Brimstone Lark

I want to write about this more over time, and I can see a pattern emerging. A lot of my ideas are about First vs Higher order reactions. I think First Order Reactions are probably a lot more similar from person to person than we acknowledge (see: First Order Reactions). Differences might come from physical states or emotional histories (ie trauma). As discussed, I can’t hold anyone including myself accountable to my First Order Reactions, but I think there’s a bit of normativity to Second Order Reactions in that one can be manifestly wrong about their thoughts and feelings (at least I can). This is one concept around Second Order Reactions that has some normativity to it – apologies in advanced for telling you how to think:)

I find myself mischaracterizing my own thoughts very frequently. Thoughts are inseparable from emotions and context, which is good because its more efficient to think contextually, but it can create risks. 1) We might draw the wrong conclusions about the empirical validity of a thought due to our subjective state. 2) We might mis-categorize thoughts that feel important with insights that are novel. All of the cognitive researchers are focused on 1, so I’ll focus on 2.

Mistaking novelty for importance is a significant feature of thinking because when we mistake important thoughts with novel ideas, it’s much harder to develop a relationship with the important principles that make our lives better. This Let me take you through an example.

“Ugh I hate that I stare at my phone so much – man its crazy how attached I am – this attachment has a profound impact on my life – this experience is extensible to my entire generation – this is a profound and novel insight”.

In this example, I’m experiencing feelings of frustration (of giving into lower desires), feelings of wonder (thinking about long term implications on my life), and feelings of fear and hope (thinking about how I can make choices that impact my life in the long term). All of these feelings make the moment feel bigger than it is. Without stepping away from those feelings I might never get a good clean look at the underling insights and thoughts that I am interested in exploring.

I already knew that I was critically and chronically distracted. It’s not a novel insight – It’s a remembering of a lesson that I learned in the past. But I never get there – I simply stop and marvel at the profundity.

How many other times has this happened? I’ve been noticing that it happens a lot.

• Realizing that I want to live in place X
• Learning that an old friend is not how I expected them to be
• Finding that I am incapable of solving a problem with the tools currently at my disposal
• Marveling at my distractibility

These are all examples within the last week where the the thought felt novel, the implications were important, but the important takeaway wasn’t the thought itself, rather it was the fact that I had already known these things but had somehow forgotten. It is very different to come back to thoughts like these and feel a sense of ‘ah I’ve been here before, yep this is a truth I’ve accepted – good on me for keeping it top of mind’ versus ‘wow! Profound thought!’

The conclusions we draw, for a huge portion of our thoughts, are things that we already knew, but just forgot temporarily. In these situations, the content of the conclusion isn’t what matters. Your ability to get to the conclusion is what matters. Investigating why you forgot matters.

One’s relationship to that ideas that are important should be different than one’s relationship with ideas which are both novel AND important. Novel ideas should be tested and explored. Important, non-novel ideas should be remembered and internalized.

When you mistake an important idea with a novel one, you rob yourself from the process of internalization because your self talk is entirely different. For example: “Ugh I hate that I stare at my phone so much – man its crazy how attached I am – this attachment has a profound impact on my life – this experience is extensible to my entire generation – this is a profound and novel insight. Wait a minute, this is something I already know – I should reward myself for remembering! I should think about the situation I’ve put myself in again, the ways I’m a slave to distraction, and the steps I can take to resolve this issue.”

Internalization comes from changing your thought patterns so that the principle is referenced more frequently. In the phone example, the principle is in the “XYZ are triggers for distraction and the material steps I can take to resolve this issue are ABC”. A focus on the feeling of novelty distracts from a focus on the principle.

It is common to learn that ones thoughts aren’t as novel as they feel. Counterintuitively, this is why it is important to write down everything that feels profound! When you write down each thought, you can come back to them, work through them, and filter out the ideas whose perceived importance were inflated due to the way you felt when you first had those thoughts. 95% of what comes out of my mind is bullshit, so I need to do the footwork of filtering down to the important stuff. In doing that work, I’ve found there are a lot of ideas I come back to. Now when I have those thoughts I think, ‘ah yep, here we are again, there is truth in my thoughts and feelings right now, I don’t need to second guess the way I feel entirely.’