Monthly Archives: May 2024

Knowledge and Epistemology

Confidence and Humility


In Damon Culture (that is to say, a culture made up of people where my traits are the expected ones of the average person, if not quite a culture made of my literal clones), how confidently someone states their beliefs is ideally NEVER influenced by how confident people around them are. Only by how confident they themselves feel about the issue.

The second may seem a natural outgrowth of the first, given how people feel about issues is often affected by others’ confidence. But the distinction is actually very, very important.

I’ve taken other people’s hedging as a REMINDER to check in with my own sense of confidence. I’ve also noticed new uncertainties when people I trust confidently say things I don’t believe.

But I never speak less confidently about something just because someone around me is doing so… particularly if they’re saying something I believe is false! If anything, someone else hedging around a statement I find false is a time I tend to feel MORE encouraged to say things overconfidently, and I have to remind myself to check-in with how-I-would-phrase-the-thing-I-believe-independent-of-what-they-said.

Because… that’s what confidence is FOR, in Damon Culture. It’s a signal for your own state of belief. Anything else seems like deception, one way or another, or playing social games out of fear.

(Also jokes, but that’s a particular context in which it’s often very clear, and clarified shortly afterward)

And fear may well be why it’s a thing people feel inclined to do! It seems reasonable in a society/culture that conditions people (particularly people of certain genders) to sound less “arrogant” or “bossy,” and where people with power will punish those who’ve pricked their pride. It’s also reasonable to think “I need to be careful in how forcefully I say this so as not to make this person defensive” in certain contexts.

Generally though, if someone, particularly in the rationality community, docks someone points for being confident, *independent of being incorrect,* they are very clearly Doing It Wrong, in my eyes, just as much as people who dismiss anything someone says with epistemic humility.

From the perspective of “What does Damon believe an ideal community would do,” adjusting to someone else’s apparent humility is a sign that something went wrong, either in the person’s understanding of epistemic humility or in their trust in the people around them to understand how to interpret their confidence (acknowledging that this lack of trust may be justified, in non-Damon Culture).

Executive Function

Procedural Executive Function, Part 3


The Off Road project has since been folded into Rethink Wellbeing, but I’ve continued working to better understand and treat Executive Dysfunction. You can read more about the project’s origins here.

If you haven’t, I suggest reading the start of my overview and exploration of Executive Function. Parts 1 and 2 of Procedural Executive Function can be found here and here.

TL;DR – Organization is the system of habits and external aids that minimizes effort for accomplishing work. 

Working Memory is your capacity for holding information in your attention at once. 

Flexible Thinking is your ability to creatively problem solve and avoid getting stuck.

Each helps you maintain progress on your goals, and can help maintain flow by reducing difficulty in solving problems, which is one of the main bottlenecks for productive work.

As we begin the final(?) installment of the series, I hope it’s clear now how the many parts of Executive Function work together to take someone from an initial notion about what they “want to do,” to actually doing it.

We can generally put the problems our executive function faces into two buckets: things that prevent us from starting something, and things that cause us to stop doing something.

The first post, covering Planning, Prioritizing and Task Initiation, addressed things in the first bucket. The second post’s contents, Self Monitoring, Impulse Control, and Emotional Control, address things that can be found in both buckets. And this post’s topics, Organization, Working Memory, and Flexible Thinking, largely have to do with things in the second bucket.

But this frame falls apart, a bit, if we zoom in to each step of the path. Do we ever “write an essay?” Or do we write sentences that make up an essay? Each sentence is of course itself made up of words, and each word is made up of letters, but when people say “I have writer’s block,” they don’t normally mean they’re blocked at the level of “I don’t know how to spell a word.” Sometimes they mean “I don’t know the best word to put here.” But often they mean something like “I don’t know what the next sentence should be,” as a subpart of “I don’t know what the next idea to start exploring is,” or “I don’t know how to best explain this idea.”

Again, things that cause us to “stop” doing something are often the same sorts that prevent us from starting the next bit.

As mentioned in Part 1, the tradeoff of “predicted fun/reward” vs “suffering/cost” is often the best measure of how hard someone will find a task to begin, and this extends to each subtask that makes up the overall goal. If you imagine doing something and the primary feelings are all aversive, such as boredom, discomfort, confusion, hopelessness, etc, then you could be reacting to the overall task, but you also could be reacting to some necessary part of it that you expect to be blocked on.

So, while some tasks are so short or straightforward that difficult problems don’t appear, the process of being able to continually engage in and complete “productive work” requires the ability to adapt to each new problem that might come up in the course of doing a task (or, if the work is boring, ways to stay stimulated and engaged if some part of it becomes monotonous). 

Which is where Organization, Working Memory, and Flexible Thinking come in. When all’s well, these things help keep us engaged and capable of solving problems as they arise until the task is done, or at least until we need a break. But if any of them aren’t functioning properly, we’re at risk of feeling stuck, which we often experience as “getting distracted,” at each problem that comes up, whether on the level of what word to write next, or whether the essay really means anything at all.

So… how do we prepare to solve a stream of unpredictable, potential problems?

Organization

This section might seem overly obvious, or a kind of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” After all, part of how executive dysfunction manifests for many people is not being able to get organized!

But it’s important to recognize what organization is for if we want to understand what goes wrong, and how it can help. And to do that, we need to focus again on what it means to get “distracted” by something.

In some situations, getting distracted is a direct effect. Our awareness brings us a new stimulus that isn’t caught by one of our subconscious filters, and our attention shifts to it, or a stray thought occurs to us that immediately grabs our attention.

But for other situations, maybe even most, getting distracted is a symptom. It’s not a sudden, hard to ignore new stimulus that pulls our attention away from something else. It’s the result of your attention seeking something else to distract you from the discomfort or frustration or anxiety of not knowing what to do next.

The first is like a rock through your window. The second is like a vacuum, pulling in anything that will fill it.

Understanding this difference in what it means to “get distracted” is important, because it’s within that difference that we see what’s within our power and what we can do differently.

So, what causes that vacuum to appear? What are the conditions that get our brains to start roaming?

Back in Part 1, I mentioned that the main two things I’ve found have kept people from starting tasks is either predicting failure, or predicting discomfort. In the same way, basically all the reasons people don’t continue to do something they’ve started doing is that they didn’t know what to do next, or predicted it would be unpleasant to do.

Any kind of friction while doing something can inhibit what I call “next step momentum,” leading to the automatic seeking of other stimuli that’s more rewarding or less effortful or stressful. The less uncertainty there is between one step and the next, the less effort transitioning takes, the fewer parts of your executive function chain are going to trip you up in general.

And again, as mentioned during Task Initiation, sometimes a person’s executive function falters because they forgot to fill their gas tank, and the thought of having to make an extra stop on the way to the gym is too discouraging. Sometimes people working on a book or essay don’t know what parts they should write in what order, and an “ugh field” develops where just thinking about it feels bad, because they don’t know how to even begin the process of deciding what order to go in. 

Those same things occur when obstacles come up in the middle of a process or project too, not just before we start. Our momentum is affected by all the same things that might block us; how close, physically, are we to the thing or place we need to take the next step? How much knowledge do we have of how to do it? Do we have the right tools?

All of which is why putting some work into organization ahead of time can help avoid things that break that flow.

Breaking Tasks into Smaller Steps: This is one of the widely given pieces of advice for a reason. The smaller and more concrete the next step is, the less likely we are to get frozen in uncertainty or confusion, and the less susceptible we are to distraction. Having an organized list of steps can also make it easier to get started, and reduce the feelings of being overwhelmed by the vagueness of a task.

There’s a big experiential difference most people feel between “I need to figure out how to apply for this government program” and “I need to go to X website, fill out Y form, and make an appointment at Z office to hand it in with any of these kinds of proper identification.”

Visual Aids: Some people might feel more overwhelmed by a long list of “to-do”s, but even sticky notes with tips or reminders on the edge of your monitor or various parts of your desk can be useful forms of external memory support that keep you from getting stuck when you’re not sure what to do next.

If you are someone who likes task lists or outlines, workflow diagrams can combine visual aids with breaking tasks down. Having an easily accessible reference sheet we can check keeps us in problem-solving mode, which is much more motivating than the void of uncertainty or confusion.

A friend of mine showed me the project outline for a web course she planned to create, and if the following image doesn’t produce visceral anxiety:

then I highly recommend something similar for any long and multiphase project.

If it does produce deep or prolonged anxiety, then maybe something simpler like Kanban boards might be better:

The best tool or system is whichever one most helps you (yes you, specifically) minimize the amount of time you spend unsure of what to do next, and the one that helps minimize the chance that you forget to do something entirely.

An extra benefit of this kind of organization is that it lets you pick and choose more easily what you have the capacity for at any given moment. If your project allows you to choose what order to do what tasks in, having the reminder that you don’t have to do the big, scary, difficult next step and still get productive work done can be very valuable.

Decluttering Spaces: Whether it’s through clearing your desktop or the top of your desk, reducing distractions makes it easier to find what you need and not have your attention caught by something else. Every bit of potential friction, including a few moments of “Where did I put that…?” can contribute to cognitive overload or trigger a path-of-least-resistance into something less taxing or more rewarding, like opening social media or a game.

