On staring at the dot

In Beneath Psychology, a recurring theme is that the interesting stuff all lies a meta level above we realize. It's not that it's hard to hit what we're aiming for, it's hard to figure out what to aim for. And often we get confused about what we are aiming for.

One especially clear example of this is in overcoming a flinch when handgun shooting. Realize that a flinch is just the decision to brace instead of aiming, aim to make up your mind, and it takes seconds to decide to aim through and through. It's a great example because we often flinch from simply facing the question of what we want, and it is all laid bare to examine in most simple and literal form when shooting a pistol. We're showing up to the range because we have this idea that we're supposed to hit the target and or that we want to, or something, and it's only when we stop for just a moment that we realize whether we actually do, and hit what we're aiming to aim for.

There's another problem that comes up in handgun shooting which, unlike the problem of the flinch, doesn't yet have a recognizable term as a general problem that applies to everything. Even though it does. I caught myself making this mistake on the meta level when aiming to learn how to aim. Even one of my dogs makes this mistake every night come dinner time, when he jumps up and down staring at the food I'm holding — and sometimes getting in the way of actually bringing his food to his feeding area — while the other dog gets it right and races to the feeding area and waits.

The problem is "staring at the dot".

What's this mean, and why is it a problem?

If you're serious about pistol shooting you probably have a red dot sight on your pistol, which is basically a little window you look through that superimposes a dot where the bullets will go. These have a few advantages over traditional iron sights, but the one that's relevant here is that this dot is projected out to the same focal plane so that we can stay target focused instead of having to focus on the front sight — or rather, so that it becomes easier to stay target focused. This makes sense from a very fundamental level, even though it seems the shooting community only figured out that it applies to irons too once red dot sights become widespread.

The problem of "staring at the dot" basically comes down to "looking at your sights" which is confusing, because isn't that what they're there for? To be seen, so that we can tell in which direction we need to move in order to correct our errors? And yeah, kinda.

It's also interesting to note that even elite pistol shooters find themselves looking at their sights in ways that are problematic. The SF guy I talked to about this said he generally struggles to maintain target focus when the target is small and far away: "it feels like a 'I need to double check and make sure this thing is in the right spot'". When I asked what's wrong with that, because it doesn't seem like an obviously bad thing, he responded "It doesn't, right? But for some reason it has a big effect".

The answer comes down to active inference stuff, and about how expectations are the same thing as intentions. In BP I explain how weird stuff like vasoconstriction that "is unconscious" and "we don't know how to do" aren't actually any different than the "conscious" behaviors you think you know how to do. For example, you know how to raise your right hand, right? You can do that, right? Okay, how. Explain to me what I have to do in order to move raise my right hand, in enough detail that I'll understand even if I don't know how to raise my right hand. I'll wait.

Doesn't work like that, right? You just kinda do it, because you expect to be able to. Literally the way you raise your right hand is by expecting your right hand to raise, and letting your brain and body do their thing. That is the setpoint that drives our hands to raise — and it's why expectations bleed into behaviors and outcomes in so many ways.

Same thing with aiming a handgun, or controlling anything. The way you aim a handgun at a target is by expecting the dot to show up on the target, and letting water flow down hill as your brain acts to realize this expectation. This is the fundamental reason why we target focus. We're predicting "Dot here" as a way of controlling towards this reality.

In contrast, "Dot where?" doesn't tell the dot where to be. It asks, and aims to find out where the dot is without any accounting for our desires.1 So it's the same thing as the flinch — it interferes with aiming because we're meta-aiming to do something else to the exclusion of object level aiming — in this case, "figuring out where the gun is aimed".

There are some complications though. One is that we do have to know where the dot is — often by seeing it — in order to know what behaviors to do in order to realize this expectation. If you take the point of a pen and slowly over the course of ten seconds or so bring it towards a spot on the wall, you can notice your attention being pulled from the "target" to the "dot" — and if you let your attention shift, eventually back to the target and back. So long as the dot and target are too far apart to see both in one's foveola, aiming to bring the dot to the target requires measuring the difference, which means measuring both locations, and doing this visually leads to oscillating attention until they're nearly overlaid.

However, we don't have to do this visually — and if we're attempting to do it quickly we won't have time to. The idea is to get close enough proprioceptively that we can effect our expectation of bringing the dot onto the target without having to leave target focus in order to go find the dot in service of bringing it onto the target. The end state is target focus either way because that's seeing both the target and the dot where it should be, the question is over what we do when we start to realize this expectation is failing.

This turns out to be a very general problem. "Think positive!" "Have confidence!" "Fake it 'til you make it!". Okay, but what do we actually do when we realize that it's fake. That the world sucks because we suck and we can't actually "just put the dot on the target".

So, it depends.

If it's "Because I need to brace for recoil" or "Because I'm gonna flinch to brace for recoil", then okay. Is that needed? Am I gonna flinch?

If it's "Because I can't find the dot" or "Because I might not be able to find the dot, if I don't look", then okay. Do we have to find the dot? Or can we maybe take our chances? What's better, relative to what we want?

If it's "Because the dot isn't on target" or "Because I don't know if the dot is on target", then okay. Do we have to know? If it's a hostage rescue shot maybe we want to be real sure. If it's a shooting competition maybe it's fine. Either way, before we shoot we probably want to go back to actually aiming before we shoot, which means focusing on where we want the bullet to end up as precisely as we can with reality-engaged expectation that it will end up there.

This last bit is where it starts to get interesting. "As precisely as we can".

