
Emotional Blocks as Obstacles to Learning - luu
https://acesounderglass.com/2020/06/12/emotional-blocks-as-obstacles-to-learning/
======
amatic
> I believe trauma instills scientific-type knowledge that is factually false
> but locally adaptive. False beliefs need more protection to be maintained
> than true beliefs, so the belief both calcifies, making it unresponsive to
> new information, and lays a bunch of emotional landmines around itself to
> punish you for getting too close to it. This cascades into punishing you for
> learning at all, because you might learn something that corrects your false-
> but-useful model.

This sounds pretty deep. I immediately remembered _other_ people who I suspect
had such false-but-useful beliefs. How to identify areas of false beliefs in
yourself?

~~~
Glench
There’s actually a proposed scientific model for this system of beliefs called
Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics (REBUS):
[http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316](http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316)
In Buddhism we just call these beliefs “conditioning”.

Good therapy can be a great method for finding and exploring these limiting
beliefs. In Hakomi therapy in particular you relax the mind to a sensitive
level using mindfulness (open attention to present moment) and then run
experiments seeing the subtle ways your body and mind react to situations
habitually. For example after hearing you talk about your life and problems
the therapist might think of a probe like “You’re safe here” and the person
notices their reactions to this probe — maybe their jaw tightens. Those
reactions are indications of beliefs and associated memories. Through the
process of therapy these implicit beliefs become apparent which is often very
emotional and when fully integrated results in greater freedom. More on Hakomi
here: [https://hakomi.com/history](https://hakomi.com/history)

~~~
amatic
Friston has a paper on free energy and psychedelics? Huh. Funny guy.

Thanks for the link to hakomi therapy. The technique seems powerful and I see
similar elements in different schools of therapy: _If you’re in mindfulness
and I say, “Dogs are friendly” and you react with fear and disbelief, there’s
no question about what model you’re holding. As soon as you’re in touch with
those beliefs and those emotions, clear memories are likely to follow. And
when memories are present, explanations aren’t needed. Even more important,
when beliefs are conscious, doubt becomes possible. Change becomes possible.
The key thing is to get the connection between the beliefs and the
experiences._

I don't particularly like the eastern philosophy backstory, though. Lots of
therapies have silly backstories.

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drivers99
> I kind of have two modes when reading: too credulous, looking for reasons a
> work could be true, and too antagonistic, looking for reasons to not only
> disagree, but dismiss entirely.

This sounds like what I read in "The Righteous Mind" which has stuck with me
since then.

First, a little background: You have an emotional response to something first,
in the deep parts of your brain, and then you come up with a rational
explanation for it from that after the fact. I've run across that concept in
multiple books (but I don't have a systematic method of determining which
books are true like the author of this blog; it's the first time I've heard of
doing that so systematically!).

How that works out in practice: When you are evaluating something you believe
to be true, you look for a fact to back you up. That is, "can I believe this
is true?" When you are evaluating something you are emotionally against, you
think "MUST I believe this is true?" Every fact must dispute what you believed
before you change your mind. If there is a shred of doubt, you will stick to
the side that is emotionally appealing to you.

Once you're aware of this dynamic, you can see in everywhere (including,
disturbingly, yourself). Which I think is what the author is talking about,
seeing she is doing that.

~~~
koheripbal
The telltale sign that you are thinking critically and non-emotionally, is
that feeling of discomfort you get.

Life starts outside your comfort zone.

------
alexashka
> I believe trauma instills scientific-type knowledge that is factually false
> but locally adaptive.

One has to step back and recognize that the author separates knowledge into
'trivial' (information needed to pass a test), 'engineering' (how to drive a
car) and 'scientific' (math, physics, science).

This is a way of categorizing knowledge along the usefulness/utility axis and
is problematic in many ways but let's leave that aside.

> False beliefs need more protection to be maintained than true beliefs, so
> the belief both calcifies, making it unresponsive to new information, and
> lays a bunch of emotional landmines around itself to punish you for getting
> too close to it.

This 'narrative-weaving' is a good first step but the next step has to be to
run it through various test cases to see if it holds up.

I don't think it does on many levels but let's take one - what constitutes a
false belief vs a true belief and who decides a belief is false and that it
needs calcification and landmines to protect it?

A 'true' belief can just as easily be surrounded by emotional landmines - for
example someone who had been abused as a child can have all kinds of defense
mechanisms to prevent that situation from repeating itself. Or is that a
'false' belief because most people are not out to abuse him/her? Does a belief
morph from being true to being false, depending on your surroundings? For
example the child needed the defenses in an abusive household but is then
adopted by a loving family, does that change the belief from being true to
being false somehow?

This nilly-willy use of language to me, is indicative of absence of training
in philosophy, where you can't just say things, because people have been
saying things for 2500+ years and most weak arguments have already been
debunked from multiple angles.

