Panic and Precedent

(shortpost)

It’s a pretty well-established fact that intermittent reinforcement—

(Where you reward some behavior sporadically rather than literally every time.)

—produces a stronger training effect than consistent reinforcement.

This is at least in part because consistent reinforcement sets up an absolute pattern, and it doesn’t take much for your brain to conclude that an absolute pattern has been broken.

A → B.
A → B.
A → B. (ah, cool, I get it, A always results in B!)
A → B.
A → B.
A → B.
A → B. (hell yeah, this is great)
A → B.
A → B.
A → ＿. (wait, what!?)
A → ＿. (okay, I guess the good times are over.)

Whereas if A sometimes results in B, but it’s not clear exactly how, or how often, or which times will be which, there’s a much stronger impulse to keep trying A, in part because you can’t quite be sure that the A → B pattern has actually been broken. Maybe you were wrong about it happening three times in ten; maybe it only happens one time in ten and you just had a lucky streak. Or maybe this is just an unlucky streak…

Absolute patterns are fragile. Flexible, intermittent patterns are robust.

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Correspondingly:

If your team has never lost a game, the first defeat is much more of a shock, and leaves you much more shaken, than if you’ve had a mix of wins and losses. Much more shaken than you “should” be, epistemically speaking, if you still have a 99% win rate.

Correspondingly:

If your friendship or relationship has never had a downturn or a rough moment, then the first big fight is actually much more frightening than if you’ve seen things go south and come back north more than once. The absolute pattern of goodness, being broken for the first time, is scary. Having already had the experience of recovery before, it’s easier to imagine recovering this time.

Correspondingly:

If you’ve never been outside of your comfort zone, the first time that circumstances force you into uncomfortable territory, you’re much more likely to be deeply shook. The pattern of “things are comfortable for me” (or “I’m generally good at the things that I try”) is suddenly broken, and it’s not clear whether it’s going to be like this forever and the good times are simply over.

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Evidence of downturns swinging back the other way is what provides feelings of safety and security and unpanic. Not just knowing the phrase “this too shall pass” but knowing it in your bones.

To head off a possible misunderstanding: the advice here is not “shoot yourself with small bullets to build up resistance to fullsize bullets.” I don’t think you should go out and mess with things that are good, preemptively, in order to prepare for later downturns. That seems crazy to me.

Rather, the point is “understanding this fact about human psychology will help you contextualize your own feelings when something like a sudden anxiety crops up.”

Something that’s only always been completely good suddenly being bad is kinda alarming! But you usually don’t actually know that the good thing is broken forever and can’t ever be fixed.

If you can recognize that you’re Big Panicked in part because you don’t know if this thing will ever turn good again, knowing the source of (at least part of) the panic can help. It helps you take the feelings more as object, and turn your attention to questions like “okay, how would I actually know if it is likely to turn good again?” or “okay, what will I do if it doesn’t?” rather than just being stuck in bewilderment and Oh No.

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