This cognitive phenomenon is usually lumped in with “confirmation bias.” However, it seems to me that the phenomenon of trying to test positive rather than negative examples, ought to be distinguished from the phenomenon of trying to preserve the belief you started with. “Positive bias” is sometimes used as a synonym for “confirmation bias,” and fits this particular flaw much better.

Subtle distinction I almost missed here. Worth expanding.

This works on a number of levels, although perhaps the most obvious is the divide between styles of thought on the order of "visual thinker", "verbal thinker", etc.  People who differ here have to constantly reinterpret everything they say to one another, moving from non-native mode to native mode and back with every bit of data exchanged.

Have you written more about those different styles somewhere?

And this is how talking is anchrored in Costly Signaling.

(Note that "I dunno, probably around 9 pm." is still an assurance, though of a different kind: You're assuring that 9 pm is an honest estimate. If it turns out you make such statements up at random, it will cost you.)

And that's why talking can convey information at all.

TL;DR It often takes me a bit to grasp what you're pointing to.

Not because you're using concepts I don't know but because of some kind of translation friction cost. Writing/reading as an ontological handshake.

For example:

>How does task initiation happen at all, given the existence of multiple different possible acts you could take? What tips the mind in the direction of one over another?

The question maps obviously enough to my understandings, in one way or another*, but without contextual cues, decoding the words took me seconds and marginally-conscious searching.

* I basically took it as "How do decisions work?". Though, given the graphic, it looks like you're implying a kind of privileged passive state before a "decision"/initiation happens, but that part of the model is basically lost on me because its exact shape is within a meaning searchspace with too many remaining degrees of freedom.

>There are four things people confuse all the time, and use the same sort of language to express, despite them meaning very different things:

I think my brain felt a bit of "uncertainty what to do with the rest of the sentence", in a "is there useful info in there" sense, after the first 9 words. I think the first 9 words sufficed for me, they (with context below) contained 85% of the meaning I took away.

>Whether you're journaling, Internal Double Cruxing, doing Narrative Therapy, or exploring Internal Family Systems, there's something uniquely powerful about letting your thoughts finish.

Strikes me as perhaps a plain lack of Minto (present your conclusion/summary first, explanations/examples/defenses/nuances second, for that's how brains parse info). For the first half of the sentence my brain is made to store blank data, waiting for connections that will turn them into info.

Also reminded of parts of this, which imo generalizes way beyond documentations.

Dunno if this is even useful, but it'd be cool if you had some easy to fix bottlenecks.

But those are all just a few ways to unblock the initial spark/decision/compulsion to do something you deliberately plan to do. If you don’t focus too much on deliberate steps of an action, you might find yourself able to do them more easily by just following notions; “non-doing,” or wuwei, is a phrase often used for this state. Of course, you also might find yourself non-doing something else other than the thing you “intend” to (that’s rather the point).

But that this “cheat” can work at all indicates again that there’s something about deliberate attention and focus that can evoke things which demotivate us, or paralyze us with indecision or fear. Acting before your conscious thoughts can get in the way is, in many ways like putting yourself in a state of total freedom from consequences; consequences only impact our behavior when we know about and believe in them, after all. This is a great strategy when the risks or consequences aren’t “real.”

This just gave me a massive "click".

Meta-feedback: I find your content really good conceptually, but unfortunately harder to read than other top posters'

~Don't aim for the correct solution, (first) aim for understanding the space of possible solutions

Seconded (after working with this concept-handle for a day). This here seems to be the exact key for (dis)solving the way my brain executes self-deception (clinging, attachment, addiction,).

(I'm noticing that in writing this, my brain is fabricating an option that has all the self-work results I envision, without any work required)

I find that [letting go of the (im)possible worlds where I'm not trapped] helps reframe/dissolve the feeling of trappedness. 

However, that kind of letting go often feels like paying a large price. E.g. in case of sensory overload it can feel like giving up on having any sense of control over reality/sensory-input whatsoever.

Does that maybe get at what you were asking?

It all does! Again, thanks for sharing.