~~~
drivers99
"False beliefs need more protection to be maintained than true beliefs, so the
belief both calcifies, making it unresponsive to new information, and lays a
bunch of emotional landmines around itself to punish you for getting too close
to it."

That sounds like the quote at the beginning of Chernobyl (HBO miniseries).
"The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize
the truth at all."

------
scribu
The idea that trauma causes emotional bariers that discourage learning is
intriguing.

It could explain why older people tend to be more stuck in their ways. They're
more likely to have experienced traumatic events, just by virtue of having
lived longer.

~~~
slfnflctd
This might be a related area of research:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3944195/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3944195/)

As a personal anecdote, I am solidly middle-aged, and feel strongly that past
& current negative experiences increasingly hedge me in if I don't actively
fight against it. In many ways I've never fully recovered from some semi-
disastrous events in my late teen years. Just getting through the essential
drudgery of the day leaves me drained of all ambition to advance my position.
The gas runs out and I stop caring before I can push through the frustration &
uncertainty of a side project to get anywhere. And there's always more
drudgery howling at the door. I seriously doubt I'm alone in this.

------
PaulHoule
I don't completely believe in the "truth" in that quite a bit is unknowable or
lost in the fog of conflict (a.k.a. war).

For instance in 2002 I witnessed a man in an Orangemen jacket punch a hippie
outside a television studio and wrote about it on my blog. That got the
attention of many of the organizations involved, all of which denied that they
knew anything about the incident -- which may have been true. As an adult any
time I have had anything to do with a fight (e.g. witness, participant) the
people involved told very different stories about what happened.

I volunteered at a mediation center which frequently handled parenting plans
for people who were separated or divorced. It was inevitable that the stories
we heard were not coherent and that some of the people were wrong if not
"lying" (which is a strong accusation.) We were not concerned about putting
together the "true history" that a court might attempt to make, but rather
give the parties a chance to work out what they want now and in the future.

See

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night)

------
l0b0
This happens even up to the national level, where controversial scientific
results are buried rather than refuted. It's generally enough that it
threatens the status quo in some way:

\- Tobacco is harmful to you. Immediate backlash from a huge industry.

\- Intelligence is evenly distributed across various arbitrary groups of
people. Rejected by bigots, racists, etc.

\- Our "scientific" measures of intelligence are strongly biased towards our
own culture.

------
Gravityloss
There are also questions like why has a particular book been written?

~~~
reciprocity
You might be interested in watching this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM)

If watching this isn't worth anyone's time, I'm not sure what would be.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sorry, I don't go watch random Youtube videos with no other information than
"it will be worth your time". Mind telling us what the video is about, and
maybe even _why_ it will be worth our time?

~~~
throwaway9482
This sounds pretty rude FYI, I actually ended up asking effectively the same
thing, you can look at my comment to see an example of how to phrase it more
politely

~~~
cuspycode
I didn't find it rude at all. The comment that presented the link was pure
click-bait. I prefer it when a brief explanation accompanies a link,
especially when the link points to a 3 hour long video, as in this case. The
YouTube teaser says _" explores the workings of the human mind, intelligence,
consciousness, life on Earth, and the possibly-simulated fabric of our
universe"_. I certainly agree that the topic sounds interesting.

~~~
throwaway9482
If the topic sounds interesting it‘s not click bait, it’s a good link that OP
went of their way to share, we’re not entitled to anything

~~~
cuspycode
I didn't know anything about the topic before I clicked the link. Nothing in
the comment that introduced the link revealed anything about the topic. And I
only clicked the link because I was intrigued by the discussion here about
rudeness. I was not motivated to click by the suggestion that watching would
be worth my time (without any further details). That I found the topic
interesting-sounding came after I swallowed the bait and clicked. Such things
happen sometimes. And I still don't know if it actually is interesting, I
won't actually know until I have set aside 3 hours to watch the video.

------
mongol
I could never learn to play golf even average, and eventually I concluded that
it was an emotional block for me. My hcp was about 24. I was emotionally not
happy when playing, had negative thoughts about things outside of golf while
playing. My body did not want to be there. Eventually I concluded that I will
never get any good if my emotions are not collaborating. I abandoned it and
that was a wise thing to do.

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mleonhard
The worst thing about false beliefs is that they are easily transmitted to
others, especially to children.