This is probably a good place to mention that “declutter” doesn’t necessarily mean “empty” or “bland.” Some people work better in a stimulating environment rather than a static one. Some would find a room full of comfy bean bags and backjacks detrimental compared to a work desk, but for others the work desk would kill their productivity after ten minutes due to physical discomfort. A cozy room with lava lamps and a cat in it is perfectly valid so long as it works for you.

Similarly, some people need silence to focus, while for others a good way to declutter their soundspace is to play music. Personally I find music without lyrics (or lyrics in a different language) particularly helpful for maintaining mental focus, and sometimes I’ll even play the same song on loop for hours when I want to maintain a flow state.

But if there’s anything that you know reliably captures your attention and shifts it toward things you don’t want to be doing, it’s good to separate it out. This is a big part of why many people who work from home distinguish their workspace from their relaxation space, if they can.

Time Management: There are a number of reasons “pomodoro timers” work for many people, but the best general explanation I have is that they act as a form of mental offloading. Open-ended work sessions can be difficult to know how to orient to; dividing work into 25 minute chunks, with built in 5 minute breaks, serves as a form of external memory to pre-empt distracting thoughts related to when to take a break and whether to keep working.

Also, if you’re not in flowstate it can be really helpful to give your brain a rest every so often when engaging in deliberate executive function. For some people it’s a literal break away from whatever area or object they were using to do the work. For others, just swapping between a thing that takes lots of effort with minimal reward signals, and a second task that doesn’t take much effort while providing many, is enough to actually boost their productivity, even if they’re swapping often.

(For an example of this, I often find consistent writing over long durations easier when I can alt-tab to some RP I’m engaging in with someone, as the natural back and forth of whose turn it is to respond allows me to take regular breaks every 3-15 minutes and is naturally fun and easier. I also know people who do the same thing with turn-based multiplayer games, or who set the pace of swapping between work and a single player game themself, though I expect that last one is likely to be particularly hard for most people with some EF disorder.)

In a broader scope, effective time management lets you adjust plans and priorities based on changing circumstances, and having accurate predictions about what to do when. Whether you’re planning out a busy day or a multi-week project, if the time you planned to take on one thing starts making the rest harder, the feeling of overwhelm can make it harder to catch up.

Oh, and of course, no discussion of EF and time management would be complete without mentioning deadlines. Many people experience approaching deadlines as a sort of turbo-mode for their executive function and creativity, but there’s a whole separate post that would need to be written about how that works (and when it fails). 

The main relevant bit for this overview is, if you know that you’re the kind of person who just does better with deadlines and are fine with last-minute crunches as your primary way to get things done, one thing you could possibly do beforehand is ensure you have all the tools you need, ready and prepared, so that your last-day-sprint has a minimal amount of distractions or unexpected frustrations. In general, doing a premortem for anything you care about going well is helpful.

Seeking Support: As mentioned in an earlier part of the series, people often have an easier time doing things when they’re doing them with others. Even when working alone, however, no matter what step of your project you’re on, an easy to reference list of all the people you can reach out to if confused or stuck can be really helpful in providing you with next-step-momentum at a critical juncture where you might otherwise end up frustrated, listless, or seeking distraction.

Make a list of people who have worked on similar projects or done similar tasks before. Add people who would be happy to act as rubber ducks, or generally brainstorm/problem solve with. Find a subreddit or web forum or discord that might be able to provide answers.

In general, it can be really helpful to make the mental motion of “seeking support” a part of your automatic reaction to noticing “I don’t know what to do next.” As mentioned in Part 2, the better you are at noticing those sorts of feelings when you have them, the more likely you are to act in an endorsed way to the experience of having them.

There are other things we could cover on the ways organization help with executive function, but that’s a good note from which to transition to the “next” part of the procedure. As a closing note though, keep in mind that all “organization” is meant to do is minimize distractions, friction, and loss of momentum. Some tasks need a little organization, some tasks need a lot, and you might not always know what you’ll need ahead of time. But we usually have some inklings of how to improve our workspace or work flow, if we give ourselves the time and frame to think about them, and if you don’t know how to do a premortem yet, I highly recommend learning how to.

As a final point, if you find yourself in an endless loop of Organization Hell, planning and organizing and meta-planning how you organize… pay extra attention to the Flexible Thinking section, and also, maybe look into some of the things that help with fears and anxieties tied to perfectionism.

Meanwhile…

Working Memory

Most people think of memory in terms of “short term” vs “long term,” a frame in which memory is all about retention of information. This brings to mind comparisons to a computer’s hard drive and RAM, and people might then model the brain as having two specific areas where “long” and “short” memory are kept.

But unlike computers, which store everything in discrete bits, human thoughts are pretty interconnected. Our bodies are constantly receiving, filtering, and processing sensory inputs from multiple sources, which means human memory systems have to span multiple parts of the brain to create the “mental workspace” where active thinking occurs.

In 1999, Nelson Cowan proposed the “embedded-processes” model[1], which put a greater focus on attention to presented stimuli, and stressed the role of “capacity” for understanding the working memory concept. Basically, the more capacity you have to hold things in mind at the same time, the more complex thinking you’re capable of doing for longer… 

But attention is one of the limiters. You can’t actively think about everything in your sensorium all at the same time.Which is why the more information you have “memorized,” the cheaper it is to shift your attention between ideas and let them work together. Ditto externalizing your thinking to a whiteboard or notepad, though as mentioned in the previous post, when focusing on any one thing, your attention will naturally shrink to exclude other bits of information.

Which, it turns out, is pretty important for executive function, a.k.a, our capability to follow through on doing specific things.

As I learned more about working memory, I’ve started to imagine memory’s role in executive function as similar to using my hands to build something out of lego.

Imagine if we had a big tub of lego sitting next to us, which represents all the information we have in our long term memory. Most of it is useless for any one task, but we don’t necessarily know which is and isn’t. Also, some of it is visible on top, while most is “buried” in the tub (which would represent our subconscious, as well as anything stored in “recognition memory”).

On our other side, imagine a conveyor belt carrying semi-random lego past us. Hopefully some of the pieces are needed for the thing we’re trying to make, but most won’t be. So long as we keep our attention moving to different things, that conveyer belt keeps moving. If we stop, it (mostly) stops, leaving us with what’s in reach, and of course what’s in our lego tub.

So we have a few options here.  We could sift through the tub/our memory and see if anything feels useful… but it’s possible we won’t recognize the right pieces even if we feel them. We could also focus entirely on what passes us on the belt. Or of course we could try to mix things from the belt and things in the tub… whatever we decide, we can’t access the pieces that have already passed us, and for the purposes of this metaphor, we can’t keep any pieces we pick up until they snap together in a way that at least somewhat helps solve our problem.

And that process of fitting pieces together and seeing if they’ll snap into place, forming a step in the right direction for solving our problem? That’s where working memory comes in.

Our hands, like our working memory, can fit only so much at once. But they can try any combination that will fit, either from the new pieces of lego passing by, or legos in the tub. All you have to do is find a piece, decide to pick it up (which may require letting go of others), and hold onto it as you try combinations.

Which brings up some important questions, like “how many pieces can your hands hold at once,” and “how good are your hands at only picking up what you want them to?”

…Well, for most people “not many” and “not very.”

You might have heard that the average amount of “chunks” of information a person can hold in their active attention at once is four, but what counts as a “chunk” is a whole essay in and of itself, and it can vary wildly for different kinds of information. Some people can train themselves to hold a truly staggering amount of digits, but it’s unclear how much this level of retention translates into capability for manipulation of information.

In any case, the likely outcome when “trying to build an object out of lego” is that you’ll find yourself constantly changing out pieces, sometimes at random as you drop some and pick up others without a useful plan or intention. And since you can’t hold many at once, any new pieces you pick up might make you have to start all over again until you just happen to get the exact right combination, without any wasted pieces.

To make things more complicated, what if instead of a box full of lego pieces you have a box of mixed lego pieces, roblox pieces, hard candies, bits of colorful paper… and instead of a single conveyor with only lego on it, there are a dozen of them all snaking around you, each with a mix of things on them?

We can even imagine all sorts of variations of this metaphor to incorporate diagnoses that affect executive function like ADHD. What if the room is filled with different colored strobe lights? Or what if the candy feels warm and soft while the lego blocks feel sharp and cold? For things like mania, what if the room is dark, and only a specific and ever changing set of pieces glow? For things like depression, what if some people’s arms get more tired than others more quickly? 

It’s worth noting that learning something new, or applying new knowledge, also uses up our “working memory hands.” Learning something new while at the same time trying to apply it in whatever task we’re doing can be very taxing, and quickly lead to mental fatigue… which often leads to our attention simply going elsewhere, wanting to do other things that are less effort and more rewarding. 

Hopefully it’s clear why difficulty with this can affect executive function, but for those who want more grounded models of what’s happening in the brain, and how we know memory is integral to executive functioning at all, we can examine the brain itself. Our prefrontal cortex is the primary source of all our executive function, a “Central Executive Network” that connects with other areas to engage in various cognitive processes: 

Episodic Buffer: The temporary storage system that modulates and integrates different sensory information for us to work with. To “create” this, the CEN routes through our anterior cingulate cortex, which is our attention controller, into the parietal lobe, which is for perceptual processing.

