Topic Summary:
I’ll reply to individual sentences from the article. Overthinking is an interesting thing to me cuz I think I do it a certain amount. It would be nice to learn about it more. Here’s a link to the article:
Goal:
Learn more about overthinking and how it relates to perfectionism. Possibly understand the problem of overthinking in my situation.
CF Relevance:
Overthinking and Perfectionism is related to CF stuff about excess capacity I think.
This is the title of the article:
Overthinking and Perfectionism
Why join overthinking and perfectionism with “and”? I read the article before and replied to it. It’s kind of intuitive how perfectionism is related to overthinking. Like, if you’re overthinking something then you want it to be good. I don’t think you know how good an idea is you made so you could be trying to improve it. You might end up improving it too much. That’s my brief thoughts about it.
The first paragraph of the article:
It seems that the paragraph says there’s a cause for overthinking. I think that could mean that it’s a potential cause. It’s not the only cause there could be. Perfection can lead you to keep trying to make things better and better. I don’t know if getting stuck overthinking or overthinking is what perfectionism causes.
First sentence:
That happens when trying to make a good post in CF. There could be so many things to improve before hitting send. You keep finding one thing and then another before deciding to finally post. I’ve gotten stuck before cuz it’s hard to know if the post is good enough. A part of me thinks I can keep improving it by editing it or rewriting stuff.
How does overthinking look like? Like, what activities does that involve? Do you think too much about something you write? You try think about what you wrote for x amount of minutes but you end up thinking about it for a greater amount? You waste too much time there. I have a feeling this stuff is related to goals.
Can you overthink something and not get stuck? If overthinking is a problem, then you could probably solve it right then and there to not be stuck. Overthinking sounds like a mistake you could make. Maybe that’s something you can postmortem about? Overthinking also seems related to resolving conflicting ideas. Like, you could just post something as it is with flaws vs. working on it and spending more time.
It happens sometimes? How often is that? An unspecified amount? Merriam Webster says that “Sometimes” means at times or now and then. That seems unclear exactly when that happens. I think it means tho it happens enough that it’s noticeable. If you’re talking about getting migraines sometimes that could mean that you get them 1-2 a month. Not too sure.
What are those “things” people get stuck overthinking? They could be things that could be improved? They can be better. You don’t know if you should focus more time on it or not. The fact that you’re overthinking a thing shows that there’s an error happening. That or your making more than one mistake. Idk
Edit: I took out parts of the reply I meant to respond with later.
Perfectionism seems to be a pattern of error. Like, it’s a bad thing. If you do certain things while you get stuck overthinking something then it may fit that pattern. That doesn’t make too much sense to me, but I would believe then when you do a similar activity, you would make the same mistakes there too. You’re overthinking there cuz you have a problem with perfectionism.
How is getting stuck overthinking things caused by perfectionism? I guess cuz you want make many things right that you take too long doing that. If you had clear goals then every error you run into is worth improving… I forget how to say tht. If you have goals that are too ambitious then every fix seems important to work on…How are overly ambitious goals and clear goals related to overthinking?
I think perfectionism is an attitude that makes you see that everything needs to be improved. There’s no end to it cuz everything is going to be off from perfection. What is your goal? Why have that goal? Maybe you don’t need to improve something so much.
Why say “may”? Maybe perfectionism doesnt alwayd have a person make all their writing more perfect? Maybe they end up finding that what they made is good enough? What stops people from constantly making improvements? Like, during the beginning or in the middle of it?
If they end up trying to improve their stuff, I don’t think they’re going to know when to stop. Like, it’s going keep being off from perfection. How does perfection look like? What does it mean? Do you need perfection for the thing you’re trying to accomplish? This reminds me of a faulty computer program; cuz it doesn’t have the right instructions to stop a loop, it keeps going and going. It doesn’t know when to stop.
How does it look like to make your writing more and more perfect? I think when you’re editing your writing, you may run into a mistake you can fix. You didn’t see it as you were writing. How bad is it to leave that mistake in? You fix the mistake so you don’t maybe confuse your readers about something you’re trying to say. How do you say it in a non-confusing way? Is it better than what you wrote? I think you can keep finding ways to say something in a better way.
