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Ask HN: I am stateless – trouble learning from feedback

37 points by servytor 5y ago

TLDR: I am stateless in the sense that indirect and direct feedback of any kind is not incorporated into my behavior tomorrow. I feel like I am constantly being reset. I do not learn from what happened yesterday. I can learn a little bit over time, and change my opinion, but tomorrow I will most likely forget. I seem to be entirely dependent on my 'active memory' and situational cues as to what is going on. I define 'active memory' as being what has happened since I have woken up. It seems that 'recent memory' is defined officially as having a 30-second cutoff, and that is is not an issue with me, so be aware I am using a new term. --- For a long time I have thought I suffered solely from the Dunning-Kruger effect. I would think I know how to do something, and then find out it took a lot more effort than usual, and thus I proved to myself that I was not that competent. Thus, I diagnosed myself as feeling superficially competent in areas where I have no expertise. Dunning-Kruger, right? I assumed a lot of people suffer from it, and I must be another moron. But despite this awareness of this self-diagnosis, and thinking about how I might be acting on it, I still feel competent in new areas when I should not. I wake the next day, and behold, I still see myself as competent. But what I am suffering from is not limited to my beliefs about myself, which is unlike Dunning-Kruger. I have trouble changing any belief. For example, let's say that I ask a group of people about who knows git well - and someone starts to talk who I had previously never thought of as being competent in that area. The next day I will see that person the same way as I did before they helped me with the git issue. It is easy for me to think "Wow, she really knows git well!" and to change my opinion in that moment, but it is almost impossible for me to remember that the next day. On the next day I can partially remember that person being an expert in git, but somehow my opinion is separate and unchanging and I will still see them as not knowing git well. So lo and behold, in the same way, on waking the next way I see that person the same way as before. I believe I have trouble learning from direct or indirect feedback (I am ignoring 'feedback' as business jargon for when a person talks to you about your performance, and that most google searches result for me). I keep 'touching the hot stove' and making the same judgement, having the same behavior, etc. The number one sign of stupidity is making the same mistake again and again, and I definitely fall into that category. I also feel like I have to recreate my knowledge-base in my active memory each day. It is normal for me to be very confused, and to make inferences based on what I can deduce based on first-principles and almost no knowledge. I will take every situational cue I can to my advantage, as I cannot trust my memory. When it comes to learning something, I am heavily dependent on notes I have taken to teach myself how something works the next day. I am awful in the sense that I constantly try to appear smart to others, as I want to blend in as another competent individual. Some questions: Do you know what the technical term is of what I am going through, so I could learn more about it? What does it mean when my mind seems to reset its opinions to the previous 24 hours? What does it mean when your beliefs do not change, and despite being aware of it, you do not know how to stop it? Do you have trouble remembering feedback? What is your hypothesis as to why? How do you incorporate feedback into changing your opinion about yourself or someone or something into your long-term memory? Are others stuck acting off of active memory only? Do people on HN suffer from memory deficits? What happens when you get feedback from a mistake or learn something? What efforts do you take, either in your head or with tools to stay aware of it tomorrow?

theandrewbailey 5y ago
Sounds like some kind of amnesia. You need to talk to a doctor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia
- servytor 5y ago
  Than you for that link. It seems like that is quite interesting and relevant, as from that article I learned about the terms episodic (autobiographical) and semantic (factual) memory. I have terrible episodic memory, but my semantic memory seems to be okay for technical subjects.
themodelplumber 5y ago
You are really good at writing about yourself / supporting yourself analytically, IMO. In some ways I'd say it doesn't even seem like you have these "problems," in the sense that you are so accepting of your existential world, in which "things happen to me," as opposed to "I make things happen and they bend to my will." IMO/TL;DR--I would't ask us with expectations of an us-fix or an us-help, unless it's just a vehicle to help you keep writing about yourself. You wrote to us about the way in which you block outside information via multiple means/effects, so you'd be swimming hard upstream. This is more common than people think. Regarding things happening, I would look at building your own hyper-perceptive timing models for interventions. Ask yourself what's happening _to you_ today and what that means you can do well today. Stuff is sucking, OK so therefore I can really write a long journal entry about how everything sucks today. (To me this is a productive exercise, not anything defeating by a long stretch) Regarding feedback, there are different names for this group of concerns you have. But the fact that you're asking us to give you names for the group of concerns, also_has a group of names. And _that_ gets really interesting. Reach out if you are interested. Otherwise I'd say--you're processing this really well and maybe asking us is the trojan-horse activity that helps you to keep writing at length about your current life conditions. Not a bad thing to be able to lean on, if that's the case.
codezero 5y ago
You should see a doctor and maybe get an MRI. Also, do you take notes? Do you do any kind of spaced repetition/actively review things from the previous day/days? I had a similar issue that had more to do with my own aversion to writing things down and reviewing them - yeah it sounds weird, but in the same way people avoid recalling bad memories (and others recall them too often) I had a similar aversion to reviewing things I wrote down especially because sometimes I didn't remember writing it, and that's kind of scary. I needed to get over that mental block, and I still am not great at following my own advice, but using external memory/finding a trusted method is a starting point for self-medicating at least for me.

37 points by servytor 5y ago

theandrewbailey 5y ago

Sounds like some kind of amnesia. You need to talk to a doctor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

servytor 5y ago
Than you for that link. It seems like that is quite interesting and relevant, as from that article I learned about the terms episodic (autobiographical) and semantic (factual) memory. I have terrible episodic memory, but my semantic memory seems to be okay for technical subjects.

themodelplumber 5y ago

You are really good at writing about yourself / supporting yourself analytically, IMO. In some ways I'd say it doesn't even seem like you have these "problems," in the sense that you are so accepting of your existential world, in which "things happen to me," as opposed to "I make things happen and they bend to my will." IMO/TL;DR--I would't ask us with expectations of an us-fix or an us-help, unless it's just a vehicle to help you keep writing about yourself. You wrote to us about the way in which you block outside information via multiple means/effects, so you'd be swimming hard upstream. This is more common than people think. Regarding things happening, I would look at building your own hyper-perceptive timing models for interventions. Ask yourself what's happening _to you_ today and what that means you can do well today. Stuff is sucking, OK so therefore I can really write a long journal entry about how everything sucks today. (To me this is a productive exercise, not anything defeating by a long stretch) Regarding feedback, there are different names for this group of concerns you have. But the fact that you're asking us to give you names for the group of concerns, also_has a group of names. And _that_ gets really interesting. Reach out if you are interested. Otherwise I'd say--you're processing this really well and maybe asking us is the trojan-horse activity that helps you to keep writing at length about your current life conditions. Not a bad thing to be able to lean on, if that's the case.

codezero 5y ago

You should see a doctor and maybe get an MRI. Also, do you take notes? Do you do any kind of spaced repetition/actively review things from the previous day/days? I had a similar issue that had more to do with my own aversion to writing things down and reviewing them - yeah it sounds weird, but in the same way people avoid recalling bad memories (and others recall them too often) I had a similar aversion to reviewing things I wrote down especially because sometimes I didn't remember writing it, and that's kind of scary. I needed to get over that mental block, and I still am not great at following my own advice, but using external memory/finding a trusted method is a starting point for self-medicating at least for me.