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad: Our ability to not just visualize things, but also remember the relative positions of things in space, like where we parked our car or what the next step in a series of directions we should take is. This requires our CEN to link up with our posterior parietal cortex and occipital lobe.

Phonological Loop: Our ability to perfectly recall things we hear or read before they get stored in long-term memory, or lost. This involves Broca’s area, which is part of our complex speech network interacting with the flow of sensory information from the temporal cortex, and Wernicke’s area, which is where speech comprehension and understanding written language come from, both of which are part of our cerebral cortex.

The sheer variety and number of parts working together to create our working memory means a lot of different things can go wrong at this step in people’s ability to have “healthy” executive function. For example, damage to Broca’s area causes a form of aphasia where people speak in a jumbled “word salad” even if they clearly know what they want to say. Wernicke aphasia makes it difficult for people to understand others, and their ability to speak is also affected; they can convey intelligible thoughts, but usually limited to just a few words at a time. Both of these disabilities have been found to impair even non-linguistic executive function.

Other things that affect working memory include age (worse as we get older[2]), hormones (estrogen seems to improve it in older women[3], but testosterone boosters don’t help retain WM in aging men[4]), caffeine (mixed, but potentially negative)[5], and emotions (super mixed and also weird).[6]

This also means there’s a variety of approaches people can take to try to improve their working memory… but reviewing studies trying to pin down the effect of this can be discouraging.

For example, some[7] studies[8] suggest that stroke victims with aphasia benefit more from working memory exercises than they do routine speech therapy, and the benefits from working memory training also seems to help children with spastic displegia cerebral palsy [9].

There’s a lot of research out there that shows a mix of outcomes when trying to isolate the effects of working memory training on executive function [10]. For people without some explicit medical diagnosis that affects EF, this study [11] reported that transferable benefits weren’t found to a statistically significant degree beyond the participants’ ability to get better at specific skills trained.

In other words, if there’s nothing specifically “interfering” with your natural working memory, there isn’t much evidence that training it will improve your executive function.

Buuuut if my model of Procedural Executive Function is correct, I do expect it would be hard to notice improvements in EF just by addressing one part of it… especially when the part trained isn’t the participant’s specific “bottleneck,” or not their only one.

There are in fact many reasons why measuring people’s executive function is genuinely hard, not least of which is the very first point I emphasized at the start of all this: “is your executive function the problem, or are you trying to do things you don’t actually want or need to do?”

All of which is to say that while the research so far paints a muddy picture, I encourage people who believe WM is the main bottleneck for their EF to do some reading of their own and decide if it’s worth trying to deliberately improve it. I’d be very interested to hear first-hand accounts if you believe 1) this is your specific bottleneck, and 2) practicing exercises to improve it helped your memory, but not your executive function.

(As a side note, I’m fascinated by the question of whether those with aphantasia (who lack the experience of having mental imagery) develop workarounds to visual processing such that they don’t experience[12] the same limits[13] as those who undergo brain damage to their visual processing center, or if their brain does in fact utilize those portions and they just don’t experience the phenomenology. If scans have been done to distinguish this I haven’t found any. (I suspect people without an “internal monologue” are similarly unimpaired compared to those who suffer from either form of aphasia.))

For everyone else, let’s talk about the last most likely bottleneck in executive function…

Flexible Thinking

To begin the ending, let’s take seriously again the notion that “doing things” is just a process of repeated, fractal problem solving.

If you manage to do a thing you want to do, it’s because you’ve succeeded at solving all the problems in the way. Kind of tautological.

If you don’t, it’s because some problem came up that you didn’t know how to solve, or predicted (consciously or not) would be too painful or frustrating or tiring to solve… which are themselves problems that could be hypothetically solved, but if we don’t know how, or we predict that solving them would be too painful or frustrating, then etc, etc.

Our brains seek rewards, and one of our reward functions involves showing competence and solving problems. When we get stuck on a problem, rather than try to brute-force it (Time consuming! Tiring! Unpleasant!), most people have natural defense-mechanisms pop up that will divert our brain’s attention elsewhere. Better to stop expending resources on something that will not reward you and try to focus on other things that will, right?

This mental pop-out is really important for avoiding getting mentally stuck in problems, and is likely a big part of what makes human cognition “special.” A lot of humanity’s problem solving capabilities exist through abstract thinking, but you can get stuck in abstract thinking much more easily than in reality. You can also get your attention hijacked by things that aren’t “real.” Minds facing discomfort or difficulty are just acting rationally when seeking more rewarding stimulation.

It’s not our brains’ fault that we’ve aimed them at goals that are totally abstract and disconnected from our immediate survival, nor is it their fault we’ve surrounded them, in the modern world, with superstimuli like social media and video games, such that the more rewarding stimulation we turn to instead of solving our problems are not often developing skills that will solve more problems; they just feel like they do.

But it’s important to notice that this natural impulse isn’t itself bad. Phrases like “diffuse thinking” or “lateral thinking” or “flexible thinking” were invented to point at the way our brains sometimes come up with answers to problems in indirect ways. It’s common advice for people stuck on problems to take a shower or walk or  generally just do anything that doesn’t require mental attention, so they can give their subconscious the chance to mix old and new problems and ideas in ways that sometimes lead to unexpected “Eureka!” moments. 

Which is why flexible thinking is a part of executive function. Sometimes we get stuck when trying to solve a problem because we’re stuck thinking in a specific way, or have blindspots that keep us from noticing potential solutions or alternatives. 

Which is why, if you learn more ways to solve problems, expand your awareness of solution space, you’re empowered to do more things, and you’re less likely to get tripped up and stop when trying to achieve any given goal. Getting caught up in “yak shaving” is generally considered a bad thing, but… well, sometimes in life, changing a lightbulb requires shaving a yak. The more easily you can swap between multiple different tasks in a short time, the less likely you are to be stymied by abruptly different kinds of problem solving that you might be called upon to do.

For some people, interruptions are more difficult to return from than others, and in a word, that sucks. Good organization can help with that, as mentioned above. But getting better at switching between modes of thinking while working on the same problem doesn’t necessarily often have the same derailing effect.

Edward de Bono was a physician and psychologist who wrote a lot (like, a lot) of books on thinking and reasoning more effectively and creatively. He coined the term “lateral thinking,” and one of his many ideas, the Six Thinking Hats, is an example of trying to systematize flexible thinking:

The idea is that you can think through a problem from each of these different lenses, one at a time, to ensure you’re not missing the solution by being too stuck in a particular mental frame. It’s also a particularly useful tool for social coordination, where, instead of people having different hats on at different times and potentially butting heads over why they’re focusing on different aspects of a debated concept or problem or solution, everyone take turns working to make different focuses of attention common knowledge, while being more obviously part of the same team.

(I also happen to think, from an IFS perspective, that whatever helps a group of people coordinate better could also help with an individual trying to coordinate themselves.)

I don’t know how effective Dr. de Bono’s 6 Hats technique is compared to alternatives; there’s some research done that claims effectiveness when used in total [14] or just from trying on particular hats [15], but as with all “rationality techniques,” my main takeaway is people should in general be trying more things (so long as they’re low cost) and see if they work for them, because finding even one out of ten that does can significantly help improve our lives.

TRIZ is a procedure formalized by inventor and sci-fi author Genrich Altshuller, though he was sent to a gulag before he could spread it among Soviet engineers. After Stalin’s death, he was released and founded an engineering school that popularized the method, which is meant to help people reframe specific problems we have to general ones, so we can more easily find  general solutions that can then be adapted into specific solutions for the one we face.

It’s the inspiration for not just this pretty cool database that lets you look up all sorts of potential physics problems and solutions, but also some Separation Principles for solving apparent contradictions in design space, and an additional (somewhat intimidating) list of 40 Principles for general problem solving. In his later years, Altshuller believed this system could be used not just for engineering problems, but for overall critical thinking and creative problem solving, and created a community that has continued spreading the good word.

His various intellectual descendants promote it as the all-inclusive method for systematized problem solving, but as with all such things, your mileage may vary. Creative thinking, an as-yet fairly illegible and mysterious process, is likely going to work somewhat differently for everyone, which again is a good reason to experiment.

Which isn’t to say there might not be better and worse systems for it. But personal fit shouldn’t be underestimated, particularly if it means you’re more likely to remember to use the method or schema. Some people use tarot cards, while for others, the Magic: The Gathering color wheel cuts reality at a number of useful joints:

Credit to Duncan Sabien. “Color pentagram” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.

Deep knowledge of this kind of schema can create powerful intuition pumps like “How might MtG Red orient to this,” or “What would MtG Green think of this problem?” This can be particularly useful if you feel a strong affinity for the “opposite” colors of Blue or White, and make some effort to really understand how people who identify with the others see and experience and navigate through the world.

Yes, this is just another way of saying “understanding how other people think is valuable” or “taking on a diversity of viewpoints can help you think better” and similar, which is nothing new, and can be said without the complex “systems.” But if you want to keep yourself from getting stuck thinking in a rigid way, and you want a deliberate mental motion or habit you can build to try, schemas like this can be useful.

