Proper posture for mental arts

What, exactly, are the principles of good mental posture for the Art of Rationality?

I’m not sure if I can answer this because I don’t understand what good mental posture is or even what good physical posture is, for that matter. Can you please confirm if my understanding, below, of what these are is correct?

Basically, posture refers to the body's alignment and positioning with respect to the force of gravity.

Good posture:

• is efficient
• allows movement within the posture
• prepares for the next movement
• allows you to react to unexpected forces
• is structurally strong

Good posture refers to the removal of impediments in movement. It is about activating only the right muscles at the right time in order to achieve specific movements.

Good mental posture, on the other hand, seems to involve taking certain perspectives or entering certain frames of mind that are conducive to the achievement of your current goals.

From the article you linked:

I've been using a term for changing the overall quality of my thoughts and feelings to something more conducive to accomplishing my immediate goal. I call it "adopting a mental posture".

If we view thought activation in a similar way to how we view muscle activation in regards to physical posture, then we can think of good mental posture as the undertaking of certain perspectives or mindsets that inhibit unhelpful thoughts and induce helpful thoughts, where what is helpful depends on the current task at hand.

A good mental posture will be:

• Relaxed - there is no misattribution. That is, you are not carrying thoughts from previous interactions or arguments. You start the thought process with a relaxed mind set in which you are free from recurrent and intruding thoughts.
• Fluid - there is no stickiness in your perspectives. This means that you can easily change your perspective. You can think of what the opposites are or what the other person you’re arguing with thinks or what the situation would be like if certain variables were changed etc. The key point here is that you can move between perspectives with ease. There is no flinching.
• Efficient and synchronous - you are activating only the thoughts that are pertinent to the task at hand. You are also thinking of the pertinent thoughts at the right time. That is, you don’t linger and dwell on certain thoughts.
• Adaptable - if you receive new information that requires you to change perspective, if you are to keep good posture, then you do so. This means that you update your beliefs.
• Normally in a broad perspective - we can think of broadness as similar to stability in physical posture. In the same way that stability is transient in physical posture, that is, you are not stable during the transition to a new movement, but do default to being stable. Your psychical (mental) posture should by default be broad, but you should be able to transition to a narrow perspective if this is going to be beneficial. You do need to be able to transition back to the broad perspective, though.

PS. Physical posture and mental posture may be entwined. People who are in pain or tired often have bad posture.

Something I've seen in various martial arts training: people who have a strong kinesthetic sense of how to achieve things and avoid mistakes can be surprisingly bad at articulating what it is they are doing. There's probably an analogic phenomenon in reasoning and discourse. People who find that they are persuasive, or have the ability to get good grasp on a topic in a short time, may not be able to convey the techniques they are using to achieve these effects. As this sort of problem doesn't stop people from giving advice, I think it's a useful pre-filter to put on when reading or hearing advice: Ask yourself if you can restate what they're saying or pay attention to what they're physically doing to gain a concrete, object level sense of what they mean.

A bit of a side question -- would you recommend the Supple Leopard book for figuring out the underlying biomechanics of many martial arts techniques? The spine positioning, in particular, looks a lot like what Tai Chi tries to achieve...

The description of the use of posture in aikido is super interesting!

I'm a little worried that analogizing "mental arts" to martial arts might lead the imagination in the wrong direction--it evokes ideas like "flexible" or "balanced" etc. But thinking about mental states when I get a lot of research done, the biggest one by far is when I'm trying to prove some annoying guy wrong on an inconsequential comment thread on tumblr. If I could only harness that motivation, I'd be set for life. Thinking about aikido practitioners primes me for things like "zen-like and serene", not "peeved and petty".

What would mental posture be? Here are some of my thoughts on what it may be in general:

1) Best posture for what? Different tasks may require different postures. Rationality or mental arts may be too broad. The best posture for specific practice X may be different than for specific practice Y.

