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Robert Sapolsky touches on this when discussing the effects of glucocorticoids on the prefrontal cortex. A stressed PFC is not an executive functioning PFC. When we're too close to an issue, we process with our periaqueductal gray (key in pain inhibition) and not with the part of our brain more adept at strategizing.
These stress effects on frontal function also make us perseverative—in a rut, set in our ways, running on automatic, being habitual. We all know this—what do we typically do during a stressful time when something isn’t working? The same thing again, many more times, faster and more intensely—it becomes unimaginable that the usual isn’t working. This is precisely where the frontal cortex makes you do the harder but more correct thing—recognize that it’s time for a change. Except for a stressed frontal cortex, or one that’s been exposed to a lot of glucocorticoids. In rats, monkeys, and humans, stress weakens frontal connections with the hippocampus—essential for incorporating the new information that should prompt shifting to a new strategy—while strengthening frontal connections with more habitual brain circuits.
R. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst 130 (2017).
>When we're too close to an issue, we process with our periaqueductal gray (key in pain inhibition) and not with the part of our brain more adept at strategizing.
This must be what happens when you think of a funny comeback or joke several hours after the opportunity to use it.
So those who opt in for parasitic payday loans are doing so under stress, can we say they opt for that loan in similar conditions like you are influenced by alcohol and therefore the contracts are invalid?
Many people have ruined themselves with such contracts and it's understood that they had full awareness of what they are getting into and that's why they are liable for all the losses.
i have a saying i tell myself every time this happens to me:
'if it's too hard, you're doing it wrong'.
Wow. This is something I’ll probably remember for quite some time. It’s intuitive and immediately applicable, and also a dose of awareness I’ve needed recently.
However, there’s a catch to this. By distancing yourself like this, it seems like you may act quite rationally - but perhaps too locally rational. You may be a long time Java programmer and just feel incredibly unfulfilled about your day to day work, and you might be eyeing stuff like Scala and Clojure with dreams of a more fulfilling line of work. Perhaps the distanced rational self would say no, you are well invested in this Java skillset, and these new things could die out, or any new venture like this might not work out, so stick with what you know. But perhaps you take the more emotional route and say no, even if things pan out badly for me, i want a more fulfilling day to day rather than writing so much repetitive code or whatever (no offense to anyone happy with Java). And perhaps you land in a spot where you’re much happier. Or hell, perhaps you really wanted to pursue music, art, etc.
It’s my conjecture, but perhaps it’s most concisely put as: the more you distance yoursef, the less risk you tolerate, and you will take the safe path, precluding the wild possibilities that are the spice of life.
I think you speak here to an important potential misunderstanding about self-distancing. It shouldn’t be about eliminating emotions, it should be about seeing them clearly.
Even the first example quote about LeBron makes the point... he says he doesn’t want to make an emotional decision... he wants to make a decision that will make him happy.
Happy is an emotion too, and a totally valid goal. “Emotional” is really being used as a shortcut to “unconscious”.
Even (perhaps especially) as inputs to the decision, emotions are valuable. If you feel joy at the thought of learning Scala and Clojure, that’s an important piece of information! If you feel depressed and apathetic when writing Java code, that too is very important.
Make conscious emotional decisions, should be the take away here. And self-distancing, to see your own emotions clearly, will help with that.
This is me. I have a track record of making good, rational decisions that I end up regretting because it wasn't what I actually wanted. recently I've been trying to do a better job of checking in on my feelings to ensure present me don't make logical decisions future me will be aggrevated to follow up on.
It’s neither/nor.
It’s not about acting rationally versus emotionally.
Reason isn’t necessarily good. And emotion isn’t necessarily bad.
It’s a matter of acting unintentionally versus intentionally.
(For some definition of intentionally).
A crude counterexample {
Some people might act rationally out of habit.
And for them, self-distancing might result in listening more closely to emotions which, for them, tend to be crowded out by deeply-ingrained intellectual ideologies.