The map is not the territory, but the more different maps you collect for reference, the more different lenses you have through which to view reality, the less likely you are to be stuck in any given situation.

Speaking of which, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention therapy. My post on the various different therapy philosophies that all modalities can fit into basically goes over four different lenses through which to view problems and solutions, which can be summarized roughly as: 

  1. How our past influences our present (Psychoanalytic)
  2. How incentives shape our behavior (Behaviorist)
  3. How feelings and frames affect our experiences (Existential)
  4. How systems can create/solve our problems (Systemic)

I’d claim that any therapist stuck thinking through problems in just one mode is going to be less effective than one who can consider a problem from multiple, and help guide a client to do so as well. If we expect ourselves to tackle every problem alone, we’re like the therapist who only sticks to one modality, let alone one general philosophy of therapy or theory of change.

But while having a knowledgeable guide is valuable, you don’t need to go to a therapist yourself to learn how to reexamine your problems from different therapeutic lenses. Not just because you can learn them yourself, but also because different people often have very different “natural” ways of viewing problems we face, and those outside views can be just as valuable.

In any case, the more flexible your thinking is, the less likely you are to get stuck on a problem. And the less likely you are to get stuck on a problem, the easier you will find it to work on the next step of it.

Using The “Procedure” in Procedural Executive Function

This series took a while to complete. Part of that is that I lost the original driving motivation to do it once the initial reasons and funding for this research drastically shifted, and I let some of my many other projects take priority.

Of course, noticing difficulty completing a series on executive function is too perfect an opportunity to miss actually putting the research into practice. This meant paying extra attention on the days that I felt were “supposed” to have some time dedicated to working on these articles. Did I work on them as much as I wanted to? If not, why not?

It became practically instinctual to just run down the list and zoom in on what particular thing my brain was tripping over. Thoughts/feelings like “I’d rather be writing fiction/reading/playing video games” soon had an attached thought of “What would make me want to write the next paragraph instead?”

And often I’d just check and read over what I’d gotten to last again, and think something like “Huh, right, I’m stuck because I don’t know how to word this part well. Can I just skip over it and come back? Is there someone I can ask for feedback? How would ChatGPT write it?”

(Still badly, in my view; not technically so, but I’m fairly sensitive to writing voice, and while AI assistance can be useful for writing in other ways, I still feel a need to write from scratch for it to feel even marginally interesting for me to reread.)

Or “Ah, yeah, reading all these research papers has gotten less interesting. What else can I do instead to learn something new related to this?”

(Books like Superlearning by Scott H. Young and A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley were occasionally helpful in pointing in the right directions, even if they didn’t often contain uniquely insightful bits I hadn’t covered already.)

Or “I don’t know how to actually solve this problem, and none of the things I’m looking up are optimistic. I should probably just skip for now and circle back to it, and if I still don’t find anything just say that.”

(This was for Working Memory, which took by far the longest to write and edit to a point where I feel okay with it. I almost just cut out the entire LEGO analogy altogether to reduce bloat and avoid getting the analogy wrong in various ways, but some feedback convinced me to keep it in.)

Since it wasn’t an emotionally complicated or taxing experience, my noticed speed bumps were always of this “knowledge problem” sort. I don’t really experience shame or anxiety or prolonged internal conflict, but these are also common bumps in the road when people are writing something for public consumption, and are why learning to integrate and manage emotional experiences are a powerful deblocker for executive function.

But there are plausibly other things that would come up as well, and I don’t presume that this process will be sufficient on its own to solve everyone’s difficulties with getting something done. I do believe, however, that whatever the solution is, it’s something that can be incorporated into a procedural series similar to this one, and I hope to continue updating and expanding on this series in the future, if some new frame or strong additional component is discovered.

As a final note, I hope you remember the first part of all this: the most important first step in solving executive dysfunction is figuring out if you actually want to do the thing.

Because if you don’t actually want to do it, and you don’t actually need to do it (on a deep, emotionally recognizable level), then the question of “why aren’t I doing this thing?” sort of answers itself.

And you can construct abstract chains of reasoning for why you “should” do it anyway, of course, and those abstract chains of reasoning might evoke aesthetically pleasing values or ethics or philosophies that makes them feel more real and motivating.

But they must tap into some predicted emotional experience that your mind can actually simulate, or they likely won’t motivate you to do “hard” things… including the process of solving problems keeping us from doing what we want, or managing the emotions that rise up when we struggle.

If you dig deep and find out that, yeah, that whole “figure out what I actually want” is the part where you’re stuck…

From my work both as a therapist and teaching at rationality camps and workshops, I can say you’re definitely not alone, there. But that’s another essay, for another time.

Citations

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-02490-002

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=YeJ4AgAAQBAJ

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6182645/

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7822596/

[5]https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55537145.pdf

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8771390

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10275719/ 

[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0021992420301453

[9] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2020.601148/full

[10] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/working-memory-training

[11]  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34344249/

[12] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945221002628

[13] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b16s06v

[14] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366387002_The_Effectiveness_of_Using_the_Six

[15] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871187117301803

Blog, Relationship Advice

What does “Secure Attachment” feel like?


[Copied over from a Facebook post of mine]

“Huh. I’ve read about this being a thing Secure-Attached people do, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it, and wasn’t sure I really believed it until now.” ~my partner

A lot of people have asked me what I think of Attachment Theory, and my basic answer is “seems useful as a frame, and also seems mostly to track true things.” But a lot of people have also boggled at the concept of what having “secure attachment” in relationships might be like, so let’s talk a bit about what it’s like to be Secure-Attached from the inside.

1) Feelings for others are almost entirely legible and entangled with specific events. That doesn’t mean they’re always explicit, but I can’t actually remember the last time I couldn’t verbalize and point to something like 90% of why I feel the way I do about someone.

2) Feelings for others are consistent and calibrated. That doesn’t mean they’re predictive, but it does mean my feelings for people don’t change unless something specific happens that I then verify the meaning of. My regard for others isn’t affected by lack of interaction.

(Unless that lack of interaction is purposeful, hence calibrated; if someone doesn’t return my call, I don’t get upset or like them less, I assume they were busy. If they do something I don’t understand that feels hurtful, I don’t update on them until I verify if it was intended.)

3) I don’t experience “need” for anyone. I want people in my life because they bring me joy, sometimes so much that their absence is painful, but I always know deep down that I’ll be OK. Maybe not “maximally flourishing,” but still OK. Strong desire is felt, but without anything like desperation.

4) I always feel happy to share how I feel; if I don’t offer my feelings, it’s because I don’t feel a need to, or I think I have signs to justifiably worry how they will impact others. I have so little shame for what I feel / think that I don’t remember what having any is like.

(This doesn’t mean I’m always right about not needing to share my feelings or having justified signs that I shouldn’t. I can still misread others, misjudge what they want, or update too much on past experiences. But if I don’t share a feeling, it’s never because it’s internally blocked in some way.)

5) I feel only positive regard for all of my exes. This keeps surprising people, and I don’t know if it’s across the board for all Secure-Attached or exclusive to them, I might also be lucky. Still, I haven’t had any bad relationships and I’m still friends with them all.

6) For me at least, security doesn’t come from family. My brother was physically abusive, my mom tried hard but was largely absent, and my dad was both physically and emotionally absent. Relationships in general are not obligatory; what I look for are those of voluntary, mutual happiness.

I might add more later but that’s what comes to mind right now. I hope it’s useful to others to know that yes, this is really a way that some people exist, and to have a bit more detail what this feels like; it can cause a bit of culture-shock, so to speak, in both directions.

Pokemon: The Origin of Species

Chapter 128: Double Duty


Hey everyone! For those who haven’t heard, I’ll be at LessOnline in Berkeley at the end of the month, if people want to attend or come say hi. Looking forward to some fun activities I’ll be putting on with Alexander Wales, TK17, and maybe others. Hope to see some of you there!

Chapter 128: Double Duty

“I think… I should go too,” Red said, pushing past his indecision with a little nudge from his unpartitioned self. “Now that Looker is here, I’m kind of superfluous. And… I’m worried they might try something somewhere.”

He didn’t have to specify who they were. Looker just nodded. “It’s been on my mind. It’s what I would do; commit a series of attacks, draw everyone’s attention elsewhere.”

“I should get some rest,” Red adds. “Let Jensen and the others rest too, then continue my training. Make sure we’re all ready.” He turned to Leaf, heart heavy. “Sorry—”

She shook her head, chin high. “No, you’re right. You got them to come, got Looker here. It’s enough.” She suddenly stepped forward and hugged him. “Thank you.”

He hugged her back, squeezing tight as warmth filled him, even as the weight over his heart grew. “I’ll be back in a thought, if something happens.”

She gave him a smile, her small, playful one that showed her appreciation for the wordplay, and some of the weight lifted. He glanced at Looker and Blaine once more, then left the ruined mansion with Blue…

“Mr. Verres. Good to see you again… I have to say, I expected more emails than I ended up getting from you.”

Red shakes Brock’s hand and smiles. “Hello, Leader. I definitely intended to send some, but… well, the whole thing on Mount Moon kind of distracted me, and then I shifted my focus to—”

“The abra research, of course.” Brock hands him a pouch full of small stones. “And you’ve stayed focused on psychics ever since.”

