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Logan Riggs1mo20

Did you listen to the song first?

8 [Exercise] Four Examples of Noticing Confusion

by Logan Riggs

18th Jan 2025

4 min read

8

Confusion is a felt sense; a bodily sensation you can pay attention to and notice! So here's my question for you:

What's this Song about?

Think About Things by Daði Frey
Youtube Link, Spotify Link
(recommended to listen to the song first, before reading the lyrics)

Lyrics

Baby I can't wait to know
Believe me I'll always be there so
Though I know I love you
I find it hard to see how you feel about me
'Cause I don't understand you
Oh you are yet to learn how to speak
When we first met
I will never forget
'Cause even though I didn't know you yet
We were bound together then and forever
And I could never let you go
Baby I can't wait to know
What do you think about things
Believe me I will always be there so
You can tell me anything and I'll listen
When we are together
There isn't anywhere that I would rather be
Three birds of a feather
I just hope you enjoy our company
It's been some time
And though hard to define
As if the stars have started to align
We are bound together
Now and forever
And I will never let you go
Baby I can't wait to know
What do you think about things
Believe me I will always be there so
You can tell me anything and I'll listen
I might
Even know what to say
But either way
At least I'll be there
Baby I can't wait to know
What do you think about things
Believe me I will always be there so
You can tell me anything and I'll listen

This is intended as an excercise, so feel free to stop for a moment, enjoy the song, and notice that confusion!

hint 1:

"Oh you are yet to learn how to speak"

hint 2:

"Three birds of a feather
I just hope you enjoy our company"

hint 3:

It's not about romantic love at all (but is indeed love)

hint 4:

Try interpreting everything literally

The answer:

It's about their newborn child, a literal "Baby"

Discussion:

I originally thought this song was about a new romantic partner, which is a great guess based off priors of pop songs w/ the word "Baby" in it.

Then I came across the line:

Oh you are yet to learn how to speak

Is he negging? Why diss your new romantic partner?

Three birds of a feather
I just hope you enjoy our company

Are they a thruple? But there's been no mention of another person this whole time.

So here my expectation of "typical love song" clashed with the literal words of the song. The easy way out is to ignore those parts of the lyrics (since everything else fits so nicely!), but this "clash + wanting to ignore" has a specific physical feeling in my body!

After allowing both my hypothesis and the contradicting evidence to exist in my head at the same time, I came to the correct conclusion.

Now another question for you, how would you have thought of this sooner?

For me:
1. I have a hypothesis/expectation
2. I come across contradicting evidence and try to ignore it (which has a specific feeling I can notice)
3. Instead, acknowledge/voice the conflict.
4. Stay w/ the conflicting evidence & hypothesis for some time (if applicable)

Okay, now that you've 100% internalized noticing confusion faster, let's move to example 2:

Anything Funny w/ This Painting?

A Scene on the Ice Near a Town (by Hendick Avercamp)

Hendrick Avercamp | A Scene on the Ice near a Town | NG1479 | National Gallery, London

(Link to zoom in)

Hint 1:

Look at everyone wearing red specifically

Hint 2:

Anything in the sky?

Answer:

It's actually just "A Scene on the Ice Near a Town", nothing more or symbolic. The hints were fake, so hopefully they confused you.

What's this comedy sketch about?

[Content Warning: PG-13]

This DJ’s Shout-Outs Are Way Too Specific - Key & Peele

My answer:

The title is misleading. It's not too specific. The DJ is replacing slang w/ positive connotations with their literal meaning (w/ negative connotations).

Here's someone's Youtube comments I disagreed w/

The actual joke is that everyone wants to be the words he says like pimp, gangster, playa, etc. because they’re treated as cool or hype in rap culture. When he says the actual meaning of those words though, owning women, killing people, disrespecting women, etc. everybody puts their hands down because they realize the reality of those words isn’t fun or hype at all.

For me, this doesn't seem to fit the original situation. My critique:

It doesn't feel like those people, in those moments, are glorifying the literal meanings of those words. That's not honest. If the commenter heard someone say "Slay Queen!", would they say "That's treating murder as cool!"

