[HN Gopher] Anxiety as an algorithm
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Anxiety as an algorithm
Author : goldfish
Score : 62 points
Date : 2020-03-03 15:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adamjuliangoldstein.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adamjuliangoldstein.com)
| skmurphy wrote:
| It's a thought provoking post.
|
| One refinement is that there are a number of earlier challenges
| you faced that are now "solved problems" so some of the squares
| should be marked blue instead of black or white because it's a
| risk you have encountered and mastered. For example, how to file
| taxes as a corporation. How to hire someone.
|
| A second refinement: there are also decision rules you can follow
| that limit your exposure to entire categories of risk. For
| example: don't finance your startup using credit card debt.
| goldfish wrote:
| Regarding blue instead of black, you read my mind for the
| second essay :)
| skmurphy wrote:
| Happy to collaborate if it's of interest. Here are some
| related posts.
|
| Constructive Pessimism
| https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2016/09/07/constructive-
| pessim...
|
| How to Tell When Your Team Has a Workable Plan of Action
| https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2012/06/02/how-to-tell-when-
| yo...
|
| Risk Mitigation: If You Predict Rain Build an Ark
| https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/12/01/risk-mitigation-
| if-...
| nineteen999 wrote:
| I have noticed a tendency (especially amongst HN articles and
| readers) to continually compare our bodies, minds, souls etc. to
| machines, as if they could be "biohacked" into perfection with
| just the right patches or software updates. Or that we could
| easily be replaced by the "correct AI" algorithm, if we could
| just get the simulation close enough.
|
| Not that I don't believe we aren't complex systems, we are, to be
| sure, and it's not that life doesn't hurt sometimes, as it surely
| does.
|
| But the whole idea really just grates on me. I like being a
| monkey, with all my strengths and weaknesses, I wouldn't trade
| that to be a cyborg for all the money in the world. Each to their
| own I guess! I guess I just don't think the analogies,
| simulations, etc. really do us much justice as a species.
| exrook wrote:
| Personally, I like that as a human, I have the capacity to use
| tools as an extension of my being to improve myself and my
| place in the world. I don't think applying the same tools I use
| to solve problems in the physical world to solve problems in my
| mind makes me any less human. Sure, those tools may not be a
| perfect match for the problem domain and provide the wrong
| answers sometimes, but it doesn't hurt to try applying them. I
| don't think this makes me a cyborg any more than lighting a
| fire or driving a car does.
| dagav wrote:
| I also don't appreciate the comparison. The whole magic of
| being human is our capacity to transcend our "programming",
| something we haven't been able to achieve with computers (and
| something I personally don't believe we ever will achieve)
| gloriousduke wrote:
| A world of only perfect beings does sound pretty boring. I'm
| not sure if anything worthwhile would actually happen in such a
| place. That being said, mental (rational) tools that help one
| recognize the origin of anxiety and reduce its deleterious
| effects are quite welcome. I think this article could help
| programmers/founders do just that.
| thrwaway69 wrote:
| If you had a world of perfect human beings, then they would
| create imperfections to stop themselves from getting bored. I
| know, I would.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's interesting that the article mentions the immune system,
| because I've always considered if allergies are the physical
| equivalent to mental anxieties.
| mjevans wrote:
| I only skimmed so I might have missed these points being
| discussed...
|
| The 'mental immune system', which uses imagination to search for
| potential paths to classify likely future outcomes suffers from
| one very critical issue.
|
| Selection bias / neural network (literal) training set problems.
| Repeated failures without success lead to the weight of that
| success against the failures skewing the prediction algorithm.
| Reality might or might not match the perceived lack of paths
| worth perusing, but the weight of that imagined failure against
| the slim odds of success surely also influences the ability to
| take the paths that could work even if they are discovered.
|
| Repairing a biological entity's neural network for predicting
| future outcomes must surely also correlate with providing a
| 'good' feed of data to re-normalize expectations. My own theory
| and belief is that our evolutionary ancestors communities were
| small and 'depression' or other signs of distress resulted in
| this reconditioning; a social control rather than a directly
| biological one. Modern society seems to have broken that control
| loop and thus the situation becomes irreparable.
| acephal wrote:
| Are you saying talking to an encouraging family (encouraging
| being re-normalization) was the ancestral solution for
| depression?
| mjevans wrote:
| While Having family can be part of a solution (or a treading
| water situation), and lacking family could be part of the
| problem...
|
| No, I chose the word __community__ for good reason.
| fossuser wrote:
| > Developing a habit of recognizing thoughts as distinct from
| reality has been shown to reduce anxiety. For more information on
| this approach see here.
|
| I think this helps with catastrophic thinking (i.e. "I'll never
| pass another technical interview if I quit my job -> My
| girlfriend will leave me -> I'll run out of money -> I'll be on
| the street" etc.), verbalizing this kind of thing can help show
| that often the extreme worst case thinking seems a little more
| ridiculous out loud.
|
| It also helps to imagine a friend thinking these things and what
| you would say or point out to them.
|
| I suspect that a lot of anxiety comes from too actively
| predicting future negative outcomes along with too much
| uncertainty, as you get more comfortable with things anxiety
| tends to go down. The problem with growing a company is if you're
| successful you'll never get comfortable because things are always
| changing and scaling up (like mentioned in the article).
|
| I've also found it personally helpful to reframe failure as
| 'learning experience' and now you know more of what works and
| what doesn't (rather than a direct evaluation of some fixed
| ability), this helps embrace failure and growth without
| constantly doubting yourself or thinking that you may just not
| have the capacity to do what you want.
|
| Sometimes it can be hard to zero in on the anxiety cause though -
| it took me a while to realize that one of the reasons I didn't
| want to go to the city (SF) is that I was afraid I wouldn't find
| parking, along with just generally more uncertainty in a
| crowded/busy place. Sounds ridiculous, but high base anxiety can
| make pushing yourself out of local maxima to do things you want a
| constant vigilant effort. The easy thing to do is rationalize why
| the status quo is better or why the status quo is actually what
| you want. I think a lot of people do this without realizing
| anxiety is a partial driver of those decisions.
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