[cartoonworld]

>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)

You got it, but then you missed it.

Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessness) that will affect your outcome while trying to conquer each of these steps. These aren't bad per-say, but a result of our biology and millions of years of evolution. If I were wagering on my own arrogantly assumed competence vs. my evolved biology.... man, I'm putting it all on Red.

It is such great advice that, as you correctly state, "[Emotions] often times distract one from making progress" but this is not easy to achieve, an obvious course of action, and it feels wrong when you're in it. Even if someone told you and you believe them.

Take a contrived example--PTSD. In WWI this was called "Shell Shock", and a lot of people up until yesterday and beyond are still smacking people on the back, giving the misguided, but sincere pep talk: "Walk it off, kid! Power through it! Get ahold of yourself! What's wrong with you? Why can't you take the win?"

The truth of the matter is that the solution is obvious, but even if something is obvious, easy, and effective, people often simply require someone to tell them the answer and more than that, be trusted enough to let them coach them through it. Once you know, maybe it really is easy, maybe it still takes a lot of work, luck, perhaps counseling or therapy (EMDR therapy sounds like bullshit but it sure is real)

[dasyatidprime]

To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on?

In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some wrong emotion, don't you? Even if your conscious mind doesn't, what's underneath sure might. Highly not recommended to put it that way to yourself raw! And yet.

Emotional processing infrastructure is an important part of society, and its blueprints an important part of culture. I suspect that the more densely packed our sociopsychological world is, the more the equivalent of mental building codes and city utilities are something that has to be negotiated to make life workable. Hindbrain Owners Association, anyone?

[sdwr]

Great point about of the value of mentorship, legacy, chain of knowledge. The emotional landscape can be complicated, scary, and full of conflicting information. Having a trusted example of something working is a huge advantage.

Take Donald Trump as a (not entirely positive) case study. Without the example of his father, he would never have had the confidence to be so scummy and provocative, or to desecrate the role of president.

I'm sure there are plenty of nice examples out there too. That's just where my head jumped to off the bat.

[cartoonworld]

This is really funny, I think I agree? I'm honestly not sure, but I am sensing a giggle.

[sdwr]

Just a tiny one :^|

[contravariant]

Seems a bit weird to conflate emotion with cognitive biases.

Sure emotions aren't particularly intelligent, in particular they almost entirely ignore consequence, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them, it just means you should not use your current emotion to plan the future. You should however use your future emotions to plan your current course of action, because otherwise what's the point?

[cartoonworld]

I am not intending to conflate emotions with cognitive bias, although since both are product of the brain they are of course related. I see why you thought that, my apologies, I may have skipped something important there.

It's just that your emotions about a particular attribute or situation will possibly be subject to and definitely interact with various cognitive bias.

Someone who is bad at reciting book reports might infer they are just not good at public speaking. Because they believe it is so, they may attribute their failures to this quality that they believe they possess.

But what if the failure isn't an attribute like being bad at speaking, but a side effect of normal anxiousness and inexperience? Will he or she recognize this, or are they likely to harbor a bias or explanation that confirms their belief? Would they be motivated to reason about why they are no good at it, and therefor shouldn't join the debate team in order to avoid experiencing speaking anxiety?

When the English teacher later asks them to read a passage, might they feel shame and resentment towards the teacher and themselves? If they feel the shame and resentment, I think they might experience cognitive dissonance, and reason that they are bad at speaking, they have stage fright. That would explain the fear and anger.

Finally, how likely are they to simply trust their mom who suggests they stick it out, and try to get a passing grade in their public speaking course?