2) Although we don't understand the human body nearly as well as I'd like, we still understand things like physical posture better than we understand thoughts and consciousness. So we may not yet have the vocabulary for the equivalents of "thoracic kyphosis" or "tight hamstrings".

2) You might be getting into philosophy here. In my engineering education, I was taught a specific philosophical approach to the world. It goes something like "The world is more complicated than we understand. Nevertheless, we can do useful things by using models of reality that are oversimplified and we can simplify them further with assumptions. It is important to keep track of which assumptions we make, and the conditions under which the model will work, or not work. Every model has limits and situations where it will not work. Being explicitly aware that we are using a model, what assumptions we are making, and when it works is important. When we don't know the answers to those questions, empirical testing can help. It's important to keep track of all this, because when we apply the wrong model to a situation, people can die."

This is not a universally held approach to the world. There are people walking around living their lives who view the world through a philosophical lens closer to Plato's Forms, or something else that is also vastly different from the above.

I think that the "remember that it is a model, and that another model might be more useful, and that it is based on these assumptions, and that the model will fail in some circumstances" is an extremely useful approach to the world, and I have applied it to other areas of my life with good results.

3) Become more comfortable with uncertainty, in general, (Pema Chodron's advice to "lean into the sharp points" comes to mind here. I recommend her book "When Things Fall Apart" for a Buddhist look at some of these issues.)

Also, more specifically, extend the time in the part of the process where you are looking for the next model to make sense of the situation. That can end up with spending a lot of time not knowing the answer. It usually ends up with a better model of the situation.

The working model to make sense of a situation is called a "cheap trick" by Venkatesh Rao. Rao has a model called the Double Freytag Triangle in his book Tempo that describes an ongoing process of looking for ways to make sense of the world, exploiting them until they break, then looking for the next one that has to take into account more data. (Quick description at the glossary to Venkat's blog here, though he makes up a lot of terminology, so it's not a great explanation for someone who hasn't read the book: http://www.tempobook.com/glossary/#double-freytag-triangle Link to book here: http://www.tempobook.com )

4) Another guide to good mental posture may be to aim for the opposite of the cognitive biases that human factors research has shown trip people up in emergency situations. For example the narrowing of focus to just a few things can lead to counterproductive actions in an emergency.

5) Thinking of the models as tools in a tool box, to be deployed when appropriate, not as part of your identity. It's similar to what Paul Graham said in this essay where he gives the advice to "keep your identity small" http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

6) Physical and mental realms are not separate. In order to have mental clarity, it helps to have had enough sleep, nutritious food, good air quality, few interruptions, etc. Most of those help with physical posture too, though physical posture is something different than getting enough sleep for example. But they are things that make a difference. Perhaps the idea relevant for mental posture is to have an awareness of your physical state and how that is affecting your thoughts. "I'm not thinking straight right now because of my physical condition therefore I should not make a major decision right now" or rules of thumb like that seem like they are useful.

To sum up, I think a good mental posture might be something like:

• become comfortable with uncertainty
• discover and remember the limits and assumptions of your models
• use models like a tool box
• keep your identity small
• be aware of what you are focusing on, and change your focus from time to time
• be aware of your physical state and what it is doing to the quality of your thoughts

But I also think that we haven't sufficiently defined what we are talking about with the words "mental posture" for me to have a good idea whether what I just said was nonsense or applicable at all.

Now, to apply it to the example you mentioned about feeling dutiful about considering the opposite. Perhaps if you were thinking about the situation as being uncertain and then figuring out which of several models to apply to the situation, you would not have already committed to a particular model that you would feel grumpy about considering the opposite of. The approach to "consider the opposite" might be something more along the lines of "What assumptions does this model use? If those assumptions were different, how would the outputs of the model change?" and "This model works in such and such conditions. Do those conditions hold or not? What would information would the model give under the opposite conditions? Would that information be reliable, or would we have to choose a different model to cover that possibility?" And, "Is there a different model available that would better fit the data that I have encountered so far?" And "I am focussing on these things in my model, but what if I included different variables?" Also, choosing a different model would hopefully not feel like attacking one's identity, or doing remedial work to validate an obvious conclusion, but rather like a more pleasant sort of choice.

