[FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant

[Marcus Daniels]

I think Glen's equivocation is revealing.   It is fine in this view to have the loud, badgering, self-indulgent feelers take energy away from the dead-eyed psychopaths, but the reverse can happen quietly in the way Steve just said.   At least if the dead-eyed psychopaths make an example of the feelers, then we know something happened -- they haven't been victimized in a way that is not recorded.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 4:00 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant

Steve writes:

"I have had moments in my life when faced with other's Freak-Outs came away feeling like I might be a closet sociopath because while *they* were freaking out, *I* was calculating my next move with them to manipulate their Freak-Out to my benefit."

That's the normal course of events.  I have this idea there should be a ceremony to address it because *merely* exploiting it leaves a stone unturned.

Marcus

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 3:57 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant

My own self-analysis around this is that when I *do* find myself in a Freak-Out, that there is a meta-level strategy in play... that the Freak-Out represents  adding heat in the annealing sense to break out of a local minima, and/or "tunneling" for the same reason...   ignoring my manners/politeness within a limited space-time context to solve a problem that the full-dimensional trajectories simply didn't allow for: "you cant get there from here".    Thus the pursuit for varied "altered states" including what I think Glen is describing broadly as "Freak-Out"... lowered inhibitions, etc.


FWIW I was raised in a very stoic family in a generally stoic subculture and I still hold lots of judgement about Freak-Outs, covering the range of examples and counter-examples both of you (Glen and Marcus) have described.   I have had moments in my life when faced with other's Freak-Outs came away feeling like I might be a closet sociopath because while *they* were freaking out, *I* was calculating my next move with them to manipulate their Freak-Out to my benefit.   For the most part, I found I had some kind of ethical center that saw that as "wrong" and avoided acting on it,.  And yet I still practiced it in my mind, maybe preparing for the day when someone's Freak-Out was so threatening to my life/livelihood that I could justify that manipulation?  I cringed a little when Glen described control-in-the-face-of-Freak-Out as being a
(necessary/useful?) tool, because that cuts too close to the quick of my mistrust of my own inner Sociopath.


