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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   2907 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 12, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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With apologies to @Capital_Room (not really) I'm reposting his hypothetical:

Let us consider a hypothetical character named John. Here is what John has to say about some of his coworkers:

Alice at work keeps stealing my parking space; obviously, she wants to murder me so she can have it all to herself.

Bob bumped into me in the hall yesterday; obviously, he’s a threat to my life, since he clearly shows a willingness to inflict violence upon me.

I suggested to Carol that we use a red background on the webpage, but she used a blue one instead. I can only conclude that she wants to kill me so that I stop showing up her lousy ideas with my better ones.

Dave made a comment about the smell of fish in the break-room after I reheated my lunch in the microwave. Obviously he hates my culinary choices, because he hates me, and intends to assassinate me.

Emma in management announced the new work schedule, and the set up for Monday afternoons conflicts with one of my hobbies outside work. She obviously created that whole schedule specifically to attack me personally, because she’s plotting to destroy me.

Frank called me a “paranoid nutjob.” He’s clearly out to get me and wants me dead.

Greta says I’m constantly exaggerating how much people don’t like me to play on people’s sympathy. She’s obviously plotting my death.

Henry made a comment about how I frequently accuse everyone of wanting to kill me, which only goes to prove how much he wants to kill me.

(Cartoonish, yes, but it’s a deliberate excess for purpose of illustration.)

What’s the best explanation for why John is Like This?

John is paranoid — maybe a classmate tried to stab him on the playground as a kid, and now he views everything through the lens of that trauma, or something.

John is cynically engaging in hyperbole to win over others into taking his side — he found out that exaggerating how much hostility he encounters engendered greater sympathy, and he just kept ramping it up in intensity.

John frequently contemplates killing anyone he disagrees with or dislikes — he’s engaging in “typical-minding,” believing that everyone else shares his own murderous hate.

Disregarding that this is a metaphor for the Jews or whatever, it's how I model people. What is the best explanation?

Well, the biological explanation (mostly feeding into 1, but can also feed into 2 or 3) is an enlarged amygdala in the brain. Which can be genetic, a result of intense trauma, and potentially other environmental factors. Or a mix of those.

So this simply means that any signals coming into the brain get fed into the amygdala, the amygdala analyzes any possible threats in those signals, and inevitably finds and amplifies those signals, then sounds the alert to every other part of the brain, which then acts as though the threat is real whether there is such a threat or not.

Scary thing, is that this means that if you say something positive to them, they'll immediately assume you're lying and look for any angle that could be used against them. If you say something negative, they'll take this as a direct 'attack' and (over)react accordingly. And if you say something neutral, they'll immediately take the worst interpretation and (over)react accordingly.

And you don't say anything they'll assume you're thinking the worst thing about them.

This is how their brain works on a literal physical level, so when I encounter someone who fits this profile I immediately model them as a ball of neuroses and paralyzing anxiety and self-esteem issues, which tends to trigger a pity response. This disarms any anger I may have, and I usually then take pains to distance myself from this person since there's little I can do to calm them down when they are cognitively wired to feel threatened by almost every single stimulus they encounter.

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