“For the most part.” He doesn’t feel guilty, exactly, or like he should apologize for not being more interested in rock pokemon, but… “I really appreciate you taking the time to help now.”

“It’s nothing.” Brock’s face becomes serious. “Whether Pewter is ever in need of you or not, we’ve seen how hard you work to protect the region. I only wish I could help more.”

Red nods, feeling touched, and pockets the pouch for a moment so he can unclip a pokeball, a greatball, then an ultraball, summoning the rockruff out of each onto the rooftop of the Pewter Gym.

All three are fairly mature, heads rising to some point on Red’s stomach. He takes a moment to stroke the rough fur between the ears of the first two, and the snout of the third, enjoying the clear pleasure they get through his surface mergers with each. “Meet Jasper, Flint, and Roxy.” Red smiles. “The names came with them.”

Brock snorts, then crouches to let the dogs sniff his hands before he opens his own pouch of stones and starts to feed and stroke their ears or necks or backs. “Not from the same litter, though, looks like?”

“No. I guess the theme is hard for people to resist, though.”

“It is.” Brock finds a spot under Roxy’s chin that makes her wag her tail, and Red notes the way the Leader’s gaze is moving across her fur, fingers tracing the stony nubs at her neck, then moving down to feel the underside of her paws, deftly avoiding each claw. “Your email said you wanted to better understand their temperament, so you know what form of lycanroc to evolve them into?”

“Sort of. I think I want a day or dusk lycanroc, since… well, I’m sure the night form has its uses, but—”

“You’ve got enough choices for tough and strong Rock types, you want one with speed potential.”

“Exactly. The ‘dex says mixed things about whether the rockruff’s attitude matters before it evolves—”

“It does.” Brock snaps his fingers above the three pokemon’s heads, and drops a fleck of some gem or the other down for them to snap out of the air. “In the wild I expect the calmer rockruff to evolve during the day, the more vicious ones to evolve at night, and those in between to evolve during dawn or dusk. But it’s hard to say for sure if that’s how it works, since all our experience is with tamed ones, and pokeball training smooths out a lot of the edges. Trainers don’t often experience a variety of the same pokemon, and these days people will usually just look up strengths and weaknesses of each form, then just train with them at the right times to get that result.”

He picks up a faint sense of judgment from Brock’s mind, if not his tone. “Like eevee?”

Brock shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you if their personality matters as much. But trained lycanroc are less likely to play to their form’s stereotype than wilds, even the day forms.”

“That’s what I thought.” Red tosses a scattering of stone and gem chips and watches them race for their favorites, observing the way Roxy uses her body to block Flint, who nips at her legs, while Jasper dodges around both to get at a piece of glittering quartz. “It’s why I asked for rockruff, instead of just getting one already evolved. I could try to balance a night or dusk form’s mood out… or I could double up on it.”

“And?”

Red feels out their moods as they playfully fight over the mineral snacks, the sound of rocks crunching in three mouths filling the air. “Day,” he says, pointing to Jasper.

“Easily,” Brock agrees.

Red points to Flint next, who feels happy to tussle with the others. “Night?” Then Roxy, who’s more visually aggressive, but doesn’t seem to feel as excited to be. “…maybe dusk? Or maybe they’re both dusk, or both night. I know dusk is much rarer in the wild, so on priors they’d both be night, but these were the three I went with after merging with ten.”

“Your gift would be of more use here if they were wild, but it’s important not to confuse their temperament with their behavior.” Brock tosses some more bits of stone to the side, then points to Roxy as she watches Flint and Jasper run ahead. “See how she’s the one watching, now?”

Red senses it before she acts, the identification of Jasper as the easier target. Soon she’s muscling him out to get at the better bits, while he darts away, then back for some stones along the edges. “More adaptive.”

“That’s one way to put it. As I said, any of them could be made to evolve into any form of lycanroc. It’s just up to you to decide what kind of lycanroc you want, in more ways than one.”

Red looks at the three rockruff, mentally feeling out their different personalities. “I think I want dusk,” he says, feeling the words out, his certainty solidifying. “Not quite as fast, but it’ll still outspeed a scyther or darmanitan, while also hitting hard enough to maybe take a weavile down in one hit.”

“Sound reasoning. And the rockruff?”

“Roxy.”

Brock nods and stands, dusting his palm off on his corduroy pants. “Enjoy your time with her before she evolves. They’re just starting to lose their playfulness, and once they evolve…”

“Yeah.” Red knows he probably won’t have much time for that, especially since he’ll be packing all her training into the twilight hours… “Thanks again, for this.”

“Like I said, happy to help.” Brock studies him for a moment. “Not gifted, but seems like there’s something else on your mind?”

“I… yeah, a bit.”

The Leader doesn’t speak, gaze back on the rockruffs as he patiently feels through the bag for more stone chips, then tosses some more. Red does the same as he musters his courage, letting out a slow breath. He told Dr. Seward and Leaf he’d talk to Giovanni about this, but there’s no harm in bringing it up with others too…

“Not long ago, I was struggling with feeling… stuck, between how much responsibility I felt I had, and how much power I had…”

The wind and sun warred to cool and warm him as they stepped back onto the rest of the plateau, where the interpol workers were milling around the mansion. Some were collecting picnic blankets and cleaning, others were clustered in small groups, talking. No doubt waiting to hear if they’d need to pack up or should go back to work.

Red held a fist out to his friend, who bumped it. “See you soon, maybe?”

“Yeah. Lots to talk about.” Blue walked over to where Ira and Wendy were standing, and Red turned to Jensen, who had a hand held to his earpiece as he approached, no doubt telling the other guards that they were on their way back. As Red watched, going over a quick internal checklist to make sure there was nothing he needed to get before he teleported, he also saw Looker leave the building, coat flapping in the wind.

“I know that feeling,” Misty says, voice wry.

“You do?”

“Sure.” She sends her starmie through another of the suspended hoops around the bleachers, and he does his best to guide his after it; the pokemon’s mind is among the weirdest he’s ever felt, to say nothing of its body, and he keeps being distracted by the way it flexes its arms as if it’s underwater, instead of floating through the sunny sky above it. What’s somehow just as distracting is the way it’s very aware of the “taste” of salt in the humid air; it makes Red simultaneously feel like he’s covered in sweat, and also like his mouth is open, tongue hanging out. “Every Leader does, I think. We take responsibility for a whole city, some outlying towns, sometimes a whole island, in Blaine’s case. But none of us can really defend that much territory, not personally and not through our gym members. Every death, every destroyed home, it’s like the universe reminding us that no matter how strong we get, it’s not enough.”

Red nods, struggling to maintain the merge with his starmie as his own past failures flash through his mind. He’s just barely able to sense the hostile intent from Misty’s starmie before it spins midair, and nudges his own pokemon to throw up a hasty Light Screen before the Water Gun hits.

The power is diminished enough that it feels like being hit by a strong breeze, which is such an interesting way to interpret the feeling of water that Red loses his concentration completely.

“Tag,” Misty says, and raps her knuckles against the bill of Red’s cap. “Back to the start you go. Drink break first.”

Red uncaps an energy drink and swallows a salty-sweet mouthful, grateful for the cooler keeping it icy cold. “I guess the Stormbringers make that even worse?” he asks as he sends an impulse to his starmie to dive back underwater, where the first ring in the obstacle course is set up.

His boss’s long strides closed the gap quickly, but Looker didn’t say anything as he approached. Just summoned his teleporter, and after Jensen did the same, they returned to the interpol base.

The rest of the bodyguards appeared around them in the time it took for Red to unstrap his abra from its backpack, feed it, and return it to its ball. Looker finished typing something on his phone, then said, “Good work out there, everyone. Get some rest… except for you.” Looker gestured for Red to follow, and the guards hung back so the two of them could enter the elevator alone. As soon as the doors closed, Looker said, “It’s time.”

“Obviously.”

The sky is dark with thunderclouds, though enough daylight shines through that, as Red looks out over Vermilion City, he doesn’t flash back to the night of Zapdos’s attack more than a couple times. “Sometimes it feels like it happened just a few days ago,” Red says, voice soft. “Other times… years ago. Like the start of my journey was more recent, somehow… I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does, actually.” Surge sighs, slow and heavy. “The you that was here, he’s closer to some parts of who you are today… but in other ways, he’s also further. Sometimes further than the you that set out from Pallet Town.”

Somehow Red didn’t expect that level of insight from the Vermilion Leader, and he mentally kicks himself for forgetting that this was a man who had not just been through multiple Legendary incidents, but also a war. “How do you deal with it? The feeling of… knowing that if you don’t do more, then no one else will, while at the same time… you can’t think of anything else that’ll make a difference? And you can’t convince yourself that you’ve done all you can, because that’s the same as accepting that things will go badly, and—”

“And you can’t make yourself care less.”

It’s Red’s turn to sigh. “Yeah.” Or in his case, he could, sort of, but he doesn’t want to… which is probably the same, effectively, for most people.