[Unrelated to Noticing Confusion, their error is "actual meaning" and "reality of those words", implying a word's "true meaning" is only their literal meaning as opposed to depending on context]

Conclusion

I hope you've gained some practice in noticing your confusion! It's good to prepare for more difficult situations, with disincentives to voicing confusion e.g. looking weird in the smoked filled room, saying the Emperor Wears No Clothes (cause more realistically, you'd be executed), or looking like an idiot by admitting your wrong.

Now, it's been implied in this post that noticing confusion is a positive thing. When you say to yourself "Noticing confusion is always the correct thing", do you notice anything?

Rationality

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[Exercise] Four Examples of Noticing Confusion

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[-]jbash1mo44

What confusion?

I originally thought this song was about a new romantic partner, which is a great guess based off priors of pop songs w/ the word "Baby" in it.

... but based on you having presented it as an "exercise", the obvious prior is that it's anything but that. Otherwise it wouldn't be interesting.

Unless you're being tricksy, of course, so we have to leave some probability for it being that.

I find it hard to see how you feel about me

Hmm. A baby? That's fairly common in songs.

"Oh you are yet to learn how to speak"

Oh, OK, it's about a baby. Unless, of course, it's more tricksiness.

But from there on it's just looking for confirmation.

When we first met [...] We were bound together then and forever

Oh, it's totally a baby. Although that may be more obvious if you're a parent.

And then more and more gets piled on.

[-]Logan Riggs1mo20

This is great feedback, thanks! I added another example based off what you said.

For how obvious the first one, at least two folks I asked (not from this community) didn't think it was a baby initially (though one is non-native english and didn't know "2 birds of a feather" and assumed "our company" meant "the singers and their partner"). Neither are parents.

I did select these because they caused confusion in myself when I heard/saw them years ago, but they were "in the wild" instead of in a post on noticing confusion.

I did want a post I could link [non rationalist friends] to that's a more fun intro to noticing confusion, so more regular members might not benefit!

[-]dabbing.1mo30

I figured it was a baby at the second stanza, I dont think the confusion you felt is reproducible that easily

[-]Logan Riggs1mo20

Did you listen to the song first?

[-]dabbing.1mo10

Nevermind I didnt think was a requirement

[-]Logan Riggs1mo20

I didn't either, but on reflection it is!

I did change the post based off your comment, so thanks!

[-][anonymous]1mo10

(I think it's good for posts with confusion exercises to exist)

I disagree with the post's opening claim (which is orthogonal to the rest of it, I think):

Confusion is a felt sense; a bodily sensation you can pay attention to and notice

I think this comes from an (understandable) typical mind fallacy (longer-form link).

I know there is a post somewhere where the author describes starting to primarily experience things like confusion as bodily sensations, but that doesn't mean that is the fundamental nature of confusion:

It's surely not for minds in general, since confusion is fundamentally cognitive, not fundamentally bodily. In this sense the statement is wrong, though an adapted one which says "confusion happens at the same time as a specific bodily sensation" is possible to be true for particular beings. The next point is about that claim, but about all humans.
It's not true for all humans; for me, confusion is not a bodily sensation. It could be that if I did a certain series of meditations trying to make myself feel confusion as a bodily sensation, that would start happening for me, but that's not how I am now, and I'm content experiencing confusion in the way I do so I won't try to change it. (For me confusion is a mental dynamic, and also noticeable. It also comes with some change in mental qualia but I wouldn't describe it as bodily.)

[-]Logan Riggs1mo20

You're actually right that this is due to meditation for me. AFAIK, it's not a synesthesia-esque though (ie I'm not causing there to be two qualia now), more like the distinction between mental-qualia and bodily-qualia doesn't seem meaningful upon inspection.

So I believe it's a semantic issue, and I really mean "confusion is qualia you can notice and act on" (though I agree I'm using "bodily" in non-standard ways and should stop when communicating w/ non-meditators).

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