Paragraph from the article:
First sentence:
CF and TOC have ideas about all four of those topics? Does CF have a set of ideas for each of the topics? Same with TOC? I know CF builds on TOC. CF would have some different ideas cuz it’s a new philosophy. Does that mean different ideas on the topics?
TOC for sure talks about goals and variance. I think it talks about limiting factors and excess capacity as well. I thought TOC talked about local optima rather than excess capacity? Those ideas seem similar; I dont think they’re the same. In a working system, most things have excess capacity. I think if you wanna improve the system then you gotta focus on 1% of things that dont have excess capacity. If you do work on the 99%, you’re working on local optima.
CF talks about all four topics. It talks about clear goals and binary goals. It talks about projects which involve goals. I don’t remember about it talking about limiting factors. Those sound like bottlenecks, like many factors have excess capacity and there’s only a few factors that limit the goal.
So CF and TOC ideas help with perfectionism? I imagine then that perfectionism is a philosophical issue. If you have better epistemology then you won’t get so stuck with constantly making things perfect. You can interact with the ideas that bring about perfectionism. You can think about things in terms of goals to help you deal with the problem better.
How would those ideas help? Ideas about goals maybe help you understand what you’re achieving and why. Like, if you’re trying to constantly improve at something, you could figure what you’re doing that for. What goal requires something to be more and more perfect? What sub-goals do you have? What do you need to achieve the overall goal?
Concerning variance, I think that would probably help with seeing that there’s always variance in results. Like, when you throw a ball a certain distance, it’s impossible to throw it in an exact location. You should expect variance that literal perfection isn’t possible. I think you can ask why you have to be so precise? What is it for? What goal requires you so much precision?
Concerning excess capacity, most factors have excess capacity. I think if you’re goal isn’t overly ambitious then you’ll only need to focus on a few factors to improve. Learning about excess capacity lets you at least ask yourself if you’re working on something that is already enough?
There’s two things at play here that can reduce perfectionism problems. The first is focusing your optimization on bottlenecks, and the second is believing that it’s a waste to focus on non-bottlenecks. So those can reduce problems with perfectionism? They don’t fix them all? I don’t think it would either cuz you would still be making mistakes u need to investigate. There for sure is more than one problem with perfectionism.
Focusing optimization on bottlenecks and not wasting your time on non-bottlenecks are for sure CF and TOC ideas. I know CF builds on TOC and agrees with it so thats why I say CF ideas. TOC is compatible with CF.
How does the belief about non-bottlenecks help? How can it reduce problems with perfectionism? I think it’ll help you see that maybe that thing you’re trying to constantly improve is a non-bottleneck and you’ll stop the cycle. Also, if you really have the belief then you’ll have done some research about it. You’d probably be able to identify non-bottlenecks to not waste time.
I think you can focus that energy at optimizing something on bottlenecks. You’re not just focusing on stuff that has excess capacity. You can actually see a good change. It’s not that you’re improving efforts are wrong it’s that you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I don’t think you’re wrong for wanting to make things better.
Trying to get “good enough” outcomes are ideas about goals. You’re trying to achieve a result there. If you get something that’s good enough that’s like completing a checklist. If you figure what’s good enough about an outcome then you got ideas about that. What’s good enough? “good enough” outcomes are described in the hyphen. Here it is:
This is what “good enough” outcomes are. What is margin of error? I think that’s like when you make a measurement and it has some precision. The measurement is precise within 10th of a meter. If it veers too far off then I think it’s not within the margin of error. Idk
I saw some stuff from gemini about margin of error. That’s usually expressed with a plus or minus symbol. Like, if something is measured with a margin of error of +/- 0.5 meters, then the real measurement is within that range. How does that work with “good enough” outcomes?
“good enough” outcomes being a margin of error past a breakpoint is similar to measuring something with a certain margin of error. So are “good enough” outcomes that margin? Like, they’re expressing that margin where the true measurement is. I think the outcomes could be measured and their true measurement would be somewhere past the breakpoint.
