a fairy tale demonstrating that to maintain a constant property, words are not needed and you don't even need to be human
if in the forest a bunny fell into a pit with stakes and was surprised - this can be interpreted as "the bunny held the property of the ground under his feet as 'solid'". the bunny didn't think in words, didn't know the word "property" and didn't "hold" it in attention.
the bunny barely survived, but now his behavior changed - he began to fear walking on the ground and became more cautious. it can be interpreted that his property of the ground under his feet changed from constant (solid) to inconstant (not always solid).
the universe where the bunny holds the property of earth as constant, and where he is not sure of its constancy - are two different universes with different predictions.
in which universe, where the property of earth inside the bunny is "always solid", or where it's "not always solid", is he less likely to fall into a pit?
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Let's ground this with an example from mathematics.
For many years I held the narrative "mathematics sucks", all this time I was making the standard error of mind projection: the dislike seemed like an unchangeable property inherent to mathematics itself. By property I mean a stable pattern. "Properties" are an abstraction, and few people can define this word without preparation, but out of habit they can use it for auto-completing the next word in speech.
The word "sucks" reflected my constant feelings of rejection and avoidance of everything related to mathematics.
At the cellular level what prediction can be obtained from the statement "mathematics sucks"? That when observing thoughts or things in the world that fell into my category of "mathematics", I will notice a certain sensation associated with avoidance and rejection, in short stress (unpleasant sensation in the head). This is surely connected to some changes in physiology or neural processes that the word "unpleasant" should convey.
When I say "constant properties", I expect recurring sensations in the near future after shifting attention to the category "mathematics", these sensations I called unpleasant.
Such sensations are often called properties by people. If such a sensation was recognized - the word "property" will follow it. If there is no word "property", it can be replaced with something similar - mathematics is pleasant, mathematics is beautiful, mathematics is disgusting - pleasantness, beauty and disgustingness will be the properties. And by properties here I will consider stable predictions of sensations.
The hypothesis "there will be a stable unpleasant sensation after shifting attention to things from the mathematics category" is forbidden by the observation that in some contexts things from this category will be felt differently than unpleasantly.
Since sensations depend on physiology, by influencing physiology, we can influence sensations. Even those that seem constant, for example, "mathematics sucks".
I won't list those interventions in physiology that should guarantee improved sensation from doing mathematics even for a hardcore hater and avoider of mathematics. Such substances surely exist. But I don't expect that, for example, alcohol will be sufficient for this.
If you meditate in silence without stimulation for a whole hour, and then in an empty room you only have a mathematics book, stimulation from the mathematics book should ideally be maximal for all past life, since the excitation threshold of neurons has changed and to remove pain you will take the most accessible option for exciting neurons from those offered.
At this moment the internally felt property of mathematics will change from "sucks" to "wow, how interesting". This can even be shocking, since in passive expectations there was no change of this property, because you're used to in normal life, when you didn't sit for an hour in an empty room, stimulating receptors in the usual way, that is near-maximally from what's available. If this happens day after day, it's not surprising that mathematics loses the competition for stimulation and its property internally doesn't change for years. For it to change, you might really need to end up in an empty room for an hour.
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What constitutes the self-fulfilling prophecy
The comfort level for reading mathematics books and learning new things in mathematics directly depends on how much uncertainty there is in decoding the read text. Maximum discomfort will be if you're reading a book in an unknown language, and it will be more comfortable if you're reading in your own.
Because every time you encounter an unfamiliar word, you want to direct your attention somewhere, referring to your model of reality, because the author of the words is trying to direct your attention somewhere. But your goal of "directing attention" is not fulfilled, and you get irritated from the unfulfilled expectation. To fulfill it, you open a translator, and finally direct attention somewhere, having read the translation. Now this is certainty, not uncertainty. Often you experience a pleasant sensation if you quickly convert the feeling of uncertainty into certainty.
