Thread by @EpistemicHope

I'm experimenting with having a trigger to call to mind / remember my vision of myself as a badass and the "feel" or ethos of the life I want to live.

The point is NOT to change my behavior directly, or even to shift my state, but only to make cognitively available what I care about, in moments when I might have forgotten it.

Like, if I'm mindlessly watching youtube videos, I can notice, and fire the trigger, and bring my vision of myself to mind.

Crucially, this is intended to be ZERO about forcing myself. I'm not "trying to get myself" to stop, or to do something different, bludgeoning with "a stronger motivation".

It is only about remembering.

I had opportunity to try this, for the first time tonight.

To my surprise, this caused something that I've heard both @So8res and @AnnaWSalamon talk about, but hadn't really gotten to work for myself, to click.

(Though this is a report of a single data point, so [shrug].)

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon They've both talked about "letting the part choose".

Anna gave a talk once where she said that she aspired to set up her mind such that no part of her is incentivized to hide information from herself.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon So if she's trying to be frugal, and also she want's a slice of pizza there's a way that part of her tries to be mindless / not be fully conscious that she's buying a slice, because if she were to reflect on it, she knows that she would decide not to buy it.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon So the pizza-wanting part/subroutine/pattern is sort of trying to "sneak past" the trying-to-save-money part/subroutine/pattern.

(I think most people have experienced this phenomenon.)

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Which is bad mind design. You don't want to incentivize that kind of shenanigans. You want to have a general policy that has the property of incentivizing awareness of information.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon So Anna described how in this situation, she would first notice that part of her was trying to sneak past her reflective self (yay for noticing it!), and then _let that part decide to buy the pizza or not_.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Nate alludes to something similar here.

mindingourway.com/productivity-t…

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon I've tinkered with this sort of approach in the past, but I haven't really been able to make it work for me.

Like, if I tried this, it always felt like it was "me" deciding, instead of the part.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon If I paused to consider, I would reliably decide not to do the thing that was trying to sneak past. But I knew that if that was the case I was doing it wrong, so I might err on the side of doing the thing, trying to be compassionate, but probably being closer to lazy.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon I didn't really know how to have the part decide.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon If I asked "how much rest do you really _need_?", the answer would be kind of confused, "well obviously, I don't _need_ any. I _could_ keep going."

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon But trying the thing where I triggered the memory of the way I want to be in the world and the sort of life I want to live, this sort of clicked for me.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Suddenly, I felt like I _could_ decide from the part.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon The feeling into both the immediate desire, and the ethos of the way I want to be in the world, the question (for me) was something like "is this behavior something that is part of my ideal life?"

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Somehow it felt like, each of the answers, "yes, actually, it is" (even if this seems depraved or silly), "no, it isn't", and "some version of this, but done with intention and a different mental posture", were all live possibilities.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon It was okay if doing the thing is part of the life that I want to live, and also, it actually might not be part of the life I want to live, in which case I ACTUALLY (not forcing myself / pretending) don't want it, and can just...not.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon All of which is awesome.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon My experience here suggests that there's something important about importing your "higher goals", first, so that the part in question / you in the mode of the part, has something to choose between.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon If you are _just_ asking, "do you want pizza now, or not?", it's hardly surprising if you get a confused response.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Or to use Nate's terminology, I think I wasn't successfully implementing the "austerity" component of "compassionate austerity" (which made the compassion sort of disjointed).

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Additionally...

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon Posit: Absolutely all behaviors, no matter how crude or debased or inane, can be sanctified. There's some version of that behavior that is spiritually aligned with your values aspirational self.

All behavior stems from SOME impulse of life, worthy of reverence and service.

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon It also seems worth noting that I strongly suspect that this moment was influenced by having read this tweet thread in the past couple of days.

https://twitter.com/AskYatharth/status/1421690833934372867?s=20

@So8res @AnnaWSalamon I think it gave the a subconscious template for this kind of thing, and I only noticed the similarity when I was writing up _this_ thread.

So, thank you, @AskYatharth!

Addendum:

Another way to put it is that you have to be able to access near mode and far mode, at (roughly?) the same time, in order to meaningfully choose between them /how to integrate them.

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1422119991361642498?s=20

If you're only connected to one, then that one is overriding the other, and you're not really _choosing_.

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