Sad to say I've been the person with the self-reinforcing network of largely-false beliefs (with regard to https://aella.substack.com/p/the-other-porn-land/comment/240855567). And yeah, the thing that finally broke me out of it was *not* in fact a direct counter-argument against the belief that [person-I-barely-knew] was my One True Love or against a major swath of the associated memeplex I had built up around it. The thing that broke me out of it was reading hpmor and the sequences, which taught me *general* good practices of epistemology while (mostly) refraining from arguing against the specific false beliefs I had, such that I could eventually apply those practices to my false beliefs and realize their falsity on my own. Sadly, I suspect even Eliezer would have failed if he'd tried to change past-me's mind by directly challenging the false beliefs I had.
The reasons for beliefs aren't always about the beliefs being true. (Which means showing that they are false won't cause the person believing them to change their position.)
I know a person who is an absolute nightmare at social deduction games. She is seriously two or three standard deviations above normal at lying, social manipulation, misdirection, obfuscation, causing chaos, and DEDUCING who is doing those things and counter-playing it.
But even they lose at werewolf/mafia/clocktower sometimes. Why? Because we are all apes and we run our memeplexes on extremely crappy hardware. If the 'miasma' (good word btw) just happens to stick to you too strongly by random happenstance (or deliberate malice/spite), sometime you HAVE 'to take the L' and cut losses.
I learned this lesson early and brutally as a child, it is extremely unpleasant. There are mitigations but they almost always involve real and steep costs.
Sincerely sorry this is something you have to deal with, and wishing you luck.
I once saw a social deduction based reality TV show in which one of the most inept players, who had spent the entire season being manipulated by one contestant after another, made it all the way to the final challenge simply because the other contestants had concluded (quite accurately!) that he wasn't going to be a threat.
I am very familiar with this in terms of politics. I'm not going to go into the object level, but there are highly popular self-reinforcing networks of beliefs that I am strongly opposed to, where sources cite each other in a loop based on nothing.
This makes me want to rip my hair out, jump up & down, do cartwheels, and then lay on the floor face down screaming. I know this hopelessness palpably. I’ve sort of been obsessed with this dynamic for a few years now. You’re describing Karpman’s Drama Triangle (which I’ve been reworking into The Hot Potato Game, as my old workshop is over 3hrs & too meandering to be effective).
Until one intentionally flips some switches, we seem to be biologically programmed for familiarity - not truth. You have to build the truth functions separately. But the familiarity machine comes built in.
Your description of the pillar rebuilding — from my perspective, you’re watching someone ride in circles around the Triangle instead of follow you off of it. Or, you convinced them to put down the hot potato they were holding, but as soon as you look away, they picked up another one subconsciously, to continue the Game. Riding the Triangle / Playing the Game builds momentum that you have to account for in order to leave (yourself) or to maybe possibly help others leave.
I say “maybe possibly”, because that’s one of the most frustrating parts — you can’t pull someone off, they have to choose it.
When you’re in this dynamic, it’s hard to see outside. Your description of choosing to cut ties with people after oodles of chances sounds (to me, based on this scant info) like you choosing to disengage from the Triangle/Game dynamic. If someone if still playing and you leave, they can’t see you clearly. They’re still labeling everything according to the Game, so often the one who disengages just gets pegged as a Villain Player (which is essentially what you described).
I’m sort of obsessed with trying to better describe/teach this dynamic, because it seems like one of the very few ways to get people to actually fucking give up Potatoes. Once you can see the full structure, it’s much easier to be like, “oh, that’s not how I want to live my life” and begin to shift the momentum. Everything is better outside of this stupid-but-understandable Game (except for engaging with people who are still playing it).
You probably know (I'm posting it for members of the lucky 10,000 https://xkcd.com/1053/), there are adjustments to the Drama Triangle that I have found helpful:
Yeah, I reference a couple alternative/inverted Triangle configurations in my workshop, but I have found with students that they tend to be more confusing rather than helpful. Or maybe confusing isn’t the right word…maybe ‘distracting’. They tend to focus on doing the new Triangle instead of learning to notice the dynamics of the classic one. Then they’re playing two games and still not being self-responsible.
Because that’s the crux of the classic Drama Triangle: each player is deflecting self-responsibility in one (often subtle) way or another. Learn what self-responsibility is / looks/feels like, and you’re set. You don’t need a whole other dynamic or model or Game.
Not to say the alternatives have no value. And also, I love that xkcd! It plants seeds of humility — which is helpful for cultivating self-responsibility. 😜
Perhaps I'm going too meta, and have a divergent experience, but I have found it hard to break myself and others out of the three roles. Bringing awareness of the triangle while trying to remove the 'blame/wrong' elements has been more successful for me (personally) than trying to forcefully abandon the habitual dance.
It has been said building a new habit is easier than breaking an old.
*crackse knuckles* Ah man, you can never go too meta. 😌
There must be a wire crossed in communication somewhere, as I would describe my approach as also bringing awareness to the pattern and removing the shame elements, so you can see the basic motivators underneath. The Triangle dynamic seems to fundamentally be a mechanism for energy efficiency. I would definitely agree that you can’t bypass the shame elements and force a behavior change, at least not sustainably.
A problem with confirmation bias is that, it is, in some sense, completely rational: the more surprising something would be, the more grounds you have for believing that it's not what it looks like, and something that's not surprising at all is very likely to be exactly what it looks like.
