Honestly, I’ve found the single hardest part of overcoming my damage is simply finding something that actually motivates me: For the majority of my life, even now, irrationality is sufficiently successful that I have no reason to “correct” it. I happen to have a strong investment in the identity of “rational”, which gave me enough of a push to start reading this site, but I could still easily make excuses as to why I wasn’t applying it. It wasn’t until I found Something To Protect in my life that I started really taking this stuff seriously and began making an effort to “win” instead of merely being “right”.
Once I had that motivation, I found this site to be incredibly helpful: a number of LW posts have explicitly helped me bridge gaps between “a strong analytical mind” and “a very damaged map of reality”. There’s still a LOT I’m working on, and I’ve been reading here for at least half a year, so it’s hardly an instant fix. It requires a lot of effort—and that’s why a good motivation is essential. I’ve found some posts instantly shift a huge chunk of my map in to a better alignment, and other posts suddenly pop up 3 months later and make me realize I’ve been doing things wrong my entire life.
Honestly, I’ve found the single hardest part of overcoming my damage is simply finding something that actually motivates me: For the majority of my life, even now, irrationality is sufficiently successful that I have no reason to “correct” it. I happen to have a strong investment in the identity of “rational”, which gave me enough of a push to start reading this site, but I could still easily make excuses as to why I wasn’t applying it. It wasn’t until I found Something To Protect in my life that I started really taking this stuff seriously and began making an effort to “win” instead of merely being “right”.
Once I had that motivation, I found this site to be incredibly helpful: a number of LW posts have explicitly helped me bridge gaps between “a strong analytical mind” and “a very damaged map of reality”. There’s still a LOT I’m working on, and I’ve been reading here for at least half a year, so it’s hardly an instant fix. It requires a lot of effort—and that’s why a good motivation is essential. I’ve found some posts instantly shift a huge chunk of my map in to a better alignment, and other posts suddenly pop up 3 months later and make me realize I’ve been doing things wrong my entire life.