Complex Numbers

Wisdom of the Waltz

Waltz is not sure what to make of this.

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-speaking-to-yourself-in-the-third-person-makes-you-wis...

Why speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser

Simple rumination – the process of churning your concerns around in your head – isn’t the answer. It’s likely to cause you to become stuck in the rut of your own thoughts and immersed in the emotions that might be leading you astray.

Waltz doesn't know anybody like that.

Instead, the scientific research suggests that you should adopt an ancient rhetorical method favoured by the likes of Julius Caesar and known as ‘illeism’ – or speaking about yourself in the third person

A lot of us are worried about illism now. Oh, illeism. Nevermind.

The idea is that this small change in perspective can clear your emotional fog, allowing you to see past your biases.

Or, just spitballing here, maybe focusing on changing a particular habit, such as referring to oneself in the first person exclusively, can help you break out of an emotional rut.

Grossmann’s aim is to build a strong experimental footing for the study of wisdom, which had long been considered too nebulous for scientific enquiry.

Good, because priests are just as important to an adventuring party as mages.

Grossmann found that these wise-reasoning scores were far better than intelligence tests at predicting emotional wellbeing, and relationship satisfaction – supporting the idea that wisdom, as defined by these qualities, constitutes a unique construct that determines how we navigate life challenges.

Waltz has known for a long time that intelligence isn't correlated with emotional wellbeing, or Waltz would be one of the happiest people on the planet.

The article goes on to describe some of the studies involved.

I find these emotion and relationship effects particularly fascinating, considering the fact that illeism is often considered to be infantile.

It always makes Waltz think of D&D.

Alternatively, it can be taken to be the sign of a narcissistic personality – the very opposite of personal wisdom.

Or, perhaps, narcissists are the only ones who have it right.

Previous experiments have shown, for instance, that rumination leads to worse choices in poker (hence why expert players strive for a detached, emotionally distanced attitude), and that greater emotional awareness and regulation can improve performance on the stock market.

Oh, like that's going to help NOW.

...actually, it probably would. Wisdom says "don't sell now that everything's tanked," but emotions are like "SELL, MORTIMER! SELL!"

It is notoriously difficult to increase general intelligence through brain-training, but these results suggest that wiser reasoning and better decision making are within everyone’s power.

Waltz is not holding out any hope that people will suddenly become wiser by referring to themselves in the third person. Or the second.