Sad to say I've been the person with the self-reinforcing network of largely-false beliefs (with regard to https://aella.substack.com/p/the-other-porn-land/comment/240855567). And yeah, the thing that finally broke me out of it was *not* in fact a direct counter-argument against the belief that [person-I-barely-knew] was my One True Love or against a major swath of the associated memeplex I had built up around it. The thing that broke me out of it was reading hpmor and the sequences, which taught me *general* good practices of epistemology while (mostly) refraining from arguing against the specific false beliefs I had, such that I could eventually apply those practices to my false beliefs and realize their falsity on my own. Sadly, I suspect even Eliezer would have failed if he'd tried to change past-me's mind by directly challenging the false beliefs I had.
The reasons for beliefs aren't always about the beliefs being true. (Which means showing that they are false won't cause the person believing them to change their position.)
...you knew this already, right?
ʸᵉᵃʰ
I know a person who is an absolute nightmare at social deduction games. She is seriously two or three standard deviations above normal at lying, social manipulation, misdirection, obfuscation, causing chaos, and DEDUCING who is doing those things and counter-playing it.
But even they lose at werewolf/mafia/clocktower sometimes. Why? Because we are all apes and we run our memeplexes on extremely crappy hardware. If the 'miasma' (good word btw) just happens to stick to you too strongly by random happenstance (or deliberate malice/spite), sometime you HAVE 'to take the L' and cut losses.
I learned this lesson early and brutally as a child, it is extremely unpleasant. There are mitigations but they almost always involve real and steep costs.
Sincerely sorry this is something you have to deal with, and wishing you luck.
I once saw a social deduction based reality TV show in which one of the most inept players, who had spent the entire season being manipulated by one contestant after another, made it all the way to the final challenge simply because the other contestants had concluded (quite accurately!) that he wasn't going to be a threat.
Yup that sounds shitty, I’m sorry 😞 🫂
I am very familiar with this in terms of politics. I'm not going to go into the object level, but there are highly popular self-reinforcing networks of beliefs that I am strongly opposed to, where sources cite each other in a loop based on nothing.
This makes me want to rip my hair out, jump up & down, do cartwheels, and then lay on the floor face down screaming. I know this hopelessness palpably. I’ve sort of been obsessed with this dynamic for a few years now. You’re describing Karpman’s Drama Triangle (which I’ve been reworking into The Hot Potato Game, as my old workshop is over 3hrs & too meandering to be effective).
Until one intentionally flips some switches, we seem to be biologically programmed for familiarity - not truth. You have to build the truth functions separately. But the familiarity machine comes built in.
Your description of the pillar rebuilding — from my perspective, you’re watching someone ride in circles around the Triangle instead of follow you off of it. Or, you convinced them to put down the hot potato they were holding, but as soon as you look away, they picked up another one subconsciously, to continue the Game. Riding the Triangle / Playing the Game builds momentum that you have to account for in order to leave (yourself) or to maybe possibly help others leave.
I say “maybe possibly”, because that’s one of the most frustrating parts — you can’t pull someone off, they have to choose it.
When you’re in this dynamic, it’s hard to see outside. Your description of choosing to cut ties with people after oodles of chances sounds (to me, based on this scant info) like you choosing to disengage from the Triangle/Game dynamic. If someone if still playing and you leave, they can’t see you clearly. They’re still labeling everything according to the Game, so often the one who disengages just gets pegged as a Villain Player (which is essentially what you described).
I’m sort of obsessed with trying to better describe/teach this dynamic, because it seems like one of the very few ways to get people to actually fucking give up Potatoes. Once you can see the full structure, it’s much easier to be like, “oh, that’s not how I want to live my life” and begin to shift the momentum. Everything is better outside of this stupid-but-understandable Game (except for engaging with people who are still playing it).
You probably know (I'm posting it for members of the lucky 10,000 https://xkcd.com/1053/), there are adjustments to the Drama Triangle that I have found helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle#Therapeutic_models
Yeah, I reference a couple alternative/inverted Triangle configurations in my workshop, but I have found with students that they tend to be more confusing rather than helpful. Or maybe confusing isn’t the right word…maybe ‘distracting’. They tend to focus on doing the new Triangle instead of learning to notice the dynamics of the classic one. Then they’re playing two games and still not being self-responsible.
Because that’s the crux of the classic Drama Triangle: each player is deflecting self-responsibility in one (often subtle) way or another. Learn what self-responsibility is / looks/feels like, and you’re set. You don’t need a whole other dynamic or model or Game.
Not to say the alternatives have no value. And also, I love that xkcd! It plants seeds of humility — which is helpful for cultivating self-responsibility. 😜
Perhaps I'm going too meta, and have a divergent experience, but I have found it hard to break myself and others out of the three roles. Bringing awareness of the triangle while trying to remove the 'blame/wrong' elements has been more successful for me (personally) than trying to forcefully abandon the habitual dance.
It has been said building a new habit is easier than breaking an old.
*crackse knuckles* Ah man, you can never go too meta. 😌
There must be a wire crossed in communication somewhere, as I would describe my approach as also bringing awareness to the pattern and removing the shame elements, so you can see the basic motivators underneath. The Triangle dynamic seems to fundamentally be a mechanism for energy efficiency. I would definitely agree that you can’t bypass the shame elements and force a behavior change, at least not sustainably.
A problem with confirmation bias is that, it is, in some sense, completely rational: the more surprising something would be, the more grounds you have for believing that it's not what it looks like, and something that's not surprising at all is very likely to be exactly what it looks like.