But okay, if there *are* people who ask the impossible or unreasonable, why should that cause suffering? Why not just reject all impossible demands?
-
Show this thread
-
To explain this, I have to posit some inherent limitation in what thoughts are possible, and that makes my model more complicated & so less credible, for occam’s razor reasons. Hmm. I’m stuck.
1 reply 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread -
“Some people demand the impossible” should lead to the update “demanding the impossible is a thing people sometimes do”, but I don’t see why it overcorrects to “all feedback should be interpreted as a demand to do the impossible.”
4 replies 0 retweets 6 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @s_r_constantin
Malcolm 🌎cean Retweeted Malcolm 🌎cean
The emotional brain is timeless; it doesn't overtly have the declarative belief "all X means Y", it just responds to X as if it's like situation Y, without recognizing that the emotional brain isn't really taking in the present situation.https://twitter.com/Malcolm_Ocean/status/1209195568146325504 …
Malcolm 🌎cean added,
Malcolm 🌎cean @Malcolm_OceanReplying to @QiaochuYuan @visakanvMy latest frame for this: everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation and their old emotional meanings. Like dreaming you're at school but it's also on a boat somehow. & as in dreams, somehow the weirdness of this mashup goes unnoticed2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean
We *observe* that this is how the emotional brain seems to work. But why would it work that way? Why would a general machine for processing information acquire this failure mode? "Evolution is a blunt instrument" maybe?
3 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @s_r_constantin
Not sure, but it seems to me that a brain that works that way is fairly appropriate for a relatively static context, including both: • static environmental threats (predator animals / enemy humans) • static culture (in Deutschian sense & more generally)
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean
Hm. when people say things like that, I have kind of a threat response. (I know you don't mean anything bad by it, just reflecting here.)
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @s_r_constantin @Malcolm_Ocean
"We evolved for static culture" is too close for comfort to "Go back where you came from"...like, I think in order to talk about this claim in good faith I think I have to be explicit about the blob of antisemitism that in practice surrounds it? meh. hard to express cleanly.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @s_r_constantin
Oh huh. Yeah, that's a very different direction than all of what I'm thinking here. I'm also wanting to double-check we're even meaning the same thing by "static culture". I was assuming by your reference to CritRat that you'd read David Deutsch's work.
2 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean @s_r_constantin
I see any "going back" as both impossible and undesirable. Dynamic culture will be differently functional with our existing neurology, by not installing everyone with a guilt-button etc during childhood in the first place, and using generative communication/motivation instead.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
-
-
Replying to @s_r_constantin
So the current dysfunctional state, that your thread is about, is something we're able to talk about because we have enough space from the static culture to be able to look at it, but we're still very much emotionally affected by it and all current dynamism is in *spite* of that.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean @s_r_constantin
Would recommend reading at least this summary if not a few whole chapters of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, which provides some of the scaffold for how the emotional brain works, and you can sorta read between the lines to see how it currently gets stuck.https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ/book-summary-unlocking-the-emotional-brain …
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like - 5 more replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.