For example, when you read fiction, you quickly decode letters into images. But if reading in an unknown language, this won't be quick, uncertainty is converted to certainty more slowly, which slows down the process in time, and you're used to fast stimulation and don't get the same influx of neurotransmitters (dopamine and those that usually go with it) as usual, and this becomes painful, and you strive to avoid pain, including "small" pain.
If you're used to instant mouse response to your actions, input lag even of 0.3 seconds can lead to pain/discomfort. Only one variable was changed - mouse response. But it affected expectations, expectations affected stimulation speed, which affected pain.
Over time you would get used to it and no longer be irritated. But if the transition is sharp, you don't have time to adapt.
Usually people strive to avoid pain associated with low stimulation of their receptors, especially if they're used to high stimulation. For example, if a child eats a lot of food with sugar every day, if offered food without sugar, they will reject it, because predicting return to low stimulation when eating broccoli will not be like the usual high stimulation and pain will be predicted.
If you set yourself the goal to make the internally seeming property of mathematics from sucks to pleasant, like the child with sugar, you can predict pain in the central nervous system. In other words, predict unpleasant sensations in the future. If you're used to constantly maintaining receptor stimulation at a certain level, even without realizing it, your life will largely be a self-fulfilling prophecy of maximizing stimulation where you decided to be while avoiding other unpleasant states.
To solve the task of changing mathematics properties from "sucks" to "pleasant" or even neutral, you need to endure the pain of learning and for long. The amount of pain decreases proportionally to how clear it becomes where to direct attention after a certain symbol and by what rule, similar to learning a new language. Therefore people who have studied mathematics usually no longer suffer seeing it - they don't repeatedly go through stopping from uncertainty, they automatically direct attention to images clear to them out of habit, they do it quickly and can already get pleasant neurotransmitters in their head in the process.
The self-fulfilling prophecy consists in that if you without understanding it yourself are trying to maximize stimulation of your receptors, then where you can without additional stress jump off, you jump off into a state so that the variable "receptor stimulation" would be maximally large.
Some goals stated by people ultimately don't look like maximization of some final result, but the goal "maximization of receptor stimulation in ways where there is no terrible stress" is of the sort where people REALLY try to maximize it and they try very very hard.
I added to the formulation "where there is no terrifying stress" to explain why many people don't immediately try to use some substances for excessive stimulation - it's assumed that they have terrifying stress for this strategy. Because they predict that such intervention will immediately hit many other goals that they also want to maintain in the future (for example, preserve money, health etc).
How to stop the self-fulfilling prophecy if you wanted to
To stop the self-fulfilling prophecy, where you strive to maintain the constant property of mathematics "sucks" as such until the end of life, to voluntarily not transition to low stimulation, which is followed by pain, you must, surprise, go (temporarily) into low stimulation.
- But how will this convince a person to transition to low stimulation, if their goal is, surprise - not to transition to low stimulation?
For another goal, to achieve which they understand that they need to go through low stimulation, and they have competing stress on not fulfilling this other goal.
When people go into low receptor stimulation, usually they want to reduce pain - motivations immediately appear to buy themselves something sweet, because it relieves pain, to put music in the background, because it relieves pain (with influx of dopamine and other neurotransmitters), to do this together with someone, because having someone nearby adds quickly convertible uncertainty into pleasant sensation, which relieves pain. Drink coffee. Or ibuprofen.
You can subject yourself to low stimulation, get guaranteed pain and partially relieve it with mathematics, as in the case with an empty room. Often by a similar principle people go to the office to work there instead of home - they create low stimulation for themselves with the office, where there is additional stress on the strategy of not working, and against the background of low office stimulation, unlike at home, transition to less low stimulation - mathematics. This will be easier than transitioning to it from home.
- Why would a person, described above with words ["maximization of receptor stimulation in ways where there is no terrible stress"] want to create low stimulation for themselves with an office?
