we need to talk

celeste headlee

“You have to change a man’s heart before you can change his behavior”

Retribution is a drug - Revenge

When someone has been wronged, the brain experiences a state of chemically induced turmoil. That person may spend years trying to satisfactorily resolve an unresolved emotional conflict. If you look at the brain of someone who's just been harmed by someone - ridiculed or harassed or insulted - we can look at what the brain is doing, and what the brain looks like on revenge looks the same as the brain of somebody who is thirsty and is just about to get a sweet drink to drink or someone who’s hungry who’s about to get a piece of chocolate to eat. It’s the satisfaction of a craving. The desire for revenge doesn’t come from some sick dark part of our mind. It’s a craving to solve a problem and accomplish a goal. 

Multitasking isn’t doing multiple things, it’s switching between single tasks back and forth, and the switching creates a dopamine-addictive feedback loop, rewarding the brain for losing focus and consistently seeking external stimuli.

Meditation - The brain is guaranteed to get distracted, and you can’t stop yourself from thinking, but the craft of meditation is to not follow every errant thought that comes into your head. Meditation simply makes you aware of what the brain is thinking and gives you more control over which thoughts you dwell on and which you choose to release.

Convergent information - when someone tells us a story, our brain automatically scans our memory for a comparable experience. In conversations our brains respond identically, as if we’ve just been presented with visual stimuli.

Empathy - We try to understand others by relating their story to our own experiences. This is not a good employment of empathy because our egos distort our perception of our own empathy. If I watch a video of puppies and another group watches a video of maggots, and then I’m asked how bad it was for those who had to watch the maggots, I won’t think it was that bad, because I’m relating it to how I feel, and I just saw a puppy video! 

We underestimate the negative reactions of others easily when we’ve just come from a positive experience. AKA, we use our own feelings and perceptions as a basis to determine how others feel.

Biases - there’s no evidence to suggest people who are aware of their own biases are better able to overcome them than those who are unaware of their biases.

Fake News - One of the dangers of the backfire effect is that once someone has read it, it can become part of their belief system and very difficult to dislodge. Trying to correct inaccurate information is one of the best ways to get people to reinforce their incorrect belief.

Conversation Control - In an emotionally charged conversation, you cannot change the mind of whomever you’re arguing with. Your goal instead should be your own enlightenment. You can’t control what they take away from the conversation, but you can control what you get out of it. 

Two sides of the aisle - If we only speak to people who agree with us we shut out the possibility of new perspectives, discoveries, and information.

Attention Span - Our attention spans are dwindling to about 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than a goldfish. Poor attention leads to poor health (inability to focus on long periods of exercise, unable to spend long periods of time in the kitchen to prepare meals), bad relationships via our patience threshold, and in intelligence as our IQ is determined not only by what we know but also by what our brain can ignore while it focuses on something else.

The upside to this is that our brain plasticity, as was suggested in the shallows, is changing so that we are becoming better at doing more with less (i.e., engaging in short bursts of ihg attention and more efficient encoding into memory). Having the ability to quickly pivot our attention from one thing to the next is valuable. 

Cramming - Interspaced repetition is extremely useful for encoding information into long-term memory, whereas rote repetition is a good way to disengage or become apathetic. 

Questions - Winning over a person who dislikes you is one part giving honest compliments and one part asking for advice.

Silence - If you give a listener a series of words, an extended silence will prompt certain populations of cells in the brain to start looking for a signal. If the signal doesn’t come, arousal and emotional centers. It can wakes up parts of our brains that may have been sleeping.