} And in fact, it’s not about ideology versus non-ideology.
There are people throughout history who have articulated this much clearer than I have.
I hope someone will follow up with links to passages in this vein.
> the more you distance yourself, the less risk you tolerate
The opposite, for me. My logical distanced reasoning tells me to go far away to a country where I know no one, see how it is like to live there, find new friends and colleagues and maybe live there.
Whilst my feelings / intuition? about this makes me anxious and I'd rather stay at home, in "safety".
Turns out in this case, the logic distanced reasoning was right, for me.
Also applies to relationships: self-distancing/meditation can allow you to tolerate a lot of things that maybe you'd be better off not having to tolerate in the first place, and keep you from leaving a bad situation.
Self-distancing is a tool and in this case you are using it wrong.
Often, the problem when making such choices, is that fear short-circuits the thinking process. "I may switch to Clojure and not find a job; NO JOB? POVERTY! POVERTY? DEATH!" whereas a more correct thought process would be: "I may switch to Clojure, enjoy it but not find a job. How long can I do without a job?"
This will allow you to explore and discover the safety nets you have around you. From experience as a former doom-thinker: such safety nets are more prevalent than you'd think.
I know it's just an example, but someone who understands programming work would probably not be against learning another language or two and trying to get more interesting work. They may question whether the language will make you happy. Similarly they'd ask someone switching to art whether that would really be the path to happiness, are jobs available, what kind of salary to expect etc.
I wouldn't tell a friend not to pursue their dreams. But I would look for good arguments that they actually understand what they want.
I think the main motivation of asking yourself those questions with self-distancing is to expose your feelings to yourself. It helps you to state them. You are trying to understand yourself. I guess this is the main reason of this technique. Unfortunately it is not emphasized in the article.
>Self-distancing is the act of increasing the distance from your own egocentric perspective when assessing events and emotions that you experience.
It's odd that there's no mention of meditation as a way to achieve this effect, since that's arguably its biggest benefit.
Put another way, as someone once said: Wisdom is the ability to take your own advice.
Yes, this does seem like it's closely related to a habit you develop through meditation. However, the "self-distancing" seems worse to me than meditation, since it seems to advocate taking a distance from the "true self" of feelings and thoughts. Meditation encourages the [better]route of recognizing that feelings and thoughts are not parts of your true self at all.
I would go further and say that meditation is the only way to reliably and truly actualize such a state of mind.
I always imagine myself in a movie. What would I want the protagonist to do? Usually leads me to be more outgoing and not staying at home.
But what if what you want the protagonist to do is a non-stop 80s montage?
>leads me to be more outgoing and not staying at home.
Leads me to be more impact & big picture driven, less ego zero sum bullshit.
Nice tip. I am going to try this too.
This reminded me of something which made it to the front page a while back about how people came to a different result when they considered Trolley Problems in their second language rather than their first.
But that article framed it as there being benefits to both the emotional approach and the more rational approach, depending on the problem being considered. This one seemed to discount the emotional baggage as totally unnecessary.
Edit: found the article, and now I'm not sure that I read it on HN after all, but for anyone curious (text is in Spanish): https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/06/18/laboratorio_de_felicida...
This is called "detachment" in many areas of leadership like the military.
I'm sure everyone has personally experienced this, for example when giving advice to others. It's usually very rational and practical because you're not personally and emotionally invested in the events of their life.
“We’re all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function. Without mercy. Without compassion. Without remorse. All war depends upon it.”
— Speirs, Band of Brothers (2001)
Jocko Podcast talks about this A LOT. Such a good podcast just in general. A bunch of prevailing themes but can take a little bit out of each.
This is such a simple and effective trick to think about problems involving you. It's very easy to do, for example you imagine how somebody else who is standing next to you can see you, like if you were that person. Sometimes I imagine how my grandpa would see what I do if he still would live and he could be proud of me or not.
