- I noticed a recurring thing in people.
- Suppose two people are having an in-person discussion.
- PersonA says something to PersonB and PersonB disagrees with it.
- It could be something as simple as the following scenario. PersonA and PersonB are talking about why PersonB was upset about an immediately previous in-person discussion with PersonC. PersonB thought PersonC meant X when he said "it". PersonA instead thinks that PersonC meant Y when he said "it". And so PersonA asked PersonB, "what do you think PersonC meant by "it"?"
- Suppose that in the moment of it being said, PersonB gets emotional, raises their voice, and swears that he's right and PersonA is wrong.
- PersonA tries to reason with PersonB, saying things like:
- Continuing my hypothetical example above:
- "I don't know why you believe PersonC meant X."
- "How did you rule out that PersonC meant Y instead?"
- "ok so we believe different things about what happened. And we have different perspectives about how to figure it out. You do faith while I do reason."
- Suppose further that PersonB's emotional state escalates with each instance of PersonA speaking about the subject and not immediately saying that he believes PersonB. The exchange ends when PersonB runs away from the discussion in an extremely aggressive emotional state of crying and yelling "nobody believes me" or "nobody listens to me".
- Some people do this in such a way where they get worse over time. They get instantly angry anytime anybody says something that in any way indicates that they don't agree with them. They believe their theories with such strong faith that they effectively ignore criticisms and rival theories to their own. They effectively treat themselves as god. (Some of them actually say they are god.) They lose touch with reality. They make up unreasonable theories like that their friends and family are out to get them. So they run away from their families and also can't function on their own because they can't hold a job or keep any relationships with anyone. They also won't accept help from therapists or any other experts. And then they become homeless. And they go in and out of mental hospitals. They commit crimes while being proud of what they're doing because they think it's good (according to them, god told them they should do it). They also feel ashamed of what they're doing because sometimes their reasonable side crops up and questions their actions. But their bad side suppresses that thinking with hypnotic mental habits like saying certain phrases as a way to stop thinking (some people pray or do the "speaking in tongues" thing, while some people do things like repeat "things will get better, things will get better, things will get better", effectively fulfilling the same function as a prayer).
- Connecting this to static memes:
- This is what static memes do. When they activate, you feel bad (upset, crying, angry), which discourages you from continuing thinking and discussing about a disagreement, effectively causing you to ignore criticism and rival theories of your pet theories.
- Rational memes compete with static memes.
- Rational memes and static memes can both be active at the same time.
# session 2 - 7/25/2020
- how did they get that way?
- it's a tantrum. he was punished as a child and he created coping mechanisms.
- in other words, the static memes replicated from parent to child.
- punishments make disagreements painful.
- win/lose
- people focus on acting in ways that try to avoid pain.
- they create an association between disagreements and mental suffering.
- in the future, those people experience mental suffering when people disagree with them.
- this happens whether it's a win/win or a win/lose situation.
- they treat all situations as win/lose (or a subset of situations from the set of all situations)
- so like even if one is trying to rationally discuss a disagreement (win/win), the person can treat it as if it's its win/lose
- that mental state has triggers associated with it such that anytime they enter the mental state, the associated trigger causes them to have an emotion/thought (e.g. "nobody listens to me!")
# session 3 - 7/26/2020
- what sort of disagreements was I talking about above?
- not just disagreements between two people. I'm also talking about disagreements between one's expectations and one's understanding of reality.
- how is this stuff connected to wanting social approval?
- people who feel mental pain when others disagree with them are mad because they didn't get the social approval that they want.
- this doesn't account for situations where nobody else is involved.
- lots of people think that discussions are for changing other people's minds. they don't view them as purposed for helping themselves be persuaded.
- suppose someone believes that god healed their leg. suppose that he knows that he can get evidence that could refute his theory. And then he says that he doesn't need to get evidence because he's not interested in trying to convince other people. So he thinks evidence is only for convincing other people.
# Acknowledgements
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