On 4/28/22 4:12 PM, glen wrote:
> I like everything about that layout except the "outside the 
> abilities". I think those of us who "lose it" actually want to lose it 
> ... or enjoy losing it ... like dancing at a rave at the DJs crecendo.
> Some part of them knows it's unproductive. And they don't have to be 
> all that sociopathic, ignoring the feelings of those around them or 
> being all that ignorant of their trajectory towards freak-out. They 
> just *want* the freak-out. It feels good.
>
> The trick is that some of us have manners and try to adapt to context 
> and others don't ... or simply don't have the willingness to classify 
> contexts and match them with different manners/modes. The right 
> wingers who go on and on about "wokeness" are this way. They simply 
> don't *want* to exhibit good manners. The same might be true of a 
> freaking out antifa shouting at a nazi.
>
> It's all about wants and (physiological) reward. What are they getting 
> from their chosen behavior? If they wanted to calm down, they would.
>
> On 4/28/22 15:03, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> My reasoning goes like this. 1)  I know there is a difference between 
>> the things I feel and the behaviors I have that could reveal them.
>> It is not a perfectly controlled thing, of course, but I have a 
>> degree of control.   This control leads to some control of the 
>> feelings themselves.   As you say, one can whip themselves up, but 
>> one can also calm themselves.    2) I would never pull one of these 
>> vehicular stunts unless it was a theatrical motivation for a third 
>> party to observe or I was artificially influenced by a high dose of 
>> testosterone, adrenaline, meth, etc.   A common situation like low 
>> blood sugar or high caffeine wouldn't be enough.   I just wouldn't 
>> even think about it if someone flipped me off.   I might feel bad if 
>> I thought I had made a mistake and deserved criticism/shaming, but I 
>> wouldn't then thrust my car in front of another leading to who knows 
>> what outcome for no reason at all.
>>
>> I don't think thresholding is the right way to model it.  It is more 
>> like can one estimate how cool or agitated they are and modulate the 
>> situations to avoid unproductive conflict.   Some people I have found 
>> can't recognize their own degree of agitation.  The flooding is going 
>> outside the abilities of the control system.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 2:44 PM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant
>>
>> Well, I purposefully chose to use sociopathy in this example to 
>> indicate the complete competency spectrum. A flood-prone sociopath
>> *needs* to get good at suppressing their freak-outs. A psychopath 
>> doesn't need to suppress anything. There's no such thing as an ideal 
>> psychopath, of course. We're all a little psycho to some extent.
>>
>> But if you're asserting there's a difference between freak-out 
>> behavior and a freaked-out mental state, then we might expect the 
>> monists to come flying out of the woodwork with their loops on 
>> repeat. It's a social skill, a competence, to be able to *whip* 
>> oneself up into a state of enthusiasm ... or even a state of Flow.
>> When you enter the MMA ring, you don't calm yourself, meditate, and 
>> relax. You whip yourself into a [controlled] freak-out. Explosive 
>> athletics require freaked-out mentality *and* often quite a bit of 
>> bit of freak-out behavior.
>>
>> This conception of flooding and freaking out as some sort of 
>> over-the-threshhold loss of control is idealistic nonsense. That's 
>> the heart of my claim that freak-outs aren't the problem.
>>
>> On 4/28/22 14:32, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>> Sure, it depends whether we define a state-of-mind as the freak out, 
>>> or the observed behavior of the freak out.   The former could 
>>> happen, and no one would know.  And I think you are confusing 
>>> sociopathy with psychopathy in this example.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>>> Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 2:24 PM
>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant
>>>
>>> But by keeping it together, you *weaken* your plausible deniability. 
>>> Keeping it together would give the prosecutor the ammunition to 
>>> accuse you of [pre]mediated murder (with [pre] in brackets because 
>>> it's not technically pre-mediated murder). The more cold-blooded you 
>>> are, the more likely we'll interpret your killing as cold-blooded 
>>> murder.
>>>
>>> So a competent sociopath gets good at *simulating* freak-outs. 
>>> Again, the freak-out isn't the problem, here. Freaking out is a tool 
>>> just like any other. And it's rational and intelligent to use the 
>>> tool deliberately.
>>>
>>> On 4/28/22 14:17, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> Just to clarify, I wouldn't shoot the guy because I was emotional. 
>>>> He was the one that experienced the freak out.   In some potential 
>>>> circumstance, I would potentially do it for protection of my 
>>>> passenger, and to a lesser extent as a sort of public service, 
>>>> because the opportunity was given to me in the context of
>>>> (plausible) self-defense.   The subtler reason that excuse would be 
>>>> appealing would be due to the basic injustice that I was basically 
>>>> keeping it together and he was not, and keeping it together is 
>>>> work.    So why should I take on the burden for adapting to lazy 
>>>> people?   Just because I can? If we go around making special 
