matthMar 8
Cat Hicks
Look, it's a mess out there and you can react to that mess by deciding everyone else is a moron or you could react to it by deciding most people are trying to get by with a different context than yours and start working the problem. Those are your choices pretty much, can't choose "no mess"
Mar 8 at 5:04pmWeb
Show threadCat HicksMar 8

To be clear: you can have grief about the mess!! Grieving the mess is also a human response. But you'll feel a lot more alone if your default is "I'm the only one who Truly Understands The Mess" and a lot less alone if your default is "my fellow humans must also be in versions of The Mess" and guess what

The default is a learned skill.

Show threadShannon Quinn Mar 8
@grimalkina Honest question: why is that the learned skill? Is there an evolutionary component there, or is that “I alone can fix everything” sociopathy beat into us that deeply from the start?
Show threadCat HicksMar 8
@magsol oh, BOTH povs are learned -- we have adaptive social cognition to help us situate in the context of our local cultures, which reward very different behaviors. I see it like, our beliefs in the social realm are fundamentally very malleable because that is an adaptive way for them to be for a social species. So yes, I think there's an evolutionary component to the malleability itself.
Show threadCat HicksMar 8

@magsol

This study on the early shaping of norms has some substance to fill out the picture I'm sketching

https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116047611746509626

Show threadCat HicksMar 8

@magsol But I also mean learned in the sense that, we have found certain belief structures are productively malleable. When people are provided with more adaptive "virtuous cycles" to unlock better interpretations of others, it helps improve our adaptive behaviors

Good examples are:
- self-compassion (which ties to = compassion for others)
- anxiety interventions
- sense of belonging
- interventions on attribution errors (e.g., growth mindsets re: abilities--> performance)

Show threadCat HicksMar 8

@magsol So even within-individual over our lifetimes (not just between cultures) we see individuals get on more or less adaptive tracks. I am interested in how we increase prosocial behavior, so I like to remind people we can learn ways of thinking that measurably increase our prosocial interpretations and behavior :)

That makes the world function, materially, in a more prosocial way!

Show threadCat HicksMar 8
@magsol but that malleability also means that other beliefs can be internalized: outgroup biases, fixed mindset and deficit attributions about others. These play a role in our biggest failures of empathy for others
Show threadcraignicolMar 8

@grimalkina there feels like an overlap between "I'm the only one who Truly Understands The Mess" and learned helplessness.

As in looking for other people who understand the mess the way you do, and having infrequent successes and lots of disappointments.

Show threadCat HicksMar 8
@craignicol yeah I think it can be destructive and narcissistic pretty fast (which goes along with learned helplessness). Giving in or not to contempt for others feels like a big difference here
Show threadWoozle HypertwinMar 8

@grimalkina What I see is... a little more complicated, I think, than either of those options:

  • Many people clearly do have a decent grasp of what's going on, and are at least withdrawing their participation to whatever extent they can. (Many are actively working to fight it.)
  • Many people do not really understand what's going on, and would be horrified if they did; they're more the victims of misinformation-structures than they are participants.
  • A very few people, typically those operating from positions of power (often not the most visible, though) know exactly what they're doing. Some of those may honestly believe they're doing what's right, but many (most?) of them suffer from an inability to look much beyond their own near-term gratification.

...and since I've rambled this far: my focus lately has been on "how can we help the first group to be most effective at maximally reducing the harm done by the last group?" ...or something along those lines.

TLDR: Good exists. Find it, and help it to prevail.

Show threadCat HicksMar 8
@woozle this was a very condescending way to reply to what's obviously a succinct social media post. You can engage with my larger work in social science to see the "complicated," but don't talk down to me
Show threadCat HicksMar 8
@woozle especially when your tldr is indistinguishable from my original post
Show threadWoozle HypertwinMar 8

@grimalkina I'm awfully sorry! I honestly did not mean to condescend.

I'll have to think this over and figure out what I did wrong. Again, my apologies.

Show threadLaurent BercotMar 8

@grimalkina I've been trying for 30+ years to come up with other explanations than "everyone else is a moron" and they never really had much explanatory and predictive power, and I oftentimes felt that it was a stretch and an exercise in performative humility.

These days, I'm running out of options, and "different context" doesn't really cut it anymore.