The call of the void

There is something I don't understand. Are people voting now on the person instead of the article? I see that all of Elo's recent activity is massively down-voted, and some of the posts might have deserved it. But certainly not all. I'm just curious whether if this post has been written by someone else, would it have been similarly down-voted.

It might not be among the core principles of this site, but it's certainly not an uninteresting topic.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1016636214258 but I don't see the raw data on a quick look.

From the study (free from the link above)

Impulsive Experiences Scale. The Impulsive Experiences Scale is a 10- item questionnaire designed for this study that asks subjects to rate the urges they have had to do inappropriate and harmful behaviors on a six item likert scale. Subjects were asked to rate the presence and strength of five different impulses/urges; the urge to shout something inappropriate while surrounded by other people, the urge to jump off of a high place, the urge to steal or take something, the urge to jump in front of a train, subway, or car, and the urge to strike or slap someone.

I have experienced this. But not like an urge but rather as a feeling of surprise how little it takes to die (or at least horrible accident) and how little it actually happens. An appreciation how amazing reliable we humans are.

Poll! Poll!

How often did you have any of the experiences in the first paragraph. E.g.

When you are holding a kitchen knife thinking, "I wonder if this is sharp enough to cut myself with".

[pollid:1161]

My impression is that the feeling really is something like "what would happen if," in order so that you can answer that with "something bad" and get out of the situation where it might happen. But because you are afraid of it happening, there is a slight tendency to misinterpret the feeling as something that might make it happen, i.e. as a desire for it, just as e.g. when you are scared in a dark room, and you hear a noise, you interpret that noise as meaning something scary.

This only makes sense once you realize that the subjective feeling of a desire does not in itself tell you what it is a desire for, but you learn that from experience. So for example there is nothing about the subjective feeling of hunger that tells you it is about food or eating, but you simply notice that when you are hungry, you are likely to eat. From this you conclude that hunger must be a desire to eat. Given this kind of separation between a desire and its object, there is nothing to prevent the kind of misinterpretation above: I stand at the edge of a cliff and feel a peculiar feeling. It would be really bad to fall, so it would be dreadful if that feeling were a desire to jump which might make me jump!

What's worse is that it is theoretically possible for someone to say to himself, "I want to jump. So I'll do it, to get what I want." Of course this is not very likely to happen.

I occasionally experience this, but I've never assigned it strong positive or negative affect/valence. I'm high in openness to experience, so I just kinda thought it was an academically interesting phenomenon, and haven't thought much of it, much less lost any sleep over it. It's just interesting in the same way that this is interesting.

If anyone takes it too seriously, I recommend this approach. Just clicking the xkcd link will help your brain more strongly associate the humorous and fascinating bits about it with the call of the void. I recommend trying to set up a Trigger Action Plan, so that you think of the xkcd any time you experience the call of the void.

We like to have power. You can jump or not jump. Its your choice. The more you consider jumping, the more power you have to choose between jumping and not jumping. Something you're already certain to do or not do lacks the feeling of a powerful choice.