I'm not sure what you mean by "childish orientation to truth-seeking" but I think this approach does involve truth seeking. It is sort of along the lines of "which approximation, though not completely true, is close enough to being true to be useful in this situation?" but also "Under which conditions does this method of approximation diverge a lot from reality?" It does require thinking of none of the models as completely true.

What, exactly, are the principles of good mental posture for the Art of Rationality?

What came to mind for me is the term "whimsical curiosity". That's what tends to lead my thoughts down various avenues and thought experiments. That attitude is open to all possibilities for their own sake.

Perhaps there's a hint of trollish obstinace in there too, which motivates me to consider the opposite. It's just mildly satisfying to figure out that something is or isn't true. I suspect a stronger form of this mindset is what caused OP to stick a wrench in his sensei's technique.

An exaggerated form of the mindset would be "the more bizarre the idea, the better". Although not ideal, I feel like it may be useful in order to take seriously things you don't actually believe. It's a counter to the dutiful obligation to mechanically think through an idea I disagree with. In my experience, this mindset first causes the reductio ad absurdum to spring to mind, but then I ask myself "what else" and a mix of positive and negative consequences start to occur to me. Sure, this hypothetical world has some insane components, but it also has some interesting unexpected benefits. Sometimes following this train of thought will even lead me to question whether the reductio ad absurdum is really absurd.

As a judoka, this really spoke to me and was a useful analogy - thankyou very much for it!

My own idea of what good mental posture looks like includes some idea of the way you model yourself. One of my biggest failure modes is when I slip into seeing myself as 'random useless seventeen-year-old' and therefore acting as I expect a random useless seventeen year old to act (ineffectively) or waiting to get permission before I do things. When I manage to change into seeing-myself-as-agent mode, my productivity and rationality gets supercharged compared to the aforementioned state. It has funny side effects - for instance, I notice I walk faster and tend to spin on my heels and clap my hands together when I'm being agenty, whereas I stroll and gesture vaguely when I'm being useless. I speak more precisely when I'm in agenty-mode, and replace 'um/er/uh' with silent pauses or 'hmm'. This indicates to me that it's not just a single mental action, but a whole different stance.

I think it's similar to what is spoken about in HPMOR with most people just playing a role and doing what they think someone in that role should do, but others genuinely optimising - but I don't think I've escaped the mode of playing a role, I just sometimes manage to play the role of an agenty person rather than the role of a useless person. It turns out that if you play the role of someone who optimises everything and Gets Stuff Done, you get stuff done. (Sometimes.)

This definitely feels like two very different mental postures. I'm not actually sure how I induce the agenty state from the ineffective state, but I have identified a number of things that might have to do with it, from social pressure, to bright lights, to having a solid idea of what agentyness looks like from observing good role models. The last idea (watching a role model and knowing what agentyness looks like) was reinforced in my mind when I heard a friend saying similar things recently, so to improve my mental posture I'm going to try and watch more awesome people work so I get an idea of what awesomeness looks like, and then try to play that role more and the 'useless kid' role less. I also really like your suggestions!

So, by way of analogy, what might an error in attempting to (say) consider the opposite look like, and what would a good “mental posture” be that would make the error matter less?

(written before reading on)

Outward orientation. Focus on features of the external world. Seeking harmony with the movements of reality.

Here are some motions I might make if I discover I've failed to consider the opposite:

• Oh no, I've broken a rule! That was bad and I am bad. wallows What do I need to do now to atone?
• Can I retroactively save myself from fully acknowledging that I've made the error by finding a convincing argument showing that I didn't actually need to consider the opposite in the first place?
• This is evidence that I'm intrinsically not the better version of myself I like to imagine.
• I'm not as good as the people who wouldn't have made this mistake.