“You’re asking the tough questions, Verres.” Surge gestures out at the city. “There’s half a million souls here, depending on where you draw the lines, and most of them are trying hard to make it through to the next day, come hell or high water. But at the end of those days, they know there’s someone above them who’s looking out.”

“You,” Red says, smiling slightly at the literalness of it, in this moment.

“Or Arceus, or Lance, or whomever.” He makes another gesture, like throwing something away. “Point is, it helps them sleep at night. There are watchers on the wall. There are Serious People gathered around a table, looking over charts and maps, making sure the next Big Thing is prepared for, and somewhere else there’s people looking over spreadsheets to make sure that no matter what happens, there’ll be enough food grown and harvested to keep them from having to think about where their next meal is coming from, so long as they keep going to work.”

Red feels a tickle along his cheeks, and brushes them a moment before he realizes it’s not his cheeks that feel them. “Hey, I think—”

“Yeah.”

They focus on their pokemon, standing on the rooftop across from them, on a plate of metal that’s wired to a grounding cable. Red’s pikachu has shifted onto his hind legs, ears twitching as he looks around, and Red shifts his mental merge away from Surge’s raichu to confirm that his own pokemon feels the same thing in his cheeks, though less acutely. He shifts again to merge with his magnezone, feeling the start of a headache as his pokemon’s weird, trinocular vision paints the world in vivid hues of electromagnetic fields…

…one of which is gathering intensity…

“The potential energy is almost always there, though it’s harder to pull out in most conditions.”

“I feel it,” Red murmurs, merging with Surge’s raichu again and rubbing his cheeks as the tingling grows.

“Ear plugs in, then, and close your eyes.” The last thing Red sees from the corner of his vision is the Leader taking a deep breath and sticking two fingers in his mouth, and then Red hears a whistle, sharp and loud, and feels through the Raichu, the grasp and fling and twist—

Only the minimal nature of the merger keeps Red on his feet; even as the world lights up it feels like he’s temporarily dunked under a waterfall, or what he imagines a waterfall would feel like, except instead of water, it’s energy, bursting over him and outward—

—only to get caught, sucked away…

“Gaahhh,” he breathes out, barely able to hear himself through the ringing in his plugged ears. He’d felt the thunderbolt, in more ways than one, and though he withdrew his merger, he still feels like his body is charged with electricity. He realizes he’s sagging against the railing, and a strong hand is holding his chest to keep him from slumping the rest of the way down.

Red braces his feet and lifts himself back up, then shakes his head and unplugs his ears. The first thing he registers is Leader Surge’s chuckles.

“Gotta say, of all the reasons to wish I was psychic, being able to feel that’s gotta be near the top, for me. Did you get it?”

“I gh—” Red clears his throat. “I got it.”

“Show’s yours, then. Remember what I said…”

Red nods, then puts his earplugs back in and merges with Pikachu. The deep familiarity makes the feeling of his whole body being charged return with a vengeance, and he has to stop himself from scratching at his fur… his skin… before he reaches out with his electric senses, feels another pathway for the energy to go down, connects it the way he remembers the raichu did it…

Another blast of light and sound, another feeling like his whole body has broken down into vibrating atoms before reconstructing…

When he’s recovered, Surge’s hand is clapping on his shoulder again. “Picking up skills that quick is definitely still higher. Nicely done. Next, the magnezone.”

“Yeah,” Red pants, then takes a deep breath as he tries to slow his racing heart. “One sec…”

“Right, right. No rush. What was I saying, before?”

“Huh? Oh.” Red rubs at his cheeks, then his neck. “People trusting in those above them?”

“Yeah. We all do it. Even me, even Lance. It’s an illusion, sort of, but it’s also not. There’s no one above, making sure all the little bits line up perfectly, but we’re all doing our bits. Some bigger than others, sure. But none of us, not one of us, could do it all alone. Right? I trust Lance to watch for distant threats, bring the hammer down where it’s needed. Lance trusts us Leaders to manage our turf, let him know if there’s something bigger we can’t handle. Civvies trust us and the rangers to keep them safe, we all trust the civvy side to keep the food and medicine and balls coming. Someone in my city wants to make a difference for Vermilion? I say, great. They’re one in half a million. Can they do one in half a million’s worth of the work it takes to keep things going? Make the stuff we need, fight in some incidents, be of service to others? Everyone’s got something they can do, and it takes half a million people to do it all.”

Red just listens, catching his breath, regaining his balance, both inside and out. Across the gap, Pikachu is running around in circles, burning off spare energy.

“Not half a million, really, a bit less. There’re babies, elderly, and sure, some have more education, more resources. So say one in 400,000’s worth. Can they do that? Great. They’re doing their part. They want to do more? How much more? Ten people’s worth? A hundred? A thousand?” Surge shakes his head. “I can do some things no one else can do. Sometimes, that’s worth a lot. Maybe in the long run, it’ll be worth everything for this city. Maybe even for this region. But most days, I’m only one man. I do one in 400,000’s worth. Pokemon attack happens, I do more. On a good day, I can do what another five veteran trainers can. If there’s some other issue, like a food shortage? I do less than one in 400,000’s worth. Maybe I’d try my hand at fishing, shock a lake and pick up all the dead ‘karp. But someone else could think of that. We all have our strengths.”

Red turns to Surge and finds the Leader is looking at him. “You, you can do something no one else can do. Most days, you’re just one man. You do what one man can do. But the other days, when we need you, you’re worth twenty, thirty, maybe fifty veteran hunters. Maybe you also solve some big science question once a year. You’re one person in billions, and if you do just those things, you’re doing far more than your part.”

Red swallows past the lump in his throat. “And if it’s not enough?”

Surge shrugs, turns back toward the city. “Then we weren’t enough. Us, the region, or the world. Maybe you didn’t give it your all, and let us down in some way. But we’re the ones asking you to do more than one person’s work. The ones who need you to. And that means we let you down first. So buck up, kid. Don’t give up on looking for new ways forward, better ways to help, but give yourself time to rest, body and mind. I don’t blame you if you don’t trust us to pick up the slack; the world needs saving from a dozen different directions, and most of us aren’t standing where we need to hold the line at any of them. But you want to do more than one man’s worth, full time? You’d better get good at convincing others to stand with you, because that’s the only way I know for people to consistently make a bigger difference.”

“Time for… what?”

“Time for us to stop ignoring your true potential. The only thing keeping you from being the greatest spy on the planet is everyone knows what you look like. That and you’re a terrible liar.”

“People like you will always struggle to convince others to stand with you.”

Red blinks at Erika, who said it like she’s commenting on the weather. “Why?”

“Because you care about different things than they do.”

Red tries to take this seriously, frowning as he sips his tea. He’s aware of a defensive response in him, a desire to dismiss or point out the ways his desires are altruistic… he wouldn’t be in this mess, in many ways, if they weren’t… but…

“I get that most people don’t care about science research,” he slowly says. “Or like, not really, not beyond being vaguely glad someone is doing it somewhere, or interested when it specifically is relevant to their life, or makes something useful for them. And I know my major scientific interests aren’t the kind that would affect most people’s lives… and the things I’ve actually accomplished have a mixed record, for how happy people are with me.” It’s hard to admit that, but not as painful as it once was.

“Good.” Erika sets her tea cup down, then rises, and he follows suit. “Keep going,” she says as she leads him away from her personal pavilion and toward one of the grooming sites.

Red adjusts his pace to match her more leisurely one, walking silently beside her as she pauses to chat with the occasional trainer or gym member, smell some flowers, or just pull a small pair of scissors from some pocket in her sleeve and trim one of the various plants they pass, holding onto the bits and occasionally smelling them before dropping them into garden plots with young plants growing in them. Her kimono is bright white today, with a pattern of pink vines and leaves embroidered on it, and he wonders if it would be rude to ask, as someone not part of her gym’s culture, what it signifies.

“I think when it comes to Rocket, I’m on the same page as almost everyone else,” he says as they reach the grooming tools. She picks a few off the rack and table, and he takes one of each. “Unless you mean something like, the way I fight, what I am, what I represent for psychics in the region, or the world…”

“All those things, and more.” Erika lays her tools out on one of the table-edges of a wide, dirt-filled pot, then summons a young ivysaur. She rubs its head, then hefts it into the pot before taking the cushioned seat beside it. “But to put things in more concrete terms, the sets of problems you care about may overlap in some way with the sets of problems most civilians do, but my guess, without knowing you particularly well, is still that they do not prioritize in anywhere near the same order.”

Red summons Ivysaur, mentally greeting his pokemon with a merger and head rub that also checks for any biological needs, then sends him an impulse to jump onto the chair, then the wide table-pot. Red’s height growth has also coincided with growing some lean muscles that could let him lift Ivysaur up, but his pokemon has gotten big enough that it wouldn’t be comfortable for either of them. “I think I don’t know how to take that. I care about them not dying to renegades, or wild pokemon, or at all if possible…”

“That, right there, is the sort of thing I mean.” She picks up a spray bottle with some green tinted water, and mists her ivysaur’s skin. “Most people don’t spend most of their time thinking of the ways they might die. They spend most of their time thinking of the ways they want to live, and struggle to. They prioritize the set of problems directly in front of them, not the ones that may or may not affect them at all in a year or two or ten.”

