"Applied Rationality Training Regime" #17: Deflinching and Lines of Retreat

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January 17 brings me to Xu's Training Regime Day 17: Deflinching and Lines of Retreat and Trying Not To Be Offended, indeed more generally Trying Not To React Emotionally to What People Say To/About You. And it seemed to me that it was reminding me of something, and then it clicked... long ago I had read Ben Franklin's story of cycling through the "virtues" and trying to, umm, apply rationality to the general goal of aligning his behavior with his goals, and #9 is

Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 

I'm pretty sure that I thought of it because I knew today is Franklin's birthday, but I wonder if his virtue-training course was in some sense an ancestor of this one. And I found myself imagining combining the two, and then more generally cycling through lists of tactics on the one hand and lists of goals on the other. Imagine 6 cards with Haidt's moral foundations, and 13 cards with Franklin's virtues; they are relatively prime, so if you just cycle through each, as a morning cue for contemplation, you'll get all 78 pairs and then you'll repeat. That's not quite the way I'd do it, but it gives an idea.

Meanwhile, the "deflinching and lines of retreat" didn't seem to be an issue when I tried, and that may be because I already have my lines of retreat more or less as Xu describes, but as usual the seat is adjusted. Imagine yourself as a cartoon story-spider, the Anansi head of a story-spider-swarm; imagine the person you're talking to the same way. When people say things in my hearing, that updates my map of the part of my world that includes them; it gives a fact about them. I'm not very good at making this out as a fact about me, and I guess that's an advantage as well as being always a disadvantage... it's easy for people to say things that make me feel puzzled or sad or oh-so-very-tired-of-not-being-able-to-communicate, but it seems harder for me to be "offended". This, too, I remember from high school if not earlier. So my relationship to deflinching is a little off, I guess. My main reaction is a set of thoughts about diagrams for these relationships, and then maybe diagrams for earlier training-regime tactics. Maybe I'll be able to write something about those; maybe not. But happy 315th birthday to Ben, anyway.