I strive to have one idea in my head, because having one idea feels like being on a motor-way and visiting one of many ideas feels like being on a small road. When I'm coding in a new domain or field I am sometimes flooded with options and I reach cognitive dissonance and my pace takes a halt, for minutes, hours, sometimes months, because of this dissonance, until one idea has become more like a high-way an the journey proceeds. I feel that because I'm a programmer I have to deal with and have achieved a quite healthy approach to what is cognitive dissonance, a state that outside of work sometimes makes me feel a bit schizofrenic.
What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
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Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the new evidence puts you at even (or close to even) odds? Then you have to live with the cognitive dissonance until further evidence.
There is a difference between managing probability mass and "managing" cognitive dissonance. If one of two events will occur, or only one of two hypotheses can be true, with equal probability according to the information you possess, it is not cognitive dissonance to hold that fact in your head. Cognitive dissonance would be more like formulating two hypotheses in logical contradiction to each other, and insisting th…
I don't think they are that different. First, the basic insight from Bayes is that belief of all kind can be represented as probabilities. Second, as @dancompton alluded to, most things are not as cut and dry as to say that they are logically in contradiction. There is usually a compatiblist view or a third alternative.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a difference between managing probability mass and "managing" cognitive dissonance. If one of two events will occur, or only one of two hypotheses can be true, with equal probability according to the information you possess, it is not cognitive dissonance to hold that fact in your head. Cognitive dissonance would be more like formulating two hypotheses in logical contradiction to each other, and insisting th…
It is rare that an arbitrary function negates another for all possible inputs.
If it negates it for the majority of inputs, but you insist it negates it for very few or no inputs, I would call that cognitive dissonance as well. In other words, if it's highly unlikely that two things are both true, but you consider it very likely they are both true, that's probably cognitive dissonance even if the two propositions are not logical contradictions.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#14I strive to have one idea in my head, because having one idea feels like being on a motor-way and visiting one of many ideas feels like being on a small road. When I'm coding in a new domain or field I am sometimes flooded with options and I reach cognitive dissonance and my pace takes a halt, for minutes, hours, sometimes months, because of this dissonance, until one idea has become more like a high-way an the journ…
You should take value from those options rather than letting any one of them define value. Then trust yourself to move forward. Software is writ in water.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is rare that an arbitrary function negates another for all possible inputs.
If it negates it for the majority of inputs, but you insist it negates it for very few or no inputs, I would call that cognitive dissonance as well. In other words, if it's highly unlikely that two things are both true, but you consider it very likely they are both true, that's probably cognitive dissonance even if the two propositions are not logical contradictions.
Do you disagree that given a bag of all functions which accept N inputs, it is unlikely that 2 chosen at random would negate each other across all N inputs?
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#16I strive to have one idea in my head, because having one idea feels like being on a motor-way and visiting one of many ideas feels like being on a small road. When I'm coding in a new domain or field I am sometimes flooded with options and I reach cognitive dissonance and my pace takes a halt, for minutes, hours, sometimes months, because of this dissonance, until one idea has become more like a high-way an the journ…
You should take value from those options rather than letting any one of them define value. Then trust yourself to move forward. Software is writ in water.
I do often continue working but then with a nagging sensation of not executing a task in the most optimal of ways, which is what I meant by having a healthy approach to cognitive dissonance, performing a task in a way you know or feel is not optimal but not being confused by feelings of cognitive dissonance, instead just see it as part of the learning process. In the end, the dissonance dissapear as soon as the learning process has finished, and I'm no longer anxious about that option.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#17A strikingly shallow and pointless article. TL:DR; We did some trivial, questionable, narrow tests, and turns out cognitive dissonance is what you thought it was and can be thought of as OK / survival instinct.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#18Does someone really believe that cognitive dissonance is a bad thing, as the article suggests at the end? I've just always imagined that feeling bad for poor decisions is how you learn not to do poor decisions.
Think about something you wanted and couldn't have. You probably tried to convince yourself you didn't want it anyway, and it was better for you that you didn't have it. It certainly keeps me more happy! But I also try to be conscious of it and use it like a tool more than a crutch.
I don't think cognitive dissonance is a bad thing. I don't see why should add a coping mechanism to acheive inner peace. If you instead saw that sometimes you win a grape, sometimes you loose one, you would have taught yourself a lesson, which should be bettar than denying facts about the world and yourself, if you are a man of science.
Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it negates it for the majority of inputs, but you insist it negates it for very few or no inputs, I would call that cognitive dissonance as well. In other words, if it's highly unlikely that two things are both true, but you consider it very likely they are both true, that's probably cognitive dissonance even if the two propositions are not logical contradictions.
Do you disagree that given a bag of all functions which accept N inputs, it is unlikely that 2 chosen at random would negate each other across all N inputs?
Obviously I don't disagree with that. Where are you going with this? People don't formulate their beliefs by picking randomly from a collection of all theoretically-possible beliefs. To expand on your example, if you are selecting from a bag of beliefs according to some criteria (based on some combination of morality, desire, etc) which are themselves in conflict (e.g. "I wish to be feared; I wish to be loved") then I think you are more likely to pick some beliefs which happen to contradict each other (again, if not logically, then for most inputs) than you would just by selecting randomly. Or, probably, if your criteria are more in tune with one another.