If you startle a cat that's preparing to pounce, it might suddenly jump, whereas if you startle it wile it's lazing about, it might just twitch and look at you suddenly. When it's preparing to pounce, its posture makes jumping the default reaction to anything that happens.

If any of these mental motions is my reflexive response to discovering an error, I must be posed for self assessment, as though I'm prepared to pounce on myself - "What do my experiences mean about me as a person?" - and for judgement of my relationship with other people, with imaginary versions of myself, or with a system of rules.

Some motions I'd rather make upon discovering I've failed to consider the opposite:

• Consider the opposite. (Better late than never.)
• What was the nature of my mistake, what damage have I done, and how can I repair it?
• How would I like to respond next time I encounter an experience like the one that happened just before I made this mistake?

(Preferably in that order.)

What posture would make these thoughts the sort I'd have as an automatic reflex if a failure to consider the opposite were to sneak up on me and yell "boo"?

There are probably some more specific good answers to this, but the one that comes to mind - and my current best answer to the more general question "what posture is good for rationality?" - is something like "seeking harmony with external reality".

This is a feeling I'm familiar with from partner dance. When I'm not dancing very well, I tend to have a strong inward focus. I'm concerned about what I am doing, whether the thing I did was what the lead meant for me to do, and how I look to other people.

When I'm dancing my best, my focus is always outward: on the lead, on the music, on the patterns of movement we're creating together. My focus is on the dance, not on myself. It's a kind of being in love, an intense selfless attentiveness to the phenomenon of dancing.

Similarly, when I'm trying to make good decisions in the midst of uncertainty and frequent error, I move more effectively if my attention is on the world, instead of on myself.

Excuse me for getting all poetical, but: Just as a master dancer must be in love with the dance, so must a master rationalist be in love with the truth. Maintaining a posture of selfless attentiveness to accuracy is what it means to be in love with the truth.

When I've fallen - say, by failing to consider the opposite - and may have damaged my model, this kind of outward-facing, world-aligned mental posture helps me spring right back up to rejoin the dance and make things right again.

[Edit: "Maintaining selfless attentiveness" is most of how I personally be in love. I am aware of having an unusual way of being in love. This might be closer to what most people experience as parental love than romantic love. Anyway, it's probably a bad phrasing for most, and just a good handle for me.]

I really like this post. Questions:

• Can the (physical or mental) posture that's appropriate for avoiding mistakes be opposed to the posture appropriate for focusing power on one point?

• Are there multiple styles of posture or thought that are equally effective local maxima, while hybrids of them are less effective?

When I think of how I've messed up in attempts to consider the opposite, I can remember several instances when my tone was dutiful. I felt like I was supposed to consider the opinion that I disagreed with or didn't want to have turn out to be true. And yet, it felt boring or like submitting or something like that to really take that perspective seriously. I felt like I was considering the opposite roughly the same way a young child replies to their parent saying "Now say that you're sorry" with an almost sarcastic "I'm sorry."

A key thing here seems to be that if you really care about the getting right outcome, or in Eliezer's words, have Something to Protect, then considering the opposite won't feel like an annoying duty. Rather, then changing your mind will become something that you actually want to do.

Crucial Conversations is sold as a book for handling social conflicts, but you can also read it as a general rationality guide; in particular, it has a whole chapter on "how to stay focused on what you really want", which has this great example:

To see how the desires of our hearts can affect our ability to stay in dialogue, let’s take a look at a real-life example. Greta, the CEO of a midsized corporation, is two hours into a rather tense meeting with her top leaders. For the past six months, she has been on a personal campaign to reduce costs. Little has been accomplished to date, so Greta calls the meeting. Surely people will tell her why they haven’t started cutting costs. After all, she has taken great pains to foster candor.

Greta has just opened the meeting to questions when a manager haltingly rises to his feet, fidgets, stares at the floor, and then nervously asks if he can ask a very tough question. The way the fellow emphasizes the word very makes it sound as if he’s about to accuse Greta of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

The frightened manager continues.

