Anger

Something I realised recently, that might be like how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy teaches people with depression that their negative thoughts about themselves aren't always true, and how you don't need to listen to them all the time:

(apologies if I make any mistakes here) whenever you get angry or annoyed about something that's happened or something someone's done, you aren't necessarily correct; just because you're angry doesn't make you right.

In 2 ways: #1 your anger itself might be misplaced, or shouldn't even exist in the first place: when someone says you've done something wrong, they might be right!

and, even if you are right to feel angry, that might make you react in the wrong way - maybe you make the situation worse, or your response isn't effective

an example: when my flatmate washed his dishes at 4am, and woke me up, I got really angry (relatively, for me, anyway). I eventually got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and made him stop. For days afterwards, I couldn't get over that he did something so inconsiderate

I kept replaying it over and over in my head (like "how could you be so stupid to wash dishes at 4 in the morning!! It'd wake anyone up!)

This wasn't helpful - it just made me resentful, and didn't fix the situation at all; I got annoyed when I saw him in the flat, and had to stop myself from acting differently around him (I'm pretty good at that, luckily), to stop our friendship deteriorating (we're very close)

but, after a while of thinking it over, I figured out that he thought he was being considerate; nobody goes to wash the dishes at 4am and doesn't realise they might wake their flatmate up. He'd closed the door into the kitchen & had headphones on; he thought he was being quiet

he didn't set out to wake me up - the opposite, he tried to minimise the chance I woke up! After I realised that,the anger went away, but, my point is that if I wasn't angry initially,I wouldn't have harboured all that resentment in the middle, or had to tread lightly around him

anger solved nothing - it just made me angry (duh) and it didn't fix anything! [I'm pretty much just restating the same thing there twice, I know]

although, when I mentioned this to him, he did say that the anger does serve one purpose, that I didn't think of: it helps you realise when you do something wrong; if people just turn the other cheek constantly, they'll take longer to change & maybe never realise what they did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_the_other_cheek

and this sort of thing pops up in other, very different, places, too: when people hear of someone that's been convicted of a crime being released from prison "early" or being given a "too short" sentence, their immediate emotional response might be

"10 years, for arson/financial fraud/environmental destruction ?! - they should get at least 20!!" I don't what this to call it - "bloodlust" isn't right, but it seems in the same ballpark, at least, when/where corporal punishment exists

They don't stop to think about the effect of imprisoning someone; putting someone in prison for longer might reduce reoffending rates, it might be useless, or it might even be harmful - it could make them more likely to reoffend!

[if the last one seems farfetched, imagine what being surrounded by criminals all day, with little job prospects after being released if companies won't hire a convict, could do to you]

[for a tiny of bit of evidence, see https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/aftereffects-us-evidence-says-doing-more-time-typically-leads-more-crime-after and http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/econ/Durlauf/networkweb1/London/Criminology1-15-01.pdf [pdf], taken from the always-amazing SlateStarcodex @ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/22/social-psychology-is-a-flamethrower/]

the certainty of the punishment is more important than the severity – the most important factor in whether someone commits a crime is the likelihood she will be punished

I'm not saying this is definitely 100% right, or that I'm some sort of emotionless robot, capable of evaluating everything perfectly rationally straight away, I'm saying that your emotional response might stop you considering the other options, and force you down one path

this is kinda similar to optical illusions, like in http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/28/mysticism-and-pattern-matching/, http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/28/why-are-transgender-people-immune-to-optical-illusions/, the whole blue/black dress and Laurel/Yanny things: what your brain tells you isn't necessarily correct or real all the time

I don't want to spoil all of them, so I'll just say, in one of those, you probably missed the second "the" - you read the words like a normal sentence, when it actually wasn't; you didn't perceive reality; what you read wasn't what was really there.

same with the dress/the sound: you might perceive the dress as a different colour or the sound as a different word - sure, it depends on the situation/circumstances blah blah etc, but that's not my point; the point is what your brain tells you isn't always exactly reality

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1014267515696922624 is the same thing, but with our eyes - you don't see exactly what's in front of you!

please don't take me as sort kind of nutcase, I mean in the "brain changes your perceptions a bit" sense, not the "the world isn't real ooooooooooh buy my healing crystals for the low low prive of 19.99 USD" sense

whenever I think things like this, I always end of thinking afterwards "duh, of course that's true, everyone thinks that!", but, then I think of http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/, http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/07/concept-shaped-holes-can-be-impossible-to-notice/, and https://xkcd.com/1053/

not to go all "blank slate", but, we're not like those ducks from that GIF/video a while ago, we're not born inbuilt with all our knowledge, we have to learn things as we go, and not everyone knows what you think of as common knowledge

maybe, just maybe, someone will read this and have a lightbulb go off in their head. If I'm not totally wrong and being a massive dumbass, or said something entirely obvious

this was ~900 words! I should just get a blog, but then I wouldn't get all this attention! Tradeoffs, tradeoffs I'm trying @devonzuegel's approach of using writing to crystallise your thoughts, rather than just keeping them boxed up in your head

and I can say "thanks, it worked!". Kinda shook my faith in some of points, having to write them down, but, like we saw, uncertainty can be good!