even if I change my situation will learned helplessness make me still have a problem?
I recommend reading “Learned Optimism” by Martin E.P. Seligman.
A short introduction: People don’t just react to their external environment, but also to their internal environment (memory, habits). Even if you get rid of the bad things outside, some bad habits may stay in your mind, and if they are related to thinking, they reinforce themselves even when their original cause is gone, and you just needlessly hurt yourself, because that’s what you consider normal way of thinking. But for other people other ways of thinking are “natural”, and they don’t hurt themselves. Two people, after receiving the same input, will react differently. They both have congnitive biases, but one has unhappiness-inducing biases, other has happiness-inducing biases.
Everyone fails sometimes, the difference is how you process the feedback. Unhappiness-inducing reactions to failure are: “this is a proof that I will always fail”, “this is a proof that I will fail at everything”, “this is all my fault”. Happiness-inducing reactions to failure are: “this is a unique situation that will not repeat anymore”, “this is a very specific situation that has no connection to other parts of my life”, “this is a random event or someone else’s fault”. (Reverse goes for success.) Note for rationalists: depending on specific circumstances, any of these sentences may be right or wrong. However, people have tendency to pick predominantly from one set of beliefs. Both are biases, but one of them are pesimistic and others are optimistic. For both, their preferred bias feels like a rational reaction. If you are a pesimist and you are strongly repulsed by what I wrote here (because you percieve pesimistic explanations as rational truth, and optimistic explanations as a happy death spiral), this may be just your pesimism speaking.
For a pesimist, helplessness and lack of emotions are natural reactions. If there is nothing you can do to improve your utility function, then what is the point of trying or caring? You must first believe that action X can lead to positive outcome Y, and only then it makes sense to do X or dream about Y.
Read the book and try it. (A typical failure mode for many intelligent people is saying “yeah, I understand why he thinks it works” and then doing nothing.)
I recommend reading “Learned Optimism” by Martin E.P. Seligman.
A short introduction: People don’t just react to their external environment, but also to their internal environment (memory, habits). Even if you get rid of the bad things outside, some bad habits may stay in your mind, and if they are related to thinking, they reinforce themselves even when their original cause is gone, and you just needlessly hurt yourself, because that’s what you consider normal way of thinking. But for other people other ways of thinking are “natural”, and they don’t hurt themselves. Two people, after receiving the same input, will react differently. They both have congnitive biases, but one has unhappiness-inducing biases, other has happiness-inducing biases.
Everyone fails sometimes, the difference is how you process the feedback. Unhappiness-inducing reactions to failure are: “this is a proof that I will always fail”, “this is a proof that I will fail at everything”, “this is all my fault”. Happiness-inducing reactions to failure are: “this is a unique situation that will not repeat anymore”, “this is a very specific situation that has no connection to other parts of my life”, “this is a random event or someone else’s fault”. (Reverse goes for success.) Note for rationalists: depending on specific circumstances, any of these sentences may be right or wrong. However, people have tendency to pick predominantly from one set of beliefs. Both are biases, but one of them are pesimistic and others are optimistic. For both, their preferred bias feels like a rational reaction. If you are a pesimist and you are strongly repulsed by what I wrote here (because you percieve pesimistic explanations as rational truth, and optimistic explanations as a happy death spiral), this may be just your pesimism speaking.
For a pesimist, helplessness and lack of emotions are natural reactions. If there is nothing you can do to improve your utility function, then what is the point of trying or caring? You must first believe that action X can lead to positive outcome Y, and only then it makes sense to do X or dream about Y.
Read the book and try it. (A typical failure mode for many intelligent people is saying “yeah, I understand why he thinks it works” and then doing nothing.)