias.

I understand that you care about her, but there's no way recommending that she read about biases will harm her. It sounds like she already knows all that stuff, though, from how you describe her.

[-]lessdazed14y00

Still. A lot of things are hard. A lot of things are hard but possible. So far, I have zero examples of people who have used the methods of rationality, as separate from just knowledge, to help with the problems they have that most people don’t have...

LW has helped me articulate my intuitions and given me more confidence in them. These intuitions are usually about why an argument is wrong.

It's about how not to be stupid, how not to fail in certain ways. I don't have examples of things it has helped me do because it is never a necessary or sufficient con... (read more)

2handoflixue14y

That's a very interesting insight, the idea that rationality and luck serve the same role, and can ostensibly be substituted for each other. I'm enjoying re-framing it as "learning rationality is learning to be lucky". Not sure if it's a useful insight, but definitely an interesting new perspective. Thank you :)

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