Using Models to Stay Calm in Charged Situations
fs.blog
fs.blog
" The next helpful model is relativity, adapted from the laws of physics. This model is about remembering that everyone’s perspective is different from yours. "
The only mental model at play here is the idea that your mind benefits from mental models and that we need an easily-referenced ontology of models brought to us in blog posts.
Seriously, there is no value to internalizing a rule like "think the same way that the theory of general relativity would." It doesn't even make sense. This is low grade pop psych.
When passions are running high, the first thing you should do before making decisions is cool down. You don't need a novel mental model you just need to take a break and wait for everyone's emotions (and the accompanying stress hormones, which suppress rational thinking) to subside. That's a better mental model than anything in this article.
These two come to mind:
https://fs.blog/2015/11/map-and-territory
https://fs.blog/2019/03/active-mindset/
It's not a wellspring of original thought, but more about shining a light on things we take for granted.
Even granting the argument, I wonder why just staying home from a raucous school meeting - as the vast majority of parents do - wouldn't be an easier way to "stay calm". Beyond that the author provided no actual data/evidence to support his conclusion that the "potentially harmful" leak in fact wasn't.
What's the mental model for recognizing a huckster company hocking to HN a mental model "learning community" for $150-250/year that promises to "repeatedly invite me to expand how I see and think. The level of IQ and EQ members offer is unprecedented and has me visiting daily"[1]
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Alex: The name of people who recombine words into meaningless jargon.
Player: What is an "I cannot say this on TV," Alex?
Alex: Correct. And we thank you for not getting the FCC involved.
If you want to stay calm in a high-risk situation, try tactical breathing first.[0] Worry about playing with "mental models" second.
Another technique soldiers use in war is to assume they are dead until the war ends. It's much less stressful and more survivable. Also, there's no point worrying about things that are actually far beyond one's own control.
Another point to consider is the calmest individual typically has the most power in an interaction and has the advantage of clearest thinking.
Beware the fury of a patient man. - John Dryden
0. https://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmcphc/Documents/health-promo...
If I see people lacking the strength (both mentally and physically) to accomplish something I always suggest screaming as loud as you can. There is nothing as funny as leaving the room to scream in the hallway. Preferably loud enough that everyone inside the room can hear it.
While it was b.. bad, I really enjoyed the article and the author is right. It is important to teach other people see things from my perspective.
Not assuming malice in general is probably the only helpful thing in there to stay calm.
Tactical breathing (I never knew it was called that) helps me, too.
Even something that simple can be difficult to apply in the heat of the moment, that's why the technique has to be as simple as "just inhale and exhale slowly". Everything moderately complex won't help.
I can vouch that it works, I was born with several heart defects and spent so much time as a child and through my early 20s going in to surgeries and procedures with uncertain outcomes that being "already dead" has been my thing, a kind of "I was born already dead" mental headspace, I still think that way effectively 100% of the time and as a result I'm pretty hard to be derailed by mundane problems, fears and slights that seem to get under the skin of others.
I wonder why they don't continue that mindset when they get home, I wonder if any military psychologists have identified downsides? A few different periods of my life I've gone to therapists and they don't seem to know care about that headspace once they carefully confirmed that I'm neither suicidal or a high risk taking individual.
It helps you think clearly even when everyone around you isn't. And it helps you empathize with, and therefore communicate better with, the people around you.
You can simply use them as a shortcut to strategies that are likely to work. If someone is making a slippery slope argument, then you can use a standard slippery slop reply.
As to why slopes are slippery, it may be that it's easy and natural to build political alliances advocating for either side of it, but hard to build an alliance advocating for the middle.
When they’re not talking to you and not getting emotional it’s just obnoxious but when they’re angry and you have to deal with it there isn’t much worse.
most important is probably the observation that one cannot control their environment and that anger isn't really helpful in any circumstance other than running away from a tiger or something, so if you get upset just take a few breaths and get a coffee.
I'm not sure how much the mental models mentioned in the article help because I've come to the conclusion that getting upset is primarily a biological thing. It's much more simple I think than people often suggest.
I like to modify it and call it Hanlon's Scythe:
"In the absence of clear evidence, don't automatically attribute to malice, that which can be trivially attributed to any other cause"