demagogue on 25/7/2022 at 03:45

---

I've been reading up on this recently too, or it's been really interesting me and I've been trying to look up more on it.

The short story I can tell you now is: it's because when you're in default mode (like daydreaming that comes over you when you're not doing anything else), parts of medial parietal lobe and posterior cingulate cortex are scavenging up things it could have you thinking about to do something with that dead time. It'll get fed up to anterior cingulate cortex which actually tallies up the utility (with the help of a few other areas), like how much work would I actually have to put into this thing and what would I get out of it, basically what's every likely possibility this thing would dredge up if I tried to do it, and if it's something with high likelihood of success, high gain, or avoiding some great lost. (It's often looking at past experience on a log falloff, i.e., "gambler's fallacy", and dopamine is playing a star role here.)

Often this works by the diffuse drift model (DDM), and factor weighing, so it cycles attention to various factors (possible outcomes & considerations like morality or propriety, etc.) and pushes a stochastic lever between "do eet!" & "abandon!", until it crosses some threshold and you "commit" to the thing. Then it'll feed-forward that to orbitofrontal lobe as a plan of action that will sit there pinging ventral prefrontal cortex with a compulsion to do the thing, and also pinging the amygdala that gets you emotionally invested in the thing.

And then as you're living life, you get feedback from the world, and OFC is going to be matching the feeback signals with those feedforward signals (those things you committed to) and as long as there's a mismatch, it's going to keep pinging vPFC with the compulsion, amgydala with emotion, and then the hypothalamus and autonomic system can get dragged in with actual stress about this thing, and all sorts of systems can get roped in, appetite, sleep patterns, energy levels (now we're more in the world of cortisol, seratonin, & friends). Either you're going to need to get feedback that matches the feedforward signal to check that box off your list or you need to commit to some other way to extinguish that pinging like "giving up in frustration", etc.

What you're calling overthinking I think covers a couple of places in that story ... the daydreaming part, the ACC weighing & DDM part, the pinging & craving part, the feedforward-feedback matching part, the emotional investment part, the stress part, the physical and cognition reactions...

Different people have different tolerances and thresholds at every step in that story, so that's why some people obsess more than others, why some people never pick up on little obsessions or never hang on to them when they do, and other people pick up obsessions at the drop of a hat and can never let go of them once they're there. If one understands what's going on, I want to think it can help them get some power over parts of it, maybe...

Well that's the best answer I can give in the limitations I have to write a post like this. If you're looking for some kind of freedom from it, good luck! Although obsessions aren't always bad and sometimes necessary too.

demagogue on 26/7/2022 at 03:45

---

Well I can think of two things that come out of a story like that.

One is the role of commitment, especially as a ritual. Like if you really commit yourself to some kind of regular thing, make it a ritual, like make a schedule for exercise or reading or practicing a thing, anything really, it has a good chance of pinging the "commit" route & trumping everything else. So it's a good way to at least keep yourself focused or doing things that are productive.

The 2nd thing was with the DDM, if you expose yourself to certain stimuli, that's gonna push the little DDM lever in the direction you want. Look at the things you want to be interested in; don't look at the things you don't. (Seems kind of obvious maybe.)

The point is, it's easier to police & keep out something getting stuck in your head in the first place than to get rid of it once it's there. You have a better chance of replacing it with something else, and/or ritualizing abandoning a thing you don't want.

Probably the first rule of being human to know is that knowing something is bad (ACC) is separate from wanting to stop the thing but craving it anyway (vPFC). The former guy has to trick the latter guy into going along with what's good for you.

Some people actually gamify it. Like make a set of rules where you win points or treats if you do what's good for you but lose points if you don't, write it out like an actual ritual or game, and for some people it works!

Maybe this is helpful? There's a lot of individual variation so YMMV.

Tocky on 26/7/2022 at 20:00

---

My wife says everything I do is obsessive. I'm not quite a completist as that would require not moving on by the distraction of another obsession. So far I collect old pulps, comics, antique bottles, movie posters, action figures, stamps, coins, hats, canes, old trunks (to keep the old pulps), I have trunks of horror outfits and accessories that I used in my horror show as well as a storeroom full of Halloween props and figures.

I figure these things are a distraction from the fact I haven't and never will add to the bulk of mankind's knowledge. I did not buckle down when it was required and finish writing any great novels or prove that gravity is the collective pull of atomic charges nor any improvements in technology or medicine. I have been a wastrel.

Of course, it's all for naught if we don't develop FTL travel. Our distant descendants will just burn up with planet. There is an infinitesimal chance that we will see ultimate entropy or some version of us seed some as yet unformed universe and continue forever though so it may not all be for nothing and therefore lies my guilt at contributing nothing but entertainment for myself.