Interesting article: http://danariely.com/2010/08/02/how-we-view-people-with-medical-labels/

One reason why it's a good idea someone with OCD (or for that matter, Asperger, psychosis, autism, paranoia, schizophrenia — whatever) should make sure new acquaintances know of his/her condition:

I suppose that being presented by a third party, as in the example, should make a difference when compared to self-labeling (which may sound like excusing oneself)?

This is an example of a pretty different kind of thing to what WrongBot is talking about. It's a hack for rationing attention or a technique for avoiding distraction and keeping focus for a period of time. You read the email once your current time-critical priority was dealt with, you didn't permanently delete it. Such tactics can be useful and I use them myself. It is quite different from permanently avoiding some information for fear of permanent corruption of your brain.

I'm a little surprised that you would have thought that this example fell into the same class of things as WrongBot or I were talking about. Perhaps we need to define what kinds of 'dangerous thought' we are talking about a little more clearly. I'm rather bemused that people are conflating this kind of avoidance of viscerally unpleasant experiences with 'dangerous thoughts' as well. It seems others are interpreting the scope of the article massively more broadly than I am.

I think this is a worthwhile discussion.

Here are some "true things" I don't want to know about:

• the most catchy commercial jingle in the universe
• what 2g1c looks like. I managed to avoid it thus far
• the day I am going to die

I know what's going on. You think of yourself and others as collections of thoughts and ideas. Since most people don't have interesting thoughts or ideas, you think they aren't interesting. OTOH, it's possible to adopt, temporarily and in a manner which automatically reverses itself, the criteria for assigning interest that the person you are associating with uses. When you do that, everyone turns out to be interesting and likable.

Come to think of it, a related argument was made, poetically, in Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan knew everything, it did clearly change his utility function (he became less human) and he mentioned appreciating not knowing the future when Adrian blocked it with tacheons. Poetry, but something to think about it.

Even better would be an Amazon like recommendation system - 'other people who benefited from this tip also benefited from...'

You can't decide not to have thoughts.

I disagree, because I have a method for doing so which I believe is effective. I stumbled upon it accidentally, while doing a mental exercise. The point of the exercise was gaze control. Normally we look around automatically and unconsciously, so I went for a walk (on a familiar path with nothing to run into or trip over) and made an effort not to, to always keep my eyes in one particular position, and never divert my gaze. First, I went around looking only forward; then, looking almost straight up, navigating by peripheral vision and using treetops as landmarks. The key was, whenever I caught myself looking down, I would immediately close my eyes, reset, and resume. This both stopped me from continuing to look down and, more importantly, stopped me from thinking about the fact that I had done so.

You can do the same thing to unwanted thoughts, such as songs stuck in your head, as long as you have the right response prepared. First, identify the unwanted thought, and which parts of the brain it uses. In the case of a song, that's your audio short-term memory, and if it has lyrics, your language processing centers. Next, prepare a thought which uses the same parts of the brain. I'll call this a "reset thought". In this case, a short meaningless phrase will work. Test it by trying to think both the reset thought and the unwanted thought at the same time, to make sure you can't (alternating is okay though.) Next, reinforce the reset thought, by focusing on it exclusively for an hour or so. Finally, turn the unwanted thought into a trigger for the reset thought, so that both the unwanted thought and any meta-thought about the unwanted thought are forced out quickly. Repeat the reset thought until something else is ready to take its place.

Zen teaches students to use a short mantra as a reset thought. The important things are that it must be able to repeat in a loop, it must have a natural stopping point in which to let in the thought which follows after, and it must be simple enough for the area which is being reset to remember, without needing other parts of the brain to assist in recall.

YMMV, of course. I'm very interested in what you think of this, since you have data sources (students) which I don't.

Question

cough technically....

not sure I understood exactly what you meant by "I started eating a gummy worm with 50% probability each time I did the chore at a pre-determined time early in the evening."

If I am not mistaken... every time he finished a chore that he had scheduled he tossed a (metaphoric or literal) coin. If heads, he ate a gummy worm but if tails he did not eat a gummy worm.

Nice post, John. Please post more on those topics.

Question: not sure I understood exactly what you meant by "I started eating a gummy worm with 50% probability each time I did the chore at a pre-determined time early in the evening."

You won me in the first paragraph and your description of Vassar's psyche.

I could promptly visualize his curious face investigating the walls, wrinkles between his eyes while he tries to draw mental connections between 11 different sources before coming up with an "Aha!", followed by an elegant (normally accurate) explanation he'll be pleased to share.

Developing over Rain: if you have time, you are curious and can make the other person at ease, questions will take you miles into the conversation. You'll learn, and the other person will be pleased to share.

However, I also agree with JoshuaZ: inane subjects are a problem. One should not fake curiosity, and all subjects are not equally interesting. If the person only talks about something you don't give a damn, faking interest wastes time and poisons your soul.

Talking to this person then becomes a gamble: "what is my expectation of maybe reaching something interesting here, if I keep asking questions enough for the next X minutes?". Of course, given enough time, you'll reach something interesting. But time is finite, and nobody seems to have enough time anymore, anyway.

So, with this person you could:

a. learn in the meta level (observe the dynamics of the conversation, or try to figure out his/her behavior); or

b. be the talker (if the person likes what you have to say, or you think you can help with something); or

c. just present her to someone who happens to also like celebrity gossips, make both happy, and excuse yourself to go find the waiter with the valuable cheese appetizers.