wallowinmaya comments on Attempted Telekinesis - LessWrong
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Great post. Some cases of "attempted telekinesis" seem to be similar to "shoulding at the universe".
To stay with your example: I can easily imagine that if I were in your place and experienced this stressful situation with CFAR, my system 1 would have became emotionally upset and "shoulded" at the universe: "I shouldn't have to do this alone. Someone should help me. It is so unfair that I have so much responsibility".
This is similar to attempted telekinesis in the sense that my system 1 somehow thinks that just by becoming emotionally upset it will magic someone (or the universe itself) into helping me and improving my situation.
Shoulding at the universe is also a paradigmatic example of a wasted motion. Realizing this helped me a lot because I used to should at the universe all the time ("I shouldn't have to learn useless stuff for university because I don't have enough time to do important work."; "This guy shouldn't be so irrational and strawman my arguments"; etc. etc.)