Straw Vulcan<\/a>\u201d model of a strong rationalist \u2014 someone who can be confused, frightened, or defeated by emotion.<\/p>\nThat wasn\u2019t exactly my problem, but I did have strong Stoic tendencies when I was younger. \u00a0My tendency toward deontology made me very worried about being swayed by emotion instead of duty, so I relished any opportunity to practice disengaging from an emotional response. \u00a0(There was also an extent to which I liked Stoicism because most people found it hard, and I was equating effort and discipline with goodness). \u00a0Ultimately, it was just hard to believe that emotions were very\u00a0useful<\/em>. \u00a0They might be nice to experience, but they didn\u2019t have a trustworthy signal to noise ratio.<\/p>\nI ended up moving on from this stance, but I still default to feeling a bit\u00a0suspicious\u00a0of strong feelings. \u00a0There were two comments during the lecture that I found quite helpful and think might have made an impression on younger!me. \u00a0I don\u2019t think they would have changed my general disposition, but I think it would have made me thing more about strong emotions as something to be studied, not just withstood.<\/p>\n
The first point the instructor made that resonated with me was that the limbic system is responding to\u00a0different\u00a0<\/em>information than your more logical brain is analyzing, and it can parse its data\u00a0faster<\/em>. \u00a0This is part of what always made me suspicious; I was worried my passions could outrun my judgement. \u00a0But what I realized during the lecture was that, if I could access the analysis of the limbic system\u00a0outside of my\u00a0<\/em>brain<\/em>, I\u2019d be interested in reviewing that data and factoring it into my decisions. \u00a0That meant I really ought to do more to integrate those instincts into my decision process, instead of quarantining them.<\/p>\nThe other helpful comment was that it made sense that most of us had a shuddery reaction to needing to send all our cool, super abstract thoughts through such a buggy, antiquated piece of machinery for implementation. \u00a0The instructor reminded us that we all do most of our typing through QWERTY keyboards which are really not optimized for typing speed. \u00a0There might be a better way for us to interface with the world, but big, awesome ideas weren\u2019t choked off or damaged by passing through this chokepoint. \u00a0It made much more sense to decide what parts of emotional instincts really needed guardrails than to assume a kludgy mechanism couldn\u2019t be useful on net. \u00a0After all, a big, jerry-rigged mess seems as appropriate a description of my mind as a whole as my hindbrain.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure how applicable this is to the general readership, but these reframings would have been a big help to me when I was an even-more-absolutist-than-now teen, and I figure I\u2019m weird, but I\u2019m not weird enough to be totally<\/em> sui generis.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m still at\u00a0Rationality\u00a0Camp, and I\u2019ve noticed that a subset of classes all fall into a category of something I might call \u201cMitigating How Weird You Are.\u201d \u00a0There are some people talking about body language, clothing style, and other ways to smooth your relations with other people that LessWrongers could probably do better. \u00a0I read Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[185,186],"class_list":["post-3986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemologyphilosophy","tag-lesswrong-retreat","tag-stoicism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/2\/24\/Spock_Zachary_Quinto.jpg\" "\\"quinto")
<\/p>\n