Are breakpoints similar to number lines? Can a breakpoint be at 0 and anything more than zero is past a breakpoint? Would the margin of error just be >0 for a “good enough” outcome? Like, just cuz there’s a margin of error doesn’t mean you have to make it small. You can make it to infinity. Margins are just numbers. If infinity is a number then you can make the second number of the margin be infinity.
“good enough” outcomes also avoid failing at any secondary issues. That makes me think of going too far from a breakpoint. Like, if you keep optimizing something it can cause issues somewhere else.
What is a primary issue? Is that with optimizing a thing? Like, you have a goal you want to achieve. If anything else becomes an issue while doing that then you don’t have a “good enough” outcome. What if secondary issues are failing at background goals? Like, you try to achieve a goal but then you start failing the goal of safety. It was safe before but now that’s failing. You wouldn’t have a “good enough outcome” then
I gotta finish this book. I think it’ll help with learning TOC ideas so you can use them to reduce perfectionism. It also sounds like you can read his other books to learn TOC.
I’m going to write about the following paragraph:
First two sentences:
I think perfectionism can be related to non-decisive thinking cuz you may not know what success or failure looks like. If you did then, it’d be easier to finish dealing with an issue and not get stuck…I think if you knew what kind of perfectionism problem you had then it’d be easier to relate it to non-decisive thinking. That itself sounds like a problem too.
The two sentences in the quote are connected I think. The first talks about non-decisive thinking. I think that’s related to the topic of decisive thinking. The second sentence talks about an aspect of CF, about success and failure criteria. I think that stuff has to do with thinking. It also has to do with decisive thinking cuz success and failure criteria works with finding out the truth and making decisions.
What is the last part of the quote about? You try to succeed rather than fail? I think that happens in CF; you try to succeed there. I think since you have success and failure criteria that makes things clearer. If things are clear then you’ll know what counts as success and what counts as failure. This is different than perfectionism I think cuz you’re just trying to improve stuff to make it more and more perfect. Where is the success and failure criteria there? Where is the success? Is failure not making something perfect more than x amount of times?
If you evaluate how good ideas and outcomes are then there could always be better ones. How good do you want the idea tho? It sounds hard to tell. Like, do you want the idea good or really good? That seems like leaving it to intuition which could end up being wrong.
“how good” and “how much” are italicized. I think they’re italicized cuz the topic of weighting ideas is related. I think if you know about that topic, you could get a better idea about it.
What is “how much something succeeds”? Is that how often something is successful? I think that could mean that there could be failures and the less failures the more successful a thing is. An example could be having a goal about making money. Making 100 dollars could be successful, but making 200 dollars is even more successful.
I think it is always possible to make something slightly better. There seems to be no stopping points only about asking how good something is. If we’re talking about making money, $100 is slightly better than $95, and $105 is slightly better than $100. If you take the mainstream view seriously then it could be tempting to keep on going. There’s no philosophical discussion about how much is enough or what is the goal.
The fact that it’s always possible to make things slightly better is what encourages perfectionism. What does “encourages” mean? It’s like the mainstream view is pro perfectionism. You gotta have a keen eye in this discussion to not fall for the trap. What if you don’t know better and you do something really difficult? You might spend a long time staying stuck perfecting things.
I’m going to write about the following paragraph:
First sentence:
Ok, so there’s CF perfection? Is there a mainstream view of perfection? Can you be a perfectionist when it comes to CF? Is it an ok goal to go for no decisive failures? No decisive failures sounds good cuz then your idea isn’t failing in a major way. There’s probably a scenario where there’s a lot of bad options and you got for the best bad option. Idk
What are decisive failures? Those sound like errors. Let’s say you’re trying to do a project and the plan only fails in two ways. If you fix those, you can pass the success criteria. Does passing mean having no decisive failures? I think yeah. Not too sure
My question is what happens when you do something really hard? I think you would be dealing with many decisive failures there. Idk
Does refuted mean there’s a decisive failure? If something has no decisive failures then that’s the best position for an idea. Can an idea have more than one decisive failure? Are ideas judged best as either non-refuted vs. refuted?