“Greta, you’ve been at us for six months to find ways to cut costs. I’d be lying if I said that we’ve given you much more than a lukewarm response. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you about one thing that’s making it tough for us to push for cost cuts.”

“Great. Fire away,” Greta says as she smiles in response.

“Well, while you’ve been asking us to use both sides of our paper and forgo improvements, you’re having a second office built.”

Greta freezes and turns bright red. Everyone looks to see what will happen next. The manager plunges on ahead.

“The rumor is that the furniture alone will cost $ 150,000. Is that right?” [...]

As we watch Greta, something quite subtle and yet very important takes place. It is lost on most of the people in the room— but with our front-row seat, it is practically palpable. Greta’s jaw tightens. She leans forward and grips the left side of the rostrum hard enough that her knuckles turn white. She lifts her right hand, with the finger pointing at the questioner like a loaded weapon. She hasn’t said anything yet, but it is clear where Greta is heading. Her motive has clearly changed from making the right choice to something far less noble.

Like most of us in similar circumstances, Greta is no longer focused on cost-cutting. Her attention is now turned to staff-cutting— beginning with one particular staff member. [...]

In reality, Greta didn’t give in to her raging desire to defend herself. Almost as soon as her finger rose like a loaded pistol, it dropped back to her side. Her face relaxed. At first she looked surprised, embarrassed, and maybe even a little upset. But then she took a deep breath and said: “You know what? We need to talk about this. I’m glad you asked the question. Thank you for taking that risk. I appreciate the trust it shows in me.” [...]

Later that day we asked Greta about that transformation. We wanted to know exactly what had been going on in her head. What had helped her move from embarrassment and anger to gratitude?

“It was easy,” Greta explained. “At first I did feel attacked, and I wanted to strike back. To be honest, I wanted to put that guy in his place. He was accusing me in public, and he was wrong.”

“And then it struck me,” she continued. “Despite the fact that I had 400 eyeballs pinned to me, a rather important question hit me like a ton of bricks: ‘What do I really want here?’”

Asking this question had a powerful effect on Greta’s thinking. As she focused on this far more important question, she quickly realized that her goal was to encourage these 200 managers to embrace the cost-reduction efforts— and to thereby influence thousands of others to do the same.

As Greta contemplated this goal, she realized that the biggest barrier she faced was the widespread belief that she was a hypocrite. On the one hand, she was calling for others to sacrifice. On the other, she appeared to be spending discretionary funds for her own comfort. It was at that moment that she was no longer ashamed or angry, but grateful. Interestingly, by transforming her motives Greta simultaneously transformed the way she saw the man who asked the question. Whereas seconds earlier he looked like an enemy, when her motives changed, the fellow now looked like an ally. In fact, this man had just handed her the best chance she could get to influence the audience by letting her publicly address a primary source of resistance to the cost-cutting effort. And so Greta moved to dialogue.

Greta taught us that a small, mental intervention— the simple act of asking a potent question— can have a powerful effect on redirecting our hearts.

You're not talking about defending yourself about an explicit social attack, like the Greta example is; but the mental motion involved is similar: "ugh, why do I have to deal with this?". The subordinate's question, or the need to consider the opposite, is perceived as an annoying external force on you that you're forced to deal with.

I hadn't explicitly thought about it in terms of posture before, but the analogy makes sense. There's something that takes you out of the truth-seeking posture; and then to fix that, to return yourself to the right posture, you ask yourself, "what do I really want here?", or "what if I'm wrong?", and then you go back. (In the Greta examples, her change in mindset is even observable from her physical stance!) And for as long as you're in the non-truth-seeking mode, for as long as you are only interested in defending yourself or your actions, you'll be less flexible in terms of what you can do.

I felt like I was considering the opposite roughly the same way a young child replies to their parent saying "Now say that you're sorry" with an almost sarcastic "I'm sorry."

One thought on this point - it might be easier to evaluate "what-if" scenarios by explicitly considering them as fictional. What if I am wrong about this assertion? Well, in such a fictional universe, I would then observe consequences A, B, and C... and only then do I ask the question about whether the assertion or its opposite appears more likely to be fictional.