You might have heard the advice to "aim small, miss small" before. What this means, technically, is to expect that our own actions will lead to what we want with small error. This requires trusting our model of the effect of our actuation on the rest of the system.2 This requires having an accurate model.

We can't actually "aim small" without an accurate model of our own actuation, or else reality will strip our intention of hitting the target from us as we realize we're wrong, and intention to hold this intention against reality is not only frustrating and "willpower intensive", it also fails silently to staring at the dot without it being in service of solving a problem that gets us back to target focus. So strictly better advice is to "aim as small as you can, and no smaller". "Aim small" is the counter to people not even really trying, accepting errors that could be corrected. "Don't try to aim smaller than you can" is advice that protects against staring at the dot, by noticing when tighter expectations cannot actually be realized — and therefore protects maximally tight aim. I've actually given this advice to a new shooter before coming up with this understanding, and it worked great.3

The interesting part is that the first thing you might think is "Okay, so figure out how small you can aim, and aim that small". And that's true, when this is the target that matters. If you're being attacked by zombies right now, then yeah, aim as small as you can and when this fails, back off to finding the dot or loosening aim slightly as necessary. Figure out how quickly and tightly you can aim, and aim like that.

If you're just at the range trying to improve though, this becomes staring at the meta dot.

Because "How small can I aim" is a direct result of how far off your actuation model is. And what we want to do when training isn't to learn how big our model error is, but to drive it to zero. Aim for it to be not wrong. Not "How far off is my proprioceptive index?", but "What does it feel like, in my arms/wrists/etc, to be pointing the gun such that the dot shows up centered in the window and on target". What does right feel like. That's the meta target on which to focus.

So now we have another layer.

Expect the dot to appear on the target as quickly and precisely as possible. Find out how quickly and precisely that is, by trying to expect, and see what stops you.

And when the answer is "The dot isn't showing up", we have a choice. We can go find the dot, and put it on the target, if what we care about is getting the dot onto the target. If what is far more interesting, is the fact that it isn't where it's supposed to be — because we actually expected it to show up — then what catches our attention is the feel of it. What am I feeling, and how is it different than what it feels like to get the dot onto the target? The focus redirect is towards the proprioceptive feel that works. The dot will still show up on the target, and we will notice where it is, but the dot is in service of updating the proprioceptive model. Fuck the target. No one cares if we hit this target. We're here to learn, not to show off.... right? Or are we :p

So we have another layer.

Expect the dot to appear on the target as quickly and precisely as possible. Find out how quickly and precisely that is, by trying to expect, and see what stops you.

And when the answer is "the dot isn't showing up", and we find ourself pulled towards the dot instead of the proprioception, we can notice whether we are interested in learning, or showing off. We're gonna get better results showing off if we set aside our curiosities for now, and find the damn dot in time. Just like we're gonna get better results hitting the damn target if we look where we want the bullets to go and set aside our worries about "what if we miss".

And if we notice that nah man, I really do want to get better, dgaf about looking good right now, then that's when the feel becomes interesting. And that's how we learn index optimally, so that when it matters we don't have to look for the dot so that we can realize the expectation of delivering lead to where it needs to be.

"Staring at the dot" is the general problem of pivoting from an expectation that is unrealistic (in our minds) to measuring our error rather than trying to correct it. It's the error that comes up when we err on the opposite side of "not even really trying", when we attempt to control better than we really can. The solution, as always, is to notice what we're doing, and what we want.

It shows up when trying to make the shots that matter, when trying to build skill, when waiting for dinner to be served. Where have you been staring at the dot, without realizing that it wasn't tying back into a reality-engaged target focus?

Appendix: index building protocol

Try to expect the dot to show up centered in the window centered on the target, because you will proprioceptively steer the dot onto the target, and notice what happens when you try to form this expectation. Make this expectation as precise as you think possible, in as challenging a situation as you think possible, and then notice what happens when you attempt to realize this expectation.

This should naturally draw your attention to how the gun feels in your hand/wrist/etc. As you present the pistol to the target, notice whether your expectations were realized. If so, make it harder. Faster. More precisely. From different head positions at different targets. With less visual cues (lights off, eyes closed, etc). Swapping between guns with different grip angles.

The moment you struggle to hold this expectation — either because you predict failure or experience it for reals, notice. Redirect your attention to what you're doing proprioceptively, and how this is different from what the right feel is. This should naturally draw your attention to the process of aligning your grip/wrists/etc so that the dot shows up on the target, with the focus still on the feel that is right. It should be interesting, because you expect this to actually work, and it didn't.

Then try it again. Iterate, keeping difficulty calibrated to where you can genuinely expect to succeed, barely.

If you notice yourself target focused, then you're just using your proprioceptive model, not training it. This is "not even trying". Aim smaller.

If you notice yourself frustrated, then you're trying expect something that isn't realizable yet. Notice your wrongness, take a deep breath, and decide what you want to do about your current limitations.

If you notice yourself drawn towards the dot, notice whether you actually care where the dot is. The dot will help you hit this target, and it will come at the cost of learning how to hit future targets. Which is more important to you?

At any moment that you realize you're interested in improving your proprioceptive model so that you can hit future targets, focus again on what it feels like as your wrists etc all become guided from where they are to where they need to be to get the dot on target.

At any moment you realize you're just not interested in what it feels like, that's fine. Your index building session can be over, if you don't actually want to learn index better. Notice whether you actually do.

At some point you gotta go back to focusing on other things. At the moment that you fail to hold a reality-engaged expectation that you'll hit what you need to hit, you can notice why. And if it points back to "because what I'm feeling proprioceptively isn't right", you can go back to wondering what is.