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When to Attack a Moose

2018-05-04 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Science & nature, Everyday life) · mode: Personal essay

Hank asks why negative events affect us more than positive ones: an evolutionary answer (one lost fight with a moose, or ostracism from the tribe, is fatal) is plausible but a cheat; he argues that we build our identity as a story of self, negative feedback forces costly revisions felt as threats to ourselves, and how we respond shapes who we become.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Negative events affect us more than positive ones; it is normal

  • ★★ Hank says it is a well-known phenomenon that negative events affect us more than positive ones, which kind of sucks. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank jokes that he can't lie in bed all night replaying the time a girl said he was cute. (joke) — 00:00:07
  • ★★ Hank says it helps him to know that this is normal, that almost everybody does it, and that nothing is wrong with him for feeling this way. — 00:00:18

00:00:26 — The evolutionary answer: the moose, ostracism from the tribe, caring what others think, bullying and health

  • ★★ Hank gives the evolutionary answer: attack a moose and win and you get meat but must eventually hunt again, yet it only takes one loss for the moose to kill you forever. (hypothetical) — 00:00:26
  • ★★ Hank says that for a prehistoric human, ostracism from the tribe could be a death sentence: survival without a tribe would probably be short and brutal. (hedged) — 00:00:51
  • ★★ Hank suggests this is maybe why we spend so much time worrying what other people think about us. (hedged) — 00:01:05
  • ★★★ Hank says caring what others think is not bad: on average, despite negative consequences, it is probably good because it prevents you from being really bad. (hedged) — 00:01:10
  • ★★ Hank says bullying and ostracism won't leave you starving in a field, but can lead to significant and serious negative health outcomes. — 00:01:24
  • ★★ Hank concludes there is probably an evolutionary reason we worry more about negative things than we are happy about positive ones. (hedged) — 00:01:36

00:01:44 — The mechanism: identity as a story of self; negative feedback forces revision, is felt as a threat, and our response shapes who we become

  • ★★ Hank feels the evolutionary answer is a bit of a cheat and wants to step back from biological causes to understand the mechanism. (hedged) — 00:01:44
  • ★★★ Hank says we work hard to build our identities, a robust story of self (what we've done, how we see the world, our roles, what we're good at), which is maybe what makes us sentient. (hedged) — 00:01:52
  • ★★★ Confirming information needs no change to the story of self, but information that challenges it (a worse soccer player, piano player or person than you thought) takes mental work to incorporate, ignore or discredit. — 00:02:10
  • ★★★ Hank thinks our brains are built to create a story of ourselves, and negative feedback is more useful in that process: it hits harder and sticks longer. (hedged) — 00:02:43
  • ★★ Hank says we have to force the new data into our old identity and tell a more nuanced, less simple, less shiny story of self, in which we aren't everything we thought. (hedged) — 00:02:54

  • ★★★ Hank says a threat to that story is normally felt as a threat to ourselves, because the story we tell ourselves is us, and messing with it is scary. (hedged) — 00:03:06

    “the story that we tell ourselves, it is us.”

  • ★★★ Hank thinks how we respond to these threats, with aggression, defense, fear, avoidance or acceptance, informs a huge part of who we become and how we interact with the world. (hedged) — 00:03:22

00:03:37 — Sign-off and end-screen song

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the video could easily have been a medium-length non-fiction book: once Hank talks about identity and story, he can keep going forever. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★ The description flags as particularly simplified the video's idea that caring what other people think prevents you from being really bad. — video description
  • ★★★ Hank says he doesn't actually know whether caring what others think keeps you from being really bad, but thinks it is maybe the only thing that gives society and culture enough cohesion to operate productively. (hedged) — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Narrative identity · negativity bias

Also: bullying · social exclusion

Also centred on Narrative identity: So, About This HAIR…

Also centred on negativity bias: A Few Of My Favorite Things · Optimism is Not Insane · The Golden Gate Bridge Didn't Collapse!! · i said yep

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