Surprising lesson in self development from cognitive neuroscience

[Carl-Richard]

This is one of the ways that (some) dopamine neurons work: unexpected rewards are much more rewarding than expected rewards. In other words, if the “reward prediction error” is positive (the outcome of the reward minus the expected reward is positive), then you’ll experience an increase in dopamine.

Therefore, if you expect the worst outcome for something (e.g. if you’re extremely anxious about talking to a girl), then there is an even greater reason to do the thing, because the odds are that, at some point, given enough tries, you’ll experience some positive outcome that you didn’t expect, and you’ll experience that outcome as extremely positive, and thus you’ll be more likely to seek out that experience again (because that is how reinforcement works).

This doesn’t just apply to talking to girls. It generally makes the case for the virtue of courage. If you do things that you expect to be extremely hard or expect to certainly contain bad outcomes (and we know that such extreme expectations are generally exaggerated), when you get on the other side, the odds are that your perspective will change for the better. So get out there and do the hard thing! :>

Edited November 6, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[An young being]

Maybe that's why Krishna tells Arjuna to do your work and expect nothing in return, which will in turn provide a greater reward.

[UnbornTao]

Like being increasingly honest with yourself, which kicks your ass: getting clear on your experience, motivations, feelings and actions, and of course communicating with others based on what you discover and determine to be the most truthful thing about yourself at the moment.

When telling the truth is your committed goal, many challenges are going to arise out of that decision. What tends to happen at the beginning is that you realize that you actually aren't as honest as you thought, and how what's true gets relegated to second player when it doesn't serve the self. This obstacle needs to be transcended.

Edited November 8, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

@UnbornTao Another insight about recontextualizing one's insecurities:

It is possible that your insecurities could be based in essentially nothing of substance. For example, imagine the go-to example of an intelligent person (Albert Einstein). Now, despite all the achievements, all the contributions to science, all the praise (generally the substantive evidence of this person's intelligence), you could still imagine a scenario where Einstein in his childhood was for example called stupid by somebody he respects, and ever since then, he carried an insecurity about not being smart enough. 

Of course, not all your insecurities are based in nothing substantial, but just recognizing the possibility that some of them could be, you could potentially identify such insecurities in your life, or you can put yourself in the mind state as if that was the case for a specific insecurity and see how you would act. This insight and the one above are just ways of peeking behind the curtain of your habitual mind and maybe see things from a different perspective.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Pav]

What about unexpected negative outcomes, could this lead to reinforce you in a negative direction? ie. make you more aversive of that experience? It's much more likely for a cold approach to go poorly than to go well.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Pav

[Carl-Richard]

On 6.11.2023 at 9:56 PM, Pav said:

What about unexpected negative outcomes, could this lead to reinforce you in a negative direction? ie. make you more aversive of that experience? It's much more likely for a cold approach to go poorly than to go well.

Yes. I think if you expect your first cold approach to go super smooth, that would certainly make you less likely to do cold approaches again, because as you say, it's more likely for a cold approach to go poorly than go well. On the other hand, as I pointed out in the thread, if you keep doing cold approaches despite your negative expectation, the times it does end up going kind of well, that will be immensely reinforcing. And I think for most people, in the context of cold approaches, unexpected negative outcomes is not really a problem, as people are generally more overly anxious than overly confident. And if you are overly confident; 1. why are you doing cold approaches?; and 2. you would probably handle rejections better just in general.

This negative reinforcement mechanism you're pointing to is thought to be why for example naltrexone therapy seems to work for quitting certain addictive substances (e.g. alcohol or opioids). The therapy consists of pairing the intake of the addictive drug with the intake of naltrexone, which is an opioid receptor antagonist, meaning it inhibits and produces the opposite effect of the desired response associated with the addictive drug. When your brain realizes that the familiar stimulus (the act of taking the drug) is not just no longer paired with the desired response, but with a response of opposite valence (an aversive response), your dopamine system updates its responses to the stimulus, meaning it will no longer associate it with the desired response and trigger cravings in the same way.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Bobby_2021]

So True. I was so scared out of my ass to play chess, but once I started winning even moderate number of times, it has become an addiction instead of fearing it. 

[Carl-Richard]

36 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

So True. I was so scared out of my ass to play chess, but once I started winning even moderate number of times, it has become an addiction instead of fearing it. 

I used to be extremely afraid of public speaking all since high school, then I practiced like a madman for one of my presentations in university, and it went unexpectedly really well. That single experience transformed my view of public speaking. I was actually excited for when I could do it again.

Edited November 7, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[UnbornTao]

On 06/11/2023 at 8:29 PM, Carl-Richard said:

@UnbornTao Another insight about recontextualizing one's insecurities:

It is possible that your insecurities could be based in essentially nothing of substance. For example, imagine the go-to example of an intelligent person (Albert Einstein). Now, despite all the achievements, all the contributions to science, all the praise (generally the substantive evidence of this person's intelligence), you could still imagine a scenario where Einstein in his childhood was for example called stupid by somebody he respects, and ever since then, he carried an insecurity about not being smart enough. 

Of course, not all your insecurities are based in nothing substantial, but just recognizing the possibility that some of them could be, you could potentially identify one such insecurity in your life, or you can put yourself in the mind state as if that was the case for a specific insecurity and see how you would act. This insight and the one above are just ways of peeking behind the curtains of your habitual mind and maybe see things from a different perspective.

Paradoxically, even having to show up as the intelligent person might be motivated by a source assumption of being the contrary. If you assume something about yourself no matter how much external things you attain, it won't change what you're assuming. The thing is to recognize that's what you're doing and stop assuming it which is getting at the heart of the matter.

I think this insecurity business goes right at the heart of what being a self is. Profound shit. But that's another topic, one that is worth personally looking into.

Edited November 8, 2023 by UnbornTao