Rule 0 is this one, and Rule 1 is a subcase of it, but rules 2 and (especially) 3 wouldn’t work for me—I seem to function better when my status and (especially) my self-esteem are high than when they’re low. And I don’t understand Rule 7.
The thing is, my rules have evolved to deal with the fact that I’ve ALWAYS been low-status. Most of my rules have evolved to ensure that my self-esteem stays low, because as a child and young adult, I was repeatedly punished whenever my self-esteem exceeded that of my high-status superiors. So, for me, destroying my own self-esteem and status are defensive mechanisms, designed to prevent the pack from tearing me apart (sometimes literally and physically).
Also, rule 0 (“Do the impossible”) is great if you’re some kind of high-status wunderkind like Eliezer, but when you’re some scrawny little know-it-all that no one WANTS to succeed, it’s just an invitation to get lynched, or sprayed in the face with battery acid, or beaten with a lead pipe, or sodomized with a baseball bat.
And once you’re in the domