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May. 1st, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leapinglyscreaminglyToday I came to understand a little more both about the way my mind works and the way that others(') do.
My significant other (is there a less clumsy term for that that isn't the wrong one? Maybe one should be invented.) had told me before that she didn't really believe me when I commented that I nearly always question myself critically on nearly everything. (Dialectically, I mean; this kind of self-criticism is usually a strength, not a weakness.) Her skepticism astonished me, but I see now where the disparity comes from. Like most difficult-to-acquire knowledge, it's pretty darn obvious once you have it.
What happens is that I'm constantly considering counterarguments to my thoughts, and when I talk a lot of the things I say I say as theories, hypotheses, to test whether I believe them or not. But verbally I just state my hypotheses as assertions.
My mental MO is to reach a conclusion quickly based on insufficient data, then state is as a fact, then give it the evil eye to see if it disintegrates and is therefore not a fact. I even do this when I'm writing notes to myself. Whether the things I say are right or not when I say them is not really something I'm checking until after I talk. Thinking about it, this is probably because I'm usually less concerned with being right than with becoming right. But the result is that the fact-checking part of my mental feedback look comes *after* the talking part. Which means I'm often wrong. And that's fine with me; I could care less if any specific thing I utter happens to be right.
But on reflection I can see how that would be annoying, especially if it isn't clear that I'm nearly always musing provisionally rather than dogmatically.
But the other interesting thing I learned is related to that. And it's that I almost never actually second-guess the things that come out of my mouth in normal conversation before I say them, even things that aren't factual assertions. I second-guess my thoughts constantly, but not my words. With some exceptions, in general I'm not thinking that much about how what I'm saying is going to be received, because I don't really care. I'm not worried about how I come off, so whatever; I just talk.
But on reflection, that's not quite the right attitude. It's possible to be emotionally independent of what other people see you without refraining from considering it. I consider my tone and the way I'll be understood when I'm writing, so why not with speech?
The danger would be to go to far and kill one's spontaneity by over-analysis. However, despite my penchant for over-analysis, I doubt I'm in terribly much danger of that.
Besides which, I suspect that adding that consideration to the loop is the kind of thing that actually makes you smarter. Considering counterarguments to your thoughts definitely makes you functionally smarter. Considering how one comes off to others presumably would make you think about other's values and perceptions more closely - which is precisely the kind of thing that makes you smarter, even if you don't care to hold those values yourself.
I've been wondering lately about the connection between empathy and intelligence. I think it's a pretty deep one. Douglass Hofstadter might agree, though I'm not certain that it's a clearly definable connection. Is it possible to be intelligent without understanding other minds or your own accurately? Probably. But it would be a kind of facile intelligence, of dubious ultimate usefulness to the thing that possessed it. How do you know what to use your intelligence for if you don't understand your own mind?
Perhaps what I am thinking of is that there is a connection between empathy and depth? I'm not sure.
My significant other (is there a less clumsy term for that that isn't the wrong one? Maybe one should be invented.) had told me before that she didn't really believe me when I commented that I nearly always question myself critically on nearly everything. (Dialectically, I mean; this kind of self-criticism is usually a strength, not a weakness.) Her skepticism astonished me, but I see now where the disparity comes from. Like most difficult-to-acquire knowledge, it's pretty darn obvious once you have it.
What happens is that I'm constantly considering counterarguments to my thoughts, and when I talk a lot of the things I say I say as theories, hypotheses, to test whether I believe them or not. But verbally I just state my hypotheses as assertions.
My mental MO is to reach a conclusion quickly based on insufficient data, then state is as a fact, then give it the evil eye to see if it disintegrates and is therefore not a fact. I even do this when I'm writing notes to myself. Whether the things I say are right or not when I say them is not really something I'm checking until after I talk. Thinking about it, this is probably because I'm usually less concerned with being right than with becoming right. But the result is that the fact-checking part of my mental feedback look comes *after* the talking part. Which means I'm often wrong. And that's fine with me; I could care less if any specific thing I utter happens to be right.
But on reflection I can see how that would be annoying, especially if it isn't clear that I'm nearly always musing provisionally rather than dogmatically.
But the other interesting thing I learned is related to that. And it's that I almost never actually second-guess the things that come out of my mouth in normal conversation before I say them, even things that aren't factual assertions. I second-guess my thoughts constantly, but not my words. With some exceptions, in general I'm not thinking that much about how what I'm saying is going to be received, because I don't really care. I'm not worried about how I come off, so whatever; I just talk.
But on reflection, that's not quite the right attitude. It's possible to be emotionally independent of what other people see you without refraining from considering it. I consider my tone and the way I'll be understood when I'm writing, so why not with speech?
The danger would be to go to far and kill one's spontaneity by over-analysis. However, despite my penchant for over-analysis, I doubt I'm in terribly much danger of that.
Besides which, I suspect that adding that consideration to the loop is the kind of thing that actually makes you smarter. Considering counterarguments to your thoughts definitely makes you functionally smarter. Considering how one comes off to others presumably would make you think about other's values and perceptions more closely - which is precisely the kind of thing that makes you smarter, even if you don't care to hold those values yourself.
I've been wondering lately about the connection between empathy and intelligence. I think it's a pretty deep one. Douglass Hofstadter might agree, though I'm not certain that it's a clearly definable connection. Is it possible to be intelligent without understanding other minds or your own accurately? Probably. But it would be a kind of facile intelligence, of dubious ultimate usefulness to the thing that possessed it. How do you know what to use your intelligence for if you don't understand your own mind?
Perhaps what I am thinking of is that there is a connection between empathy and depth? I'm not sure.
