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not to be all As A Former Math Grad Student but most people’s attempts to apply “logic” don’t really deserve the name in the first place tbh. usually when people try to form a “logical argument” they end up doing things like pretending that two things are the same which aren’t

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Chris Orozco

@OperationMoksha

· May 9

Emotions don't make logical sense and if you expect them to, you're gonna have a bad time. I see this all the time, people try to apply conventional logic to their emotions and it just doesn't work.

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 9

“logical arguments” esp. as applied to emotional topics are full of gaps if you try even a little bit to find them. mountains of unstated assumptions, mostly made unconsciously, that only escape looking patently ridiculous because people never bother to state them precisely

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

“logically i shouldn’t feel this way in this situation” why not? what unstated assumptions are you making about how emotions are supposed to work? why do you think they work that way? do they appear to work that way?

10:31 PM · May 9, 2022Twitter for iPad

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 9

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@QiaochuYuan

there’s nothing “logical” about pretending the world works a different way than it does. when i pay attention to the way my emotions actually work on their own terms they make plenty of sense. it may not be a familiar form of sense but there is plenty of deep structure there

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 9

“getting in touch with your feelings” makes it sound like a soft weak thing but becoming aware of the gap between what you really feel and what you think you should feel, what seems right or proper to feel, what a good or moral person would feel, can be radically destabilizing

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 10

in the direction of providing actionable advice, the #1 thing i do to make sense of my emotions is assume they're coming from younger parts of me executing strategies i learned to protect myself earlier in life. there's plenty of logic and sense there, in its own way

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 10

these young parts often don't understand that you've grown up, that you're not in the same kind of danger that you were as a child, that you're stronger and have more resources now; they can have all sorts of "crazy" beliefs that you aren't consciously aware of

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)

@QiaochuYuan

May 10

but all of that stuff can be surfaced and once you see it it all hangs together remarkably well in my experience. you can really come to understand how much sense it makes for them to have come to the conclusions they did and adopted the strategies they did