Red frowns as he mimics her motions. “I get that, I think. I mean it makes sense that they do that, but if someone comes along and says ‘Hey, there’s this important thing that will likely affect all of us, let’s work together on it’…”

“You believe it should work because you do not emotionally grasp their lived experience, where many people say similar things to them constantly, and none of those things feel as relevant as the ones that do, no matter how trustworthy the person saying it is. Politicians who hope to be at all successful quickly learn that their job is to represent the interests of their constituents, which means they must prioritize the things their voters care about if they want to stay in office… or pretend to well enough.” She shrugs a shoulder as she puts the spray down, then opens a pouch full of strange berries Red has never seen before, carefully counting out a few. “The line a far-sighted, altruistic politician must try to walk involves balancing these things with the ones their constituents are not aware of, or do not care about.”

“I’m not trying to be a politician.” Red counts out the same berries, then pauses. “Should I be feeding him more than yours?”

Erika smiles. “Yes, good. Half again as many, I’d judge. He could take more, but it’s his first time, and this will make him mildly sick for a while.”

Red blinks and examines the berries again. “Poison, to strengthen his?”

“Not quite. They will make his plants hardier against extreme heat or cold.” She patiently holds them out to let her ivysaur sniff them before it starts to eat. “I won’t argue with questions of identity. Whatever you consider yourself, politics is the art of group coordination. If you want to convince others, particularly those with different information or values, to change their actions or beliefs in some way, you are engaging in politics whether you know it or not… particularly if your efforts run up against other interests.”

“But…” He tries not to say it is in their interests, mulling over what she said about priorities again, and not just matters of trust, which is easier to acknowledge and doesn’t make much sense to expect. He considers mentally nudging Ivysaur to start eating, but instead lets him take his time. “Okay, I guess it’s… not actually other people’s priority that I feel responsible for their wellbeing, and even if more cooperation could help with that, they could just say ‘no thanks.'”

“Especially if it’s not just cooperation, but power you seek. Which you may not.” He feels her brief assessment, both from the flick of her eyes and the mental pings that come through her constant attempts to shield her deeper thoughts. “But—”

“They don’t know that.”

He can feel that it irks her to be interrupted, but she doesn’t let any of that show, and before he can apologize she’s already speaking again. “Yes, but also, again, their priorities are not your priorities, which means your gaining power will be fundamentally suspicious to many. Some deride minorities who prefer one of their own to politically represent them. After all, do we not live in a post-ethnic society? Could anyone not understand the same issues and challenges, and work equally hard for them? But the reality is that for most people, sharing experiences does shape common understanding and care, and any group that is not represented by others is going to have unique struggles. And since time and resources are limited, a society by default will only address the concerns that most members in it have.”

“Which means putting off the concerns of those with other problems… maybe continually, if new problems keep coming up.”

“As they do. Reasonable? Yes. Efficient? Certainly. But the lived experience of those whose issues are not prioritized is that they are not cared for, their concerns dismissed.”

Red thinks of the way dark people have faced discrimination in Kanto and Johto, and wonders what might be in store for psychics as soon as Rocket is gone. Ivysaur finally starts to lap at the berries, eating two or three at a time from his palm, and Red’s other hand strokes his leathery head, feeling vaguely guilty that his pokemon will feel sick as a result of this, even if it’s for his own good.

Is it? Leaf asks in his mind. He wouldn’t need to face extreme cold or heat if I don’t put him into battles…

“So maybe I should… adjust my feelings of responsibility, to only those people who agree with me the most, and share my values?” He frowns. “But that feels… I don’t know. Callous, in some ways, or too pessimistic. Too tribal.”

Red’s stomach sank as he hurried to keep up with Looker’s long strides. “Director Tsunemori—”

“I already messaged her, she’s on her way. I expect she’ll have her piece to say, but the game has changed again, and if she doesn’t see that she’s a fool or compromised, at best.”

“It is good to expand our perspective beyond the tribes we are born into,” Koga says, voice slow and thoughtful. “But if your solution to the lack of power is to gather other, like-minded people who are dedicated to this idea of responsibility to all, even those who do not wish for their help… a ‘tribeless tribe,’ if you will… I’m curious what you believe would happen to them?”

Red tries to imagine a group of people all working together to help everyone… “I guess it depends on how people view them? If they do well, and get support… I’d hope it would get them more resources and support, maybe get more people to join them. Kind of like CoRRNet, or Interpol.”

“Good comparisons.” They watch as Red’s glimmora rotates just above the ground, sending toxic bits of its hard shell out in bursts as its body opens and closes to propel it through the air. It’s pretty, shell glimmering purple and teal in the evening gym lights. “The first, however, has its members focus on a particular location, much like gym members. Those higher up are responsible for broader areas, and at the very top is someone who no doubt feels responsible for events in every developed region… but they are still, ultimately, a secondary power in each, negotiating and cooperating with local Leagues.”

Red slowly nods as he examines the arena through his pokemon’s strange gravity sense, then sends it an impulse to spin through the spikes it just made, reabsorbing them into its petals. “They can’t take responsibility for more because others claim responsibility for it already. And… Interpol agents are wide in geographic responsibility, but have a very narrow mission focus.”

“Just so.”

“It does help when I feel like I can just focus on a particular kind of emergency, and others aren’t mine to solve. And it helped to get more control over what I was doing with my time, more of a sense that I could say something and be listened to. But…”

“Your friends are still focusing on those other problems, and you want to help them.”

Red looks at Koga in surprise. “Uh, yeah. That’s true, and definitely part of it, but… not what I was thinking of.”

“Ah. My apologies for interrupting.”

It’s hard to read the Fuchsia Leader, even on top of him being dark. “It’s okay. The thing I was going to say is, there are still other things I want to do, other things I care about, and I don’t know how to help with them. And I don’t have time to figure it out, because all my energy is going to these other things that also matter, and no one else can do… and sometimes it feels like the better I do at one part of it, the worse it makes some of the other problems.”

Koga snaps a finger, and his garbodor sends out more poisonous debris. The stink is bad enough that Red wishes he’d put his air mask on, but it fades quickly once he sends Glimmora spinning around the sandy arena again, pulling everything into itself. “And so you feel you need the support of others, to accomplish all your goals at once. To cover each of the things you feel responsible for.”

“It’s just an idea. If the responsibility I’m taking on requires more than one person can do…”

“Sounds like a suggestion Surge would make,” Koga says, and lets out a humorous huff. “Not that this is a critique. But to ask someone to help others is to ask them, to some degree, to expose themselves.” He gestured to himself. “Leaders are not warlords, and part of that means we can cooperate for the betterment of our region. Regions are better off through cooperation as well, and sometimes may merge, as Johto and Kanto did. But whatever they may be willing to help other regions with, they must still limit their sense of responsibility, and focus the majority of their energy and resources on their own people… or else those people will suffer for it. Do you understand?”

“I think so. You mean they’ll be outcompeted?”

“Perhaps.”

Not a no, but also… “Also… it’s not just the suffering, which is bad for its own sake. You’re saying it’s unsustainable. It would lead to unrest, and replacement by someone who promises that they will focus on the problems of the people.”

Koga nods, gesturing at their pokemon. “A pokemon can be strong, an organization robust, a motivation passionate… but all of these things count for little, if they are not sustainable. The unique value of Poison pokemon is the ability to play for the long game. The reverse of this virtue is to ensure your own plans cannot be defeated by simply being outlasted.”

Red tried to think of what triggered this. The leak? Or something they found that Looker pretended was innocuous? “If I try to spy on Blaine—”

“I left Blaine in charge of a whole dig site full of agents, not to mention your wildcard friend Juniper, and made it look like a concession.”

Red mentally tripped over the idea of Leaf being described as a “wildcard,” and wondered what Looker was referring to. “Then who—”

“Everyone else in the League.” Looker’s words came out as hard and sharp as his heels striking the ground. “Whether Blaine is complicit or not, his arrival has to be taken as enemy action. We’re up against the clock now, and wherever the rot in the League is, we need to find it, before they can throw something else at us.”

“Stop,” Giovanni says, and Red lets out a gust of breath before vaulting his platform guard rails and rushing over to heal his claydol where it lies on the packed-dirt arena floor. “Better than your nidoqueen, and xatu, but not by enough. What did you learn?”

Red sprays his pokemon’s earthy body, watching as its weird biology starts the repair process of the clay shell protecting its soft innards. The first response that comes to mind feels irreverent, and he almost suppresses it, but he’s frustrated enough that he lets it out: “That overwhelming power matters more than strategy?”

He can see Giovanni’s small smile, even from the distance of the arena. “True.” The Viridian Leader doesn’t even bother healing his rhyperior. “But don’t shirk responsibility. Any trainer using Ground pokemon who doesn’t teach some a move like Smack Down doesn’t deserve their belt. Any trainer facing trainers with Ground pokemon should expect it, rather than hoping a Flying or levitating pokemon will save them the worst of what their opponent has.”