I figured out for myself a while back, that if I suspect I’m taking the “easy” choice or making excuses for myself, if I imagine there was a great coach standing next to me who knew my mindset & goals and had my best interests in mind, what would he tell me to do right now. The right action will often become surprisingly clear.
This partially explains why many have epiphanies while on shrooms...you will experience "ego death" that lets you think much more objectively about issues affecting your life.
Tried to get the primary source for the study behind the graphs there, links through to a paywalled study - so I can’t find the sample size, methodologies used, how the study was controlled etc... I’m not disputing anything - I am however cautious of drawing conclusions from articles / posts without proper citations and primary source data. Paywalled study: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0035173
It is promising however that this blog as a section on logical fallacies, without going through more articles I can’t comment if they adhere to avoiding them or not, still - good to see.
>The researchers then measured participants’ self-distance during their recollection of their past experiences
How exactly did they perform this measurement?
> self who is analyzing the event is considered to be distinct from the self who experienced it
I have hard time following this, how can there be two selfs in a single mind.
Is the observer more nobler entity with higher self restraint than the entity being observed who is more emotional and lower self control?
Huh. I've known this as "standing back from oneself" - I've naturally used this technique for a long time when assessing a customer's situation/requirements.
Also comes in handy when assessing... onself, and one's needs and requirements.
I used to do that. But people are dangerous, they just want to take benefit of others. So in some cases, if you self-distant, you won't see what could affect you, as outsiders are just outsiders.
A balance is needed, self-distant is not enough to deal with people.
Someone gave me a tip to being CTO: consider what the ideal CTO would do here and see why you can't. Surprisingly, I found it effective. Odd but I'm not one to throw out a functioning tool.
I'm in the midst of a major decision... Just quit my job with a year of runway and I'm either considering putting that towards graduate school abroad or settling down, finding a better job, and buying a home. My emotions tell me to go study, but my rational mind tells me to settle down and buy a home.
I wonder if return1 can benefit from this. He also wonders if it helps other people to refer to them in the 3rd person.
Isn't this related to how often we find people closer to the psychopathic part of the mental spectrum in leadership positions ? That distancing themselves from suffering and emotions of others comes naturally to them ?
AA members (Alcoholics Anonymous) or any addicted people are doing the opposite. They talk about drinking, they're celebrating round dates. I think the approach in the article is more effective for them.
This is similar to Kahneman's "take the outside view" advice. It helps us distance the decision from our (self-)imperceptible biases.
You may find it worth the time spending an hour reading through the work done by Yaacov Trope in this space, some that are referenced in the article
What a great concept, article and discussion.
They key is to understand who you are.
That is more difficult than one might expect.
This platitude paints a very shallow picture of human decisionmaking.
Tecnically, eating oranges "can help you make better decisions" because getting scurvy is distressing.
Looking at yourself like an alien is not a catchall which will lead you to make 'better decisions.'
This feels like Western science finding its own way towards the lessons already learned by Buddhist meditation. A lot of the same ideas, framed quite differently.
This is really a powerful and understudied phenom that's very well exemplified in a very simple form of advice I once read concerning making decisions, self assessment:
Instead of thinking "what should I do in the situation?", consider "what advice would I give myself in this situation?"
It's almost a trivial differentiation, and yet, if one applies this concept immediately for any reason big or small, one will be astonished at how the answers are different. It's really amazing.
It's hard to put data behind it, but if you just try it, I suggest you'll probably see a difference as well. I can't think of any other psychological technique which yields 'results' (at least in terms of having different ideas given framing) for basically zero effort or practice. It's not even a 'learned skill', it's just framing. It's amazing.
I suggest more intellectual people, who might be more deep in their own thoughts, might make even better use of this than more gregarious 'in the moment' people who's attention is in the 'here and now'.
As I read this article, I thought to myself, "oh, this must be why we must make such good decisions, huh?"