71–80 of 97 posts
> The single most impactful thing people can do to improve their intelligence is to learn how to soothe the shame and anxiety that comes from confronting the possibility that the world is not how you see it and experience it. This includes learning from criticism even when it doesn't come in a neatly packaged easy to digest form. Dismissing feedback just because it wasn't what you wanted to hear is the best way to ne…
> The single most impactful thing people can do to improve their intelligence is to learn how to soothe the shame and anxiety that comes from confronting the possibility that the world is not how you see it and experience it. This includes learning from criticism even when it doesn't come in a neatly packaged easy to digest form. Dismissing feedback just because it wasn't what you wanted to hear is the best way to ne…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress) You got it, but then you missed it. Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessne…
Seems a bit weird to conflate emotion with cognitive biases. Sure emotions aren't particularly intelligent, in particular they almost entirely ignore consequence, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them, it just means you should not use your current emotion to plan the future. You should however use your future emotions to plan your current course of action, because otherwise what's the point?
It's just that your emotions about a particular attribute or situation will possibly be subject to and definitely interact with various cognitive bias.
Someone who is bad at reciting book reports might infer they are just not good at public speaking. Because they believe it is so, they may attribute their failures to this quality that they believe they possess.
But what if the failure isn't an attribute like being bad at speaking, but a side effect of normal anxiousness and inexperience? Will he or she recognize this, or are they likely to harbor a bias or explanation that confirms their belief? Would they be motivated to reason about why they are no good at it, and therefor shouldn't join the debate team in order to avoid experiencing speaking anxiety?
When the English teacher later asks them to read a passage, might they feel shame and resentment towards the teacher and themselves? If they feel the shame and resentment, I think they might experience cognitive dissonance, and reason that they are bad at speaking, they have stage fright. That would explain the fear and anger.
Finally, how likely are they to simply trust their mom who suggests they stick it out, and try to get a passing grade in their public speaking course?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on? In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some…
Great point about of the value of mentorship, legacy, chain of knowledge. The emotional landscape can be complicated, scary, and full of conflicting information. Having a trusted example of something working is a huge advantage. Take Donald Trump as a (not entirely positive) case study. Without the example of his father, he would never have had the confidence to be so scummy and provocative, or to desecrate the role…
Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
Mind sharing where that process is from? I like it.
my best guess is a combo of the following books / leaders.
1. High output management (andy grove of intel fame)
2. Charlie Munger’s Psychology of Human Misjudgment
3. Ben Franklin autobiography
Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to. Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meant…
I had a rock hit my car’s bumper on the highway. I could have allowed myself to feel pity or sadness. Instead i skipped the emotion of the event and said what can i do now?
Accept that my car does not look the way I want it to.
Find solution, which in this case was filling an insurance claim. As problems develop i hope to accept them as fact and not dwell on what I hope the world would be. ie., never getting hit in the first place or having my claim denied, having poor repair etc., whatever comes i want to accept as the true state without emotion and move onto productive measures that are within my means.
> The single most impactful thing people can do to improve their intelligence is to learn how to soothe the shame and anxiety that comes from confronting the possibility that the world is not how you see it and experience it. This includes learning from criticism even when it doesn't come in a neatly packaged easy to digest form. Dismissing feedback just because it wasn't what you wanted to hear is the best way to ne…
This implies the baseline intelligence to learn to distinguish valuable criticism you didn't want to hear from useless criticism you shouldn't heed.
If you start to see corroborating evidence through introspection or similar feedback from multiple sources, then start really paying attention. Change if appropriate.
In the workplace, I’ve received criticism for purely political reasons - and these are criticisms I’ll happily rebuff. But as long as it was delivered in good faith, establish a simple system to collect, observe, prioritize.
Bringing a more structured/scientific approach also helps reduce some of the sting that comes with that criticism.
Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear.
But then I realized the flip side of this - every time we run new code and it produces an error, I hear “AUGh what the FUCK?!! D:”
I have been at this for ~15 years. I see a new error, I feel nothing. Better that way. But I still take a minute to crack a smile when I get something working for the first time :)
Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
This oversimplifies but there is some truth to it too. I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear. But then I realized the flip sid…
the oppressive tranquility is nice…but we long for the joy of success we no longer can feel just know