Mentals pt. 2/3

Is this even legal?
Author
Published

February 7, 2024

Spoiler: No.

Mental models till the very end

Serial-Position effect

We recall the start and end of things better. So, focus on these more if youā€™re creating content or, say, a presentation.

And it really seems to influence LLMs:

Licensing effect

Those who consider themselves virtuous worry less about their own behavior.

A good example are political radicals and, say, crusaders/conquistadores - doing something in the name (and weā€™re not even counting bandwagon effect and basic herd behaviour here) of places one in an sometimes near blindly-invincible position, moral-wise.

Thereā€™s a saying ā€œall is fair in love and warā€, or ā€œŠ²Š¾Š¹Š½Š° Š²ŃŃ‘ сŠæŠøшŠµŃ‚ā€ in Russian, conveying the meaning just nice IMO.

Preference falsification

If people are afraid to say what they really think, they will instead lie.

The opposite (and the solution?) is disinhibition/anonymity effect - people are more likely to tell truth and speak out if they are anonymous.

Nutpicking

Letā€™s pick the worst/craziest of a group and highlight them, eh?

Seems like a particular case of outgroup homogeneity effect:

Moral pollution

Even being near something immoral is ā€œdirtyā€.

Seems like a contemporary case of marking someone, or tattooing a symbol of shame, and a precursor to cancel culture. But is it effective and, most of all - just? Not so fast, (redneecks) cowboys.

Cosmic Shmuck principle

There are two kinds of people: those who sometimes worry about their moral compass/being an idiot-nut-moron-younameit, and the actual ones.

orā€¦

If you donā€™t wake up, once a month at least, and realize you have recently been acting like a Cosmic Schmuck again, then you will probably go on acting like a Cosmic Schmuck forever.

In other words, being THAT sure in oneā€™s ways is a rather clear mark of being lost - blindly following a thought, lead, emotion, anything - is almost always detrimental. But yeah, if youā€™re a founder and had definitely found your PFF - go along!

In Zen something close to counteracting this is called Shoshin, or beginnerā€™s mind.

Cynical genius illusion

Cynical people are widely seen as smarter, but sizable research suggests they actually tend to be dumber.

Okay, maybe Iā€™ve overdone it with House and Holmesā€¦ But most of the time this can actually hold.


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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@online{kogan2024,
  author = {Kogan, Zakhar},
  title = {Mentals Pt. 2/3},
  date = {2024-02-07},
  url = {https://teleogenic.com/posts/240201-mentals-2},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Kogan, Zakhar. 2024. ā€œMentals Pt. 2/3.ā€ February 7, 2024. https://teleogenic.com/posts/240201-mentals-2.