>>>> accommodations for people that don't try to keep it together, one 
>>>> can expect a lot more of it.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 1:49 PM
>>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant
>>>>
>>>> Well, OK. So we can partition freak-outs into (at least) 2 types: 
>>>> angry vs joyous ... or whatever other false binary you choose (pro- 
>>>> vs anti-social perhaps). Then we argue for suppression of one but 
>>>> not suppression of the other? Pffft. That doesn't work. E.g.
>>>> https://youtu.be/etK7e7iBJVQ You'd just end up living in a world of 
>>>> dead-eyed automatons.
>>>>
>>>> What you seem to be targeting, here, is *material* cause. Those of 
>>>> us who tend to flood more than others need less access to powerful 
>>>> tools like cars and guns. Again, it's not the freak-out that's the 
>>>> problem. It's the network in which the freak-out exists.
>>>>
>>>> On 4/28/22 13:40, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>>> It's not about the manners, it's about learning to distance from 
>>>>> discomfort.   Like continuing to press a climb up a hill on a 
>>>>> bicycle while the lactic acid burns your legs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Spend some time around someone with borderline personality 
>>>>> disorder for a while, you will change your mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> Road rage is a common example.   The other day there was a bicycle 
>>>>> that I was approaching who wasn't going very fast, even for a 
>>>>> bicyclist.  She did have every right to be there, and so I was 
>>>>> also going slow to wait for her to get around a parked car before 
>>>>> I passed.   Meanwhile, some lunatic comes up behind us laying on 
>>>>> his horn, oscillating from the left side of the lane to the right 
>>>>> trying to find a way around.  Because he went so far right, there 
>>>>> was no way he couldn't see the bicyclist.   I don't have a lot of 
>>>>> patience for this kind of behavior, so I indicated my displeasure 
>>>>> with a middle finger.  This individual then roars in front of us 
>>>>> both and puts his car horizontally in front of mine.   He gets out 
>>>>> and starts banging on my window to get his "catharsis".  Had I 
>>>>> determined he was an actual threat to us, I might have pushed his 
>>>>> car out the way with mine (which was much larger), or had I a 
>>>>> weapon, shot him.     F*ck his catharsis, he can share the minor 
>>>>> frustration of daily life with the rest of us, and in silence 
>>>>> please.   There is no benefit in his freak out, it was basically a 
>>>>> criminal act as far as I was concerned.
>>>>>
>>>>> There are situations which a rant is truly righteous, but I have 
>>>>> found mostly no one cares about that.   Usually this discovery 
>>>>> comes at some personal or professional cost.
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 1:20 PM
>>>>> To: friam at redfish.co
>>>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A million year old driving assistant
>>>>>
>>>>> "This is your last free article." [baaaaahhhhhhhh] Now what am I 
>>>>> gonna read this weekend!?!? Damn you! [stomp][stomp][stomp]
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course, I disagree completely with the point being made, there. 
>>>>> The freak-out improves relationships and rationality, smooths over 
>>>>> difficulties in the real world, and has all sorts of 
>>>>> narrative-breaking, cathartic benefits. In the same way that 
>>>>> convictions to ideologies foster conservatism and hamper progress, 
>>>>> the suppression of one's freak-outs amounts to rejecting a large 
>>>>> array of measures and indicators one might ordinarily use to 
>>>>> understand the world. The problem isn't the freak-out. The problem 
>>>>> is a lack of tolerance *for* freak-outs. It's the repressed 
>>>>> Victorians running around complaining about the lack of manners 
>>>>> and decorum around them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Please. Don't repress your freak-outs. We're tough. We can 
>>>>> withstand your freak-out and use it to better plan for the future.
>>>>> The last thing we need is to turn into a bunch of dead-affect 
>>>>> emotionless, freak-out-free psychopaths. Where would stand-up 
>>>>> comedy be without freak-outs? Where would we get our qualia-laden
>>>>> *rants* from? What even is laughing if *not* a kind of freak-out?
>>>>>
>>>>> I haven't had the giggles in decades. But for some reason, a group 
>>>>> of us were eating lunch a few weeks ago. Someone told a joke.
>>>>> Another someone kept laughing. I mean, even after the topic had 
>>>>> changed and everyone'd moved on. This dude kept laughing. I tried 
>>>>> to take a sip of beer and I ended up snorting it ... just because 
>>>>> that other dude kept laughing. I'm allergic to barley. So when I 
>>>>> snort beer it seriously messes me up for about an hour or 2.
>>>>> Fvcking laughing. Stupid freak-out. I should have suppressed it.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/28/22 12:53, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>>>> “Emotional flooding might have helped your Pleistocene ancestors 
>>>>>> survive, but it is maladapted to most modern interactions.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/how-to-manage-
>>>>>> em
>>>>>> o
>>>>>> t
>>>>>> ions-and-reactions/629692/
>>>>>> <https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/how-to-manage
>>>>>> -e
>>>>>> m
>>>>>> o
>>>>>> tions-and-reactions/629692/>
>>>>>
>>>
>
>
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