beginning to write about the Sea of Doubt

So I had not realized how many of my skillsets geared into the :probability nexus: :how to behave in situations full of variables that can only be calculated based on facts not in evidence: :deduce when you are working from faulty assumptions: :deal emotionally with never being certain of three quarters of your operating assumptions: paradigm that I have internally labelled the Sea of Doubt. And now that I have a reason to write about it coherently, I'm beginning to get a much bigger picture of how all of these interconnections correlate. The Sea of Doubt is the basis for my rationality, and how I use that rationality to navigate the world without feeling like an awkward jerk who is wrong all the time.

We "know" a lot of things that are wrong, and from these failsome assumptions comes much of the suffering of our lives. For instance, every young person knows that they are the protagonist of this story they are living in, and they are, as ot_atma says, not even wrong. By the age of twenty five we are expected to get over our "I AM THE PROTAGONIST" delusions and move toward an understanding of "everyone is just trying to do the best they can in variably bad circumstances", but how far people get along this path is highly dependent on personality and disadvantages. It kind of makes me question why we tell kids stories that only have one protagonist; how that's supposed to reflect their journey in life and teach them how to person while filling their head with nonsense?

We punish people socially for acting like they are the protagonist in their own life story when we have obviously cast them in a supporting role in ourlife. Why aren't they more grateful? Aren't we friends? And it would be easier to be upset if they were not trained to do this by every children's story that says that the Chosen One is special and that the normal rules won't apply to them. Because we all feel different, and our cognitive biases latch onto this evidence for our delusion and any piece of luck we encounter "proves" our merit and reinforces our ability to treat other people like they don't matter to our story. And even stories that are about seemingly moral protagonists do this. I'm looking at you, Harry Potter.

So part of beginning to look at the Sea of Doubt is looking at how we think we are special and how we think others aren't, and realizing that we have been trained to be delusional about how probability works. That we are no luckier or less lucky than others except by systems of privilege which exist embedded within the minds of the people we interact with. Once we start looking at what biases there are we can start looking at how we are trained to be irrational about them and stop telling ourselves stories to justify how "the world might work that way for other people but we are special". Because the problem with some biases is that they work on you even when you know what they are and that they're working on you. Including the Protagonist delusion.

If you're going to dig that one out of your head, set yourself a goal of about two years if you are new to rewiring your headspace. That's at least somewhat realistic? Because you will find yourself reverting back to your old neural pathways in times of stress, and it will get you pissed at yourself for being new at something, which you can't help. That's no way to make progress. And get ready for the host of terrible things that making your biases visible does to how you think of yourself and the people around you. Because once you can't hide behind thinking that you are special? You may have a whole lot of problematic behaviors that you probably weren't aware of which you could ignore because the people to whom you were doing them mattered less.

Becoming a better person is hella awkward.