Non-refuted sounds like you didn’t find something wrong with the idea. If an idea is refuted that’s like it failed at the goal. That idea wouldn’t be so good to use for that goal. If the idea was fine, then what other goal does it have?
How is the quote related to perfectionism? Idk but I bet you could have an idea that’s non-refuted and you keep working on it to make it better. I think you can make it fail at a goal that isn’t productive. That or u might not be working on the refutation of the idea. Like, you could deal with the wrong goal while trying to make it perfect.
You can see it like CF epistemology vs. mainstream epistemology. How do you figure out what epistemology is mainstream? I bet from research or lots of hours of interaction or reading. Mainstream epistemology offers one view about ideas. Is it just one? Like, is it just about how successful or how good an idea is? I bet there’s some but they’re not as prevalent.
According to mainstream epistemology, there are degrees of goodness or success of ideas. There are always worse and better ideas. This is different than CF cuz it’s analog. CF is digital; it’s talking about if an idea is refuted or non-refuted. If you go with mainstream epistemology, it makes stuff that’s infinitely better relevant. It’s like your ideas are never good enough. It’s similar to making a loop in a program but never giving it directions for when to stop.
I think there’s probably a mistake in the last paragraph. I forgot what digital and binary mean. I dont know if im comparing CF and mainstream epistemology right.
Yes, I agree with this intuitively at least. I don’t even know if I’m improving the right thing often. I could just stop improving stuff and be ok with any progress, but I bet it’ll be very slow. There might be downsides to having a perfectionist attitude, but there are also downsides to not having it too. There’s a lack of discussion here in the mainstream view that addresses the issues. It’s like you gotta have blind faith that stuff will get better. What if they don’t? What if things get stagnant?
In the mainstream view, you could optimize factors that are non-bottlenecks. You know many there are? I think it’s 99% of factors. I think there’s 1% of issues are important here… idk really, how many non-bottlenecks are there? If you worked on anything and it was often a bottleneck then people would be making improvements everywhere. There’s very little bottlenecks.
How does the mainstream view cause a lot of trouble for perfectionists? I think they wouldn’t be too sure about what to focus optimization on. They see that things are flawed, but because they accept the mainstream view everything might seem like a problem. Like, there would be so many things to optimize that they stay stuck trying to do that.
What’s the difference between Mainstream epistemology and CF? Mainstream view doesnt say what factor to focus on or worth improving. I don’t really see anything said about which goals are good enough or not too. Mainstream view also seems like a lot of work. Like, you can keep improving a lot of factors until you achieve your goals. You could work on hundreds and hundreds of things before getting somewhere.
In CF, you could take some time learning bottlenecks vs. non-bottlenecks. That instead of jumping right in optimizing any facor. Also, CF actually has ideas about factors. You could learn about them to have a better time.
If most factors are good enough then that’s good. You don’t need to focus on so many things at once. You just find the few factors holding you back. Also, if know about this you’ll get a better idea when to stop optimizing a factor. You don’t got to keep having goals that take forever to achieve.
@Elliot Criticism or saying what’s good is fine
Yes.
Either something has at least one reason it will fail, or zero reasons. Zero is the best status. Things work when there are zero defensive (failure-causing) errors. They fail when there is one or more decisive error.
Our knowledge is imperfect but if we find an error, then as best we know that thing won’t work. If we find no errors, it might work. We’re better off using things where we find no errors over ones where we find errors. Even though we’re fallible and when we think we find an error we could be wrong, and when we think there are no errors we could also be wrong. Still, we have to use the knowledge we have and do our best. Popper said some of this btw.
Yes. Say you have a seven part plan to get rich. There could be a decisive error in part 1. But even if you fix that, it still won’t work, because there’s a decisive error in part 2. There could also be multiple errors in the same part.
A common part of perfectionism is trying to improve things that aren’t decisive errors. This can be endless because where do you stop? It’s already good enough, so you aren’t going to stop at a good enough breakpoint, and it’s unclear what is an improvement or why or where to stop.
PS You can put the tag in the post it’s for instead of in a second post.