
Anxiety as an algorithm - goldfish
https://www.adamjuliangoldstein.com/blog/anxiety-algorithm/
======
fossuser
> 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.

~~~
phnofive
> I suspect that a lot of anxiety comes from too actively predicting future
> negative outcomes

Is this not the definition of anxiety?

~~~
Sophistifunk
No really, there is also a physical response, and the actual emotional state
of being anxious. You can feel anxious without knowing why.

------
mjevans
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
Are you saying talking to an encouraging family (encouraging being re-
normalization) was the ancestral solution for depression?

~~~
mjevans
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.

------
FailMore
I think this post makes some interesting points, but anxiety is a slightly
more complex subject. As a founder of a big company, there are ways it can go
wrong, and being worried about those things is probably correct. A rational
anxiety is not really an anxiety at all, but a fear. When the fear response is
decoupled from threats in reality, that is when a response is considered
anxious. Unlike in the case of the immune system, where more is better, with
anxieties, the reverse is true. "Optimal human performance" exists at the
point of accurate threat detection, for example if you were out hunting for
your tribe and you heard something odd, it would be very useful for you to
speak up, if would not be useful for you to suffer from a (non real) social
anxiety, worry about making a fool of yourself and not say anything. The noise
in the bush = potential real threat. The social anxiety = inaccurate
mentalised threat.

Inaccurate mentalised threats are constructed in the brain for very good
reason. Typically they are real when they form, and are required in order to
stabilise the caregiving environment when young. (If mum/dad gets very angry
when I make a fuss trying to get what I want, I quickly develop a fear of
standing up for myself. This fear is useful to placate mum/dad, but not useful
when I'm an adult and getting walked over.)

Strangely, the brain seems to have its own method to explain to the owner what
these inaccurate mentalised threats are - dreams. And I can assure the author
that the cure to nightmares is not as simple as recognising they are not real
- there is a cure to them though. Dreams were extremely important to my own
development/de-anxious-ing, so I wrote a paper on this function during my Msc
in Psychology. It is free to download here:
[https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz](https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz), and was discussed on
HN here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590)

~~~
hansbo
No analogy is ever perfect, but auto immunity seems to be a good extension to
cover anxiety: identifying a threat from a disease or a noisy bush is helpful,
but overfitting reality to find threats that aren't there is the opposite.

------
rednerrus
This really helped me short circuit the negative feedback loop in my brain:
[https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-
katie/#](https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/#)

------
agumonkey
I'd love to know why my algorithm cannot finish the work and lead me to mostly
positive path and yet allow me to suffer negative context repeatedly. What's
the theory behind that ? broken maturation process ?

------
skmurphy
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
Regarding blue instead of black, you read my mind for the second essay :)

~~~
skmurphy
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...](https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2016/09/07/constructive-pessimism/)

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...](https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2012/06/02/how-to-tell-when-your-team-
has-a-workable-plan-of-action/)

Risk Mitigation: If You Predict Rain Build an Ark
[https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/12/01/risk-mitigation-
if-...](https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/12/01/risk-mitigation-if-you-
predict-rain-build-an-ark/)

------
Apocryphon
It's interesting that the article mentions the immune system, because I've
always considered if allergies are the physical equivalent to mental
anxieties.

~~~
Jimpulse
That's a great insight. I never experienced chest caving anxiety ever, until I
did once. Now it's much more likely.

On the flip side there is treatment to allergies, controlled small doses to
triggers. I think anxiety may work similarly. For example, public speaking
more often with smaller audiences will reduce initial anxiety in the long run.

------
behnamoh
The website has one of the worst scroll bars I've ever seen. Some people just
mistake minimalism with minimizing things.

------
dr_dshiv
I have a problem where I have a very minimal experience of anxiety. It has
always cause me issues with deadlines or forgetting things and I've generally
been ok motivating myself through other means. I remember asking a
psychiatrist about ways of increasing my anxiety -- he looked at me like I was
nuts.

However, in the past few years I've experienced more of a general malaise from
a sensitivity to being in a state of flow; when not being in one, i feel a
sort of shame for squandering my time.

In short, I respect anxiety as an effective way of getting things done.
Everything in moderation.

------
nineteen999
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.

~~~
samplatt
Evolution is a very simple self-optimising algorithm that's been allowed to
run for a very long time. The way I see it, algorithms often have room for
improvement. Turns out, self-optimisation with no oversight for 400M years
produces something with a _lot_ of room for improvement.

~~~
gmtx725
What even is 'optimal' though. As far as evolution is concerned, we are
surviving to pass our genes on to the next generation, so we already are
'optimal'. Going any further than that is just bringing in social and cultural
biases about what 'optimal' is.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Optimal is what we say it is. And we generally don't consider "surviving to
pass our genes onto the next generation" as a sensible function to optimize
for.