...it may also be partially because I enjoy speculating about fictional universes.

My idea is ... adopting a game-like perspective? 

When my game character get hurt, I know it cognitively and I have emotional reactions, but it won't affect my overall stance in an overwhelming way. Things are affecting my character, not threatening 'myself'. 

Another trick is to know what you are really up to (aka the mission) and know your mental energy level (aka HP/MP)? 

As such, the way I deal with a difficult situation is goal-oriented, responding instead of reacting. And I'll know what I'm capable of (and what I'm incapable of), instead of blaming myself or blaming someone else over some improbable stuff. 

Our physical posture is created by muscles.

There is too much focus on the spine when discussing posture in my opinion. Our vertebrae are there to protect the spinal cord, they are not a stack of blocks that keep us upright. Working with the right muscles - the main muscles of movement [LW · GW] - will position the spine correctly.

Focusing on Base-Line (pelvic floor and rectus abdominis - the body's 'core pillar' of strength) is key to developing an awareness of the body's position, motion and balance, increasing consciousness of our sense of proprioception [LW · GW] which facilitates self-assessment and improvement of posture.

I now know what a "good posture" is. I can feel it.

A mental postures I have when doing good rationality is - Love to be wrong / Want to change my idea

Understanding a larger perspective is useful to set priorities and reflect. On the other hand I'm not sure whether it helps to get into a flow state and be immersed into a subject.

If you search a bug in the code you write, then all mental capacity goes towards being immersed in the code. I would be pleased to hear if someone on LW can code well in a mental state where their mind isn't completely focused on the code. On the other hand I doubt it.

I don't think everybody has to work in pomodoros but I think it's useful to think about how thinking works in the framework. During the work time focus is very important. On the other hand in the pause where you decide on what to work next it's useful to have the big picture in mind.

Being conscious of the context in which you acting might be a better way to frame it. If I do pomodoro I'm clear that coding time is coding time and relaxing time is relaxing time. From Creative Consciousness (CC) workshops I know the technique of writing down a context for whatever activity one engages in. When hanging out with friends at a bar the context can simply be: "Having fun"

Writing down contexts might be more a technique than a basic but context-awareness might be one of the basics you are seeking. (I think this way of being very clear about contexts comes from Landmark)

Having a discussion on LW is for example a very different context for me than having a discussion on a facebook feed. On LW I'm focusing mainly on communicating ideas to people I consider to be smart and intellectually minded. On facebook on the other hand part of my audience isn't intellecutal and that means I have to communicate differently to communicate effectively.

At the moment I had a discussion on the LW facebook group with about politics is the mindkiller with someone who hadn't read the article. On LW my basic assumption would be to assume due-diligence. That facebook group on the other hand seems to need a context where I'm assume I can't to refer to certain LW basics.

The last to Monday's I was at a Wheel of Consent meetup. The core idea of the framework is to distinguish the context where Bob touches Alice to make Alice feel good and where Bob touches Alice to make himself feel good. Communicating about which dynamic a particular touch has is valuable. Getting a shared context creates consent in which both people know what's happening.

Make your mind flexible. Achieve & maintain full mental range of movement. Don't get "stiff", and view mental inflexibility as a risk to your mental health.

There's a fun (or at least "fun") exercise in which I regularly engage at my heavily right-wing, ex-military workplace: I try to agree with the guys who are in knee-jerk agreement with Fox News. I find this helps immensely with mental flexibility, as it forces me to try to actually reason from a foreign point of view. For example: when my coworkers are vociferously agreeing that a wall should be built of the border with Canada, I try to enter the discussion from the Rationalist perspective, looking for any objective benefits a Canadian border wall might have.

This has the double benefit of developing mental flexibility AND making me seem to be a potential political/philosophical ally to the coworkers in question. That way, when I keep developing the Rationalist perspective into the deep, blatant flaws in such a measure, my inputs are actually considered instead of being immediately shouted down.

