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from the speaking-to-others-that-way-though dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
We credit Socrates with the insight that 'the unexamined life is not worth living' and that to 'know thyself' is the path to true wisdom. But is there a right and a wrong way to go about such self-reflection?
Simple rumination – the process of churning your concerns around in your head – isn't the answer. It's likely to cause you to become stuck in the rut of your own thoughts and immersed in the emotions that might be leading you astray. Certainly, research has shown that people who are prone to rumination also often suffer from impaired decision making under pressure, and are at a substantially increased risk of depression.
Instead, the scientific research suggests that you should adopt an ancient rhetorical method favoured by the likes of Julius Caesar and known as 'illeism' – or speaking about yourself in the third person (the term was coined in 1809 by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the Latin ille meaning 'he, that'). If I was considering an argument that I'd had with a friend, for instance, I might start by silently thinking to myself: 'David felt frustrated that...' The idea is that this small change in perspective can clear your emotional fog, allowing you to see past your biases.
A bulk of research has already shown that this kind of third-person thinking can temporarily improve decision making. Now a preprint at PsyArxiv finds that it can also bring long-term benefits to thinking and emotional regulation. The researchers said this was 'the first evidence that wisdom-related cognitive and affective processes can be trained in daily life, and of how to do so'.
The findings are the brainchild of the psychologist Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Canada, whose work on the psychology of wisdom was one of the inspirations for my recent book on intelligence and how we can make wiser decisions.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Mer on Monday August 12 2019, @03:19PM (2 children)
DnD has very few things right besides making the distinction between WIS and INT.
INT makes you magically learn languages, facts and history that you've never had any contact with, increases magical ability and increases your learning ability for any skill.
WIS makes you better at getting hit by magic rays.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday August 12 2019, @10:30PM
I asked the other voices in my head, but my coworkers complained about them talking too loudly ;-)
It's pretty self-evident that we can get into a rut when thinking about our personal problems, because the potential negatives and the emotional impact of the causes are sometimes just too much for us to see beyond them. That's why victims of violent crimes often develop anxiety and depression - both of which are normal reactions to, for example, rape. You'd have to be a psychopath not to be affected.
That's why it helps to talk to someone else (and what this technology might duplicate) - thinking about it a step away from the immediate personal emotional impact.
Of course, there are things that are just so terrible that even thinking about it has to be dealt with as "a memory of a memory " that's off limits even to think about. That's when thinking about it in a depersonalized way and basically packing it in a box with a big off limits sign is sometimes the only way. Some things people just aren't capable of dealing with.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 13 2019, @01:33AM