Because they have stress about not meeting the deadline and they're trying to somehow maintain the goal "project submitted on time". office is a way that worked in the past. Stress about not submitting is stronger than stress about the office. Stress about not submitting the project (+ losing salary and following unpleasantness) is more "terrible" than stress from the office.
The brain is adaptive, and tends to reduce pain. The more often you transition to low stimulation, the less pain becomes over time. This is also called "got used to it". Also pain becomes less if you study a new language and over time don't stop from uncertainty.
There are many ways to adapt faster to low stimulation. To do this, you need to influence your physiology. Meditation, training, change of environment, social pressure, blackmail, reinforcements - all this affects physiology.
But if you remembered that "mathematics sucks after all" - the very task of "changing this seemingly final property" can seem impossible and not worth the effort, and it may not be obvious at all that the answer to the task lies in changing physiology. Especially if a person has a model that things have properties not connected with physics (for example, spirituality).
But you can get confused, because in people's language you don't say "the property of my perception of mathematics is constant", you say "mathematics has a constant property". Speaking like this, you shift attention to the category mathematics itself, taking attention away from the category your perception, which you should change for the task of changing the property sucks to pleasant.
Changing a category from within is much easier if it's in attention and is perceived as a variable (and not as something unchangeable).
Otherwise it may seem that to change this property you need to somehow change things that fell into the category mathematics, and if you see that they don't change, then it seems to you that this property won't change in the future - after all the mathematics textbook is already written and letters in it don't change.
Value judgments of people like "x is good" don't contribute to the task of changing the property of an object to "x is something else". For this you need to translate this reply in your mind, redirecting the seeming property of the object to properties of perception of the object. At first, until brought to automatism, after which it won't be necessary anymore, because a habit is formed. Similar to how you speak in your language.
Because for solving such a task a mandatory condition is shifting attention to your sensations and striving to change them. But if you don't even hold your sensation in attention, how are you going to change it at all, systematically applying effort? After all you need to track sensations and in the process convert it to the needed value. In our case - convert it from "sucks" to "neutral" or "pleasant". How will you do this if your attention doesn't transfer to tracking sensation at all? And given that by default you maintain it as usual.
On the other hand, when you've already mastered everything and made the sensation from mathematics pleasant, returning back may be impossible, simply because you won't be able to return to that brain state that produced stress from uncertainty in decoding. Now you automatically decode everything and even get pleasant sensations from this. To try to repeat the previous state of "suckiness", you'll somehow have to forget what you learned. Because stress will depend directly on whether you get decoding quickly or not.
Summary of this article
Permanent properties of things are a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you try to organize your life in such a way that these permanent properties of things, as variables, would be constant. You strive not to change variables, because it's physically painful, and pain you try to minimize as often as possible.
If you're solving the task of changing seemingly internal properties of mathematics or something else from sucky to pleasant, don't strive to maintain this property constant, be ready that you need to intervene in physiology and gradually reduce pain from low stimulation through memorizing decoding. Even "incorrect" decoding already reduces pain, compared to if there wasn't any.
Therefore people systematically fall into the illusion of transparency (when you think you "guessed" what the interlocutor meant, but you didn't guess) - after all being in uncertainty so often and maintaining it in memory is painful.
Having memorized one constant property, you don't need to memorize "distribution from possible several uncertain properties".
The temptation to leave the property constant instantly cuts off expectation of a future where you go into low receptor stimulation when shifting attention to predictions. Having allowed yourself this, you get instant relief and influx of pleasant neurotransmitters in the head, therefore sticking constant properties on objects or strategies is so pleasant.
But this is not what you do when solving the task of changing a property. You can remember that this is not a property of the object or strategy, but a prediction of whether you will be in pain in the future from low stimulation. You approximately know what needs to be done to influence this pain.
When people convince you of the constancy of such properties, don't give in if you want to get a habit of more often changing these constant properties within yourself for other goals. People themselves get pleasant sensations from when they talk these properties into you and don't get disagreement.