Occasionally, a coworker even abandons their support for the measure in question.... which leads me to believe I'm on the right path.

A decade ago I read the book of Tohei and learned meditating from them. When talking about Ki he wrote (out of memory): "It's a great concept to guide action. It's a bad concept to explain things."

These days I'm mostly living in the framework of Danis Bois with has terms like "Subjective movement" and "inner movement". I think they are useful for conceptualizing what happens. There are somatic aspects that have nothing to do with biomechanics that are also at work.

Last year I was at training of Aikido Ki techniques. One exercise was about 4 people holding the arms of legs of a person and then the person getting free by letting "Ki flow". When I was holding the Ki flow technique was doing very little. Two times the person first got free from the other ones and then used muscle strength to get free. The third time I was holding the arm and the person didn't get free.

Why? Most of the time I'm holding another person it's in dancing. I think I didn't grab the arm with "anger" or "aggression". You could label this "aggression" as not freely flowing "ki". When in aggression mode, I wouldn't balance things inside my body. Muscles wouldn't relax themselves and there would be a "weakness" that allows the other person to get free.

I like the analogy to mental posture. It is vivid and can possibly be used for newbies to brige an interential gap, but I'm dubious whether deeper insights can be derived from it.

But the concrete example of the unbendable arm was much more useful for me.

But the point is, by understanding something about proper posture, you can cut literally months of training down to about ten minutes.

I tried it. I tried it myself and I tried to teach my 9 year old to apply it. And as far as I can tell he did - at least he achieved significant counter force and it did look like it came from his back muscles (I explicitly explained that he had to use his back muscles and he is mostly able to transfer this).

Sure there is more to apply the technique more broadly and I doubt this single experiment has any lasting effect. For me it is more like one more puzzle piece to better posture.

Thanks for the post.

One difference that might make good mental posture more difficult than good physical posture is that we have instincts for good physical posture-- you can learn about good movement by studying animals and 3 year old children. It isn't obvious that there's anything like that for thinking.

1. Similarly to what you feel about 'keeping yourself upright', do you have an intuition about 'finding yourself uprooted'? I mean, surely there are cashed responses to falls, both natural and learnable; and there seem to be many biased responses to mental falls, which can be considered 'natural' for the moment. What happens when you are physically falling down, have already noted to yourself that this is totally a mistake, and are minimizing impact?

2. Your metaphors seem to rely on there being rather rapid targeted feedback, and should be, intuitively, better in situations when there is only one alternative hypothesis, not for 'searching for them'. When I imagine imagining, wondering, my inner 'body image' holds breath, reaches out, on tenterhooks, skin crawling with goosebumps, and most of all - blind. It is, perhaps, a bad mental posture for a rationalist to train, but what I find comforting about it is - I don't expect to 'deal with it and be done' when I do think of some alternative hypothesis.

3. Once, when we worked on reducing trade in protected plant species, we sometimes misjudged situations and found ourselves outnumbered. It often meant 'losing' (we went away, thoroughly shamed, and sellers became bolder), which meant that next time, sellers would be much harder to subdue, but sometimes we could bluff a way to a draw or even 'a victory'. (So it was a trade-off between 'don't start' and 'don't go':) I don't know about others, but I would think, in the middle of confrontation, 'The Law backs me', and it really helped. This mantra tipped some inner scale, my shoulders went back by themselves, I became actually polite (not that I am usually purposefully rude to strangers), and yes, this is Dark-Artish. I think I could train myself to a mantra of 'The Math backs me', and it would tip me towards action in the same way.

(Epistemic status: rambling by association.)

This feels quite connected to the void/the intention to cut, and not just for the martial arts metaphor. In the same way that someone who has mastered a martial technique sees "through" it enough to be able to modify it on the fly, a good mental stance allows me to see "through" cognitive techniques, see how they work, why they work, why they might almost but not quite work for me, how they might work better if I adjusted them just so etc.