percolating thoughts on:

internal conflict, defensiveness, avoiding "error correction" signals, prediction/anticipation/expectation, the relationship between intention and actually doing something

nothing coherent yet but there's something here

okay! looping back to: https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1249761571946901509?s=20

k got distracted

where was I

right. defensiveness!

what *is* defensiveness?

I want to start by thinking about pure sensory input, related to this tweet, and list a few examples: https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1249760200128487424?s=20

ex. #1

when I was failing out of engineering classes, I made a new email and redirected most of my non-school communication and website registrations there, so that I didn't have to see emails from advisers or professors or hell even just boring student life shit

(1/2)

(2/2)

when I couldn't avoid opening my old email, I would do really, really weird things like blurring my vision/crossing my eyes, covering the bottom half of the screen so I could search for the specific email, only looking with one squinting eye open

#2

I always preferred having difficult conversations with my parents while we were in the car

so I didn't have to make eye contact

and so that both of us had other things engaging part of our attention

#3

I have some sensory processing issues, hypersensitivity

the degree to which this causes me distress varies *wildly*

and corresponds almost perfectly with my stress/anxiety levels

#4

when I started spending time in extremely accomplished/smart social circles, I became *dramatically* less argumentative and made much weaker claims in general

#5

1st grade, music class

had some phlegm in my throat

made some coughing/hacking noises to clear it, thinking nothing of it

the teacher, from another room: "what on EARTH is that horrible noise?"

class: *turns to look at me*

(1/2)

me: *shrinks, turns red, says nothing for rest of class*

(2/2)

#6

I'm walking down the road with my then-bf

some dicks in a truck come roaring up behind us and blare their horn

I see red, spin around, scream "FUCK YOU"

I could define "defensiveness" as purely downstream of fear

and that wouldn't be wrong, exactly

but it's incomplete, not nearly detailed enough to get at all of the moving parts

another example, #7

sometimes, dramatic, unexpected noises that stand out from the background actually *hurt.* if you've ever had "brain zaps" from SSRI withdrawal, it feels a bit like that, across the surface of my skin

sometimes it makes my vision blur/blank out (1/n)

it isn't always about volume

and it isn't always because it *scares* me

sometimes it's because I am putting a lot of effortful attention into something: driving, meditating, reading, studying

it's worse if I'm already tense

compare to the way I react to such things when I'm calm, energetic, engaged but not straining, at ease: no pain, no flinch

there's a buffer zone between receiving the signal and evaluating it, at the *physical* level

that's probably enough examples

I thought I could lead into this smoothly but I think I'm just going to have to lay my claims out and see if something coheres downthread

[epistemic status: lmao]

claim 1: defensiveness *is* basically about perceived or anticipated threat

claim 2: there are response patterns that are, FOR ME, identical to my conception of "defensiveness" but which aren't in response to what anyone watching would call a "threat"

claim 3: the patterns in (2) are, actually, responding to a threat

so

what is being threatened?

claim 4: response patterns that can broadly be described as "defensive" (flinch, pain, shrink, yell, fight, turn red, run away, limit routes for sensory input, etc) are triggered in response to the *disruption of expectation*

I'm using "expectation" in a maybe-idiosyncratic way

or maybe just a narrow way

it's related to the anticipating/predicting process I mentioned here: https://twitter.com/selentelechia/status/1249760196060012544?s=20

for the sake of this thread, "expectation" means what it means most of the time

and also implies a sort of...clutching? feeling

"the world is/will be like this" + [effort/strain/tension/clinging/needing]

so maybe: "the world has to be like this"

(or what? )