>>>It took me a long time to understand that the answer was because it only works when I intentionally misread what the angry internet person is saying. The goal I have in mind is not surfacing the truth of the text that they write, it is surfacing the best possible subtext that I can make fit.
the word intentionally feels a bit off. my experience is more like being enspirited by a daemon of sorts like Socrates. or what ppl call yidams now. it's not intentional as much as receptive to a way of being that obviously fits the situation. and the fun part is that if the other side does it, you don't drop it, but it's more effective, bc now it's more aligned with how they see the world now too.
is it possible to decode these core memories into learned functions of the behaviors (e.g. lying is primarily about avoiding unwanted threats, as opposed to being employed in gain)
A girl told me once about how she tricked her parents into getting her a dog at about ~6 years old by making drawings about “her dog” and turning in stories about her life with her dog to her teachers, who then told her parents to get her a dog and she subsequently got one
this would imply a fundamentally different lesson and relationship to dishonesty, though she recounted it as shattering her world in much the same way realizing I was meaningfully smarter than my parents did around age 12
> this would imply a fundamentally different lesson and relationship to dishonesty
the big insight for me here is about how it's not the event itself that predicts the future behavior. It is: (1) the event (2) your relationship to it (as the "unnecessary trauma" explains)
but also (3) all the other memories in there (past, and future). Every new memory & event interacts with all existing ones, potentially causing them to be reframed/recontextualized/take on a new meaning
----
just to say it again with clarity: what I'm saying is that the "key" to decoding the memory is often: every OTHER memory. This one simple insight I think describes a lot of the dynamics and the complexity of prediction here.
Good piece, I notice you refer to trauma as “long term body storage” which indicates that it encodes just the situation and not necessarily a behavioral response to it, though responses seem to be encoded with traumas at very high rates, and I had been thinking of them as circumstance -> response pairings that had been marked DO NOT REVIEW OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE
>Every new memory & event interacts with all existing ones
is this true? It seems like it would be very expensive to directly recast every memory on the addition of every other memory (though this maybe lessens if you only do it for high-affect memories)
how do you figure it works, if it is true, what would that look like? Can we design memories to modify other specific memories?
it may be of interest to you that I feel like as I get older and relax more, it seems like I am never rid of the traumas so much as they just get triggered less, like I went from “all disapproval will be met with death” to “disapproval of women you are materially dependent on will be met with death” to “???”, though my response to the situations which are labeled “threat” is still basically unchanged
>>>It took me a long time to understand that the answer was because it only works when I intentionally misread what the angry internet person is saying. The goal I have in mind is not surfacing the truth of the text that they write, it is surfacing the best possible subtext that I can make fit.
the word intentionally feels a bit off. my experience is more like being enspirited by a daemon of sorts like Socrates. or what ppl call yidams now. it's not intentional as much as receptive to a way of being that obviously fits the situation. and the fun part is that if the other side does it, you don't drop it, but it's more effective, bc now it's more aligned with how they see the world now too.
is it possible to decode these core memories into learned functions of the behaviors (e.g. lying is primarily about avoiding unwanted threats, as opposed to being employed in gain)
A girl told me once about how she tricked her parents into getting her a dog at about ~6 years old by making drawings about “her dog” and turning in stories about her life with her dog to her teachers, who then told her parents to get her a dog and she subsequently got one
this would imply a fundamentally different lesson and relationship to dishonesty, though she recounted it as shattering her world in much the same way realizing I was meaningfully smarter than my parents did around age 12
> decode these core memories into learned functions of the behaviors
yes! I think you'll enjoy this piece about "Unnecessary Trauma" or find it align with how you're thinking about this:
https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/unnecessary-trauma
> this would imply a fundamentally different lesson and relationship to dishonesty
the big insight for me here is about how it's not the event itself that predicts the future behavior. It is: (1) the event (2) your relationship to it (as the "unnecessary trauma" explains)
but also (3) all the other memories in there (past, and future). Every new memory & event interacts with all existing ones, potentially causing them to be reframed/recontextualized/take on a new meaning
----
just to say it again with clarity: what I'm saying is that the "key" to decoding the memory is often: every OTHER memory. This one simple insight I think describes a lot of the dynamics and the complexity of prediction here.
>https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/unnecessary-trauma
Good piece, I notice you refer to trauma as “long term body storage” which indicates that it encodes just the situation and not necessarily a behavioral response to it, though responses seem to be encoded with traumas at very high rates, and I had been thinking of them as circumstance -> response pairings that had been marked DO NOT REVIEW OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE
>Every new memory & event interacts with all existing ones
is this true? It seems like it would be very expensive to directly recast every memory on the addition of every other memory (though this maybe lessens if you only do it for high-affect memories)
how do you figure it works, if it is true, what would that look like? Can we design memories to modify other specific memories?
it may be of interest to you that I feel like as I get older and relax more, it seems like I am never rid of the traumas so much as they just get triggered less, like I went from “all disapproval will be met with death” to “disapproval of women you are materially dependent on will be met with death” to “???”, though my response to the situations which are labeled “threat” is still basically unchanged