Red finishes healing his pokemon and reconnects with its mind. The owlish statue-like pokemon spins and trills as it psychically lifts itself back into the air… for all the good that would do it, when Giovanni’s pokemon knocks it to the ground with another well aimed rock. Unlike glimmora or magnezone, whose “unstable” levitation would get disrupted by any sort of Ground attack, Claydol is constantly, psychically lifting itself up and away from the ground by default, which should have made it a great choice against Giovanni… “I still should have been able to outspeed you. That rhyperior is absurdly quick.”

“It is what it needs to be to deal with what is likely to be sent against it. While on journeys, most trainers do not have the luxury to train their pokemon precisely. Unless they spend lots of time or money focusing their growth, their belt gets filled with generalists.”

And generalists will almost always lose to specially trained pokemon, used by a trainer who understands their strengths and weaknesses. “I’ll keep that in mind, now that I have so much spare time and money.”

“See that you do.” Giovanni’s tone lightens. “There’s a broader lesson.”

Red rubs the back of his neck, replaying the way Giovanni gave commands like they were rote, not reacting to anything that happened in the short match. Like nothing Red did required him to… react, at all. “I was too predictable?”

“You picked a levitating Ground pokemon, rather than a Flying Type, because you knew to fear Rock attacks. You brought a pokemon whose attacks would be both Super Effective to some of the commonly paired types, and could get around Ground pokemon’s tough hide. All good decisions, but yes, all predictable to someone who models you as well as I did.”

Red stares at Giovanni, unsure how much to stretch his credulity. “You’re saying you trained that rhyperior specifically to outspeed any Levitating Ground types?”

“No.” Another small smile. “You’re correct to doubt that, as it’s not possible, not against a serious opponent. I would never have had a chance to outspeed a flygon. But Psychic and Dragon have about equal coverage against most strong Ground secondary types, and…”

“And I’m a psychic,” Red sighs. “So of the relatively strong Ground pokemon who can properly levitate, you expected I’d focus on a Psychic dualtype rather than the Dragon one.”

“Correct.”

“And… even if I brought a flygon, I bet your Rhyperior has Frost Fang.”

Giovanni spreads his hands, then clasps them behind him. “Again?”

Red nods and heads back to his podium, then realizes Giovanni still hasn’t moved. “You won’t heal your rhyperior?”

“She can take a few more of those.”

Meaning Giovanni is confident that Red won’t win by just trying the same thing again. He grits his teeth, wondering what else he can do…

He’s been training with most of the Leaders every few days, but Giovanni was the quickest to jump from mentoring him on using Ground types well to just straight battles. He knows he’s incredibly lucky to have this much focused training with the ex-Champion, not to mention the other Leaders, but… it does make it harder to talk about what’s been on his mind…

“Something wrong?”

“I had a thought, about ‘heroic responsibility.'”

Giovanni nods. “Can you talk and battle at once?”

“I…” He wants to say yes, to not disappoint, but maintaining a mental merger for a battle is disorienting even if it’s a pokemon that’s similar enough to a human, which claydol is very much not. “No, not for a conversation like this.”

“Food, then.” The Leader says, and withdraws his pokemon before taking the stairs down to the arena floor. Red returns his claydol and joins him, following as they make their way back toward the elevators. “Your question?”

“Basically, it’s… how do you balance doing as much as you can with doing it sustainably?”

“Partly trial and error. Learning what drains you and if it’s possible to outsource it, learning what recharges you and making more time for it, these are important gains of experimenting with different methods.”

Red nods, and fiddle with his cap as they step into the elevator, wondering if they’ll eat in the Leader’s office or go out somewhere. Weird as it is spending time so casually with so many important figures, Giovanni raises it to a whole different level, but thankfully is also the most assertive in keeping their time spent efficient and productive. “Have you ever given up on something, once you decided it was going to be a thing you helped, or a group of people you’d save?”

Giovanni is silent a moment, then shakes his head. “No. Not really.”

Red stares at him. The leader’s short hair seems freshly shaven, barely more than a dark pattern against his scalp, and he looks like he’s been sleeping well. Still burning with purpose, so that even a few moments in the elevator together makes him radiate something like reserved impatience, but less tightly wound. “I was really expecting you to say ‘yes, of course,’ and then give some speech about how people learn to accept their limits over time, or something.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Again that brief, small smile. The elevator opens, and Red sees they’re on the ground floor. Looks like they are eating out. It seems so… inefficient, given his model of the Viridian Leader. “I’ve made mistakes, perhaps even catastrophic ones. It remains to be seen if, on balance, all my work will have been a net positive. No amount of failure has made me feel less responsible.”

“Oh.” Red can’t even begin to imagine what sort of measuring stick Giovanni is using to judge his work, if that’s how he feels about it. How must he view others, by comparison? Do people outside of Bill or Professor Oak (if even him) all seem like struggling toddlers, to him?

“I’ve been told there’s a good Kalosian restaurant not far from here, if you’d like to try it.”

“Uh, yeah, that sounds great.” Red follows Giovanni through the lobby, then out into the street. Jensen is waiting at the door, and gives Red a look, to which he returns a shrug. “So do you just… not feel bad, if you fail to save something you care about?”

“I can’t tell you how everyone balances the things they care about,” Giovanni says as Red’s head bodyguard starts to follow them. “Minds operate differently from one another, sometimes vastly so, and I would not want you to hear my answer as an insistence of how you should or must feel too. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” He wonders as they walk down the sidewalk if the Leader goes out to lunch at local places often, and tries to focus. “I know my mind definitely doesn’t work like others’.”

“Fair. Then, to put it simply, I do feel bad when I fail, as I believe we’ve discussed before, in a different context. But all the things I care to protect, they’re part of a whole. They’re not distinct things, which individually can make or break my sense of whether I’m succeeding or not. I don’t try to balance a tray of delicate pottery, then mourn the vase that falls. Not because nothing can be broken beyond repair—true loss is real, and worth grieving. But because the thing I care for, in truth, the full extent of what I take responsibility for, is the world. The future of humanity itself. Not lone responsibility, I know I am not that capable. But it’s all the same, in some sense that is hard to describe, but feels nevertheless true.”

Red does his best to wrap his head around this, and briefly wishes he could do a mental merger with Giovanni to feel it from the inside. He almost suggests it…

…but no, that would be terribly presumptuous, and invasive…

…he feels an urge to ask about more specifics instead. “How does that play out, practically? I know you do a lot more than run the gym, but… aren’t there some things you wish you could focus your time and attention on, but can’t because of duties no one else can do?”

“Often. But you could imagine it, I suppose, like weaving a tapestry. A long, detailed tapestry that will take many years to finish, being spun automatically even if I do nothing. If I don’t get enough of it right along the way, perhaps the whole thing will feel ruined. But for the most part, a few blemishes here and there, some mistakes in the weave, they’re inevitable. My eye is still on the end, the point where it all is either worth the effort I put into everything that felt important, or might be, or… not.”

“I think I get it, but it’s a little weird imagining what that’s like,” Red says, smiling slightly. “Like I could say it sounds like you’ve taken responsibility for the forest, so individual trees stop mattering—”

“A fair analogy, I believe.”

“—but it also sounds like you’ve just taken so much responsibility for so many things that you’ve, like, transcended into some new evolution of what Heroic Responsibility could look like.”

Giovanni’s smile is wry, but warmer than most of his expressions. “As I said, different minds are different. But I hope this was helpful in some way, to you.”

Looker is waiting for Red when he returns from his meeting with Giovanni. Or rather, Looker is by Red’s cubicle, looking over the digital calender stuck to one wall. “You need to clear your weekend.”

“Hello to you too,” Red says as he slides past and sits down, then slides a finger across the calender to sync it and make some edits. Ooo, Blue’s finally got a Challenge match coming up with Blaine… “Also, what weekend?”

“Yeah, yeah. You can take an extra day after, but Agatha got back to us and said she’s up for a meeting.”

Red perks up at that, despite his tiredness. “I expected I’d go through some of the Leaders a second or third time before having a session with an Elite. But we have met already, a couple times…”

“Well, I’ve got less expectation that you can get into her head than Sabrina’s, but good training is good training.”

Red stares at him, wondering what he’s talking about…

…then feels his partition drop…

…and the other partitions, the ones holding his memories of his observations, assessments, and even mergers with the Leaders as he met with them all.

It takes a few seconds for the streams of memory to flow and merge, and he takes a deep breath as he returns to his full unpartitioned self again, then lets it out.

There’s a small sense of shame over what he’s doing, from the vestiges of his partitioned self. Or rather, the model of what his partitioned self would feel, if he knew.

But he’s getting valuable information, and it’s something he can control, something he can do that might really make a difference.

Looker is watching him, sipping a cup of coffee as he waits for Red to recollect himself. “Anything?” he finally asks.

“Maybe,” Red says, reviewing some of his memories. Odd looks, from Erika and Koga. Subtle mental reactions, from Erika and Surge. And something that might be personality changes, in Koga and Giovanni… “Maybe not. Next few meetings might give me something more concrete to follow up on. But as usual, I got some interesting advice and training.”

Looker grunts. “I’ll take it. Keep up the good work.” He claps Red on the shoulder, then heads off.

Leaving Red looking after him in surprise, then turning back toward his desk, setting his guilt temporarily to the side. Notebook out, attention on his body, he begins to re-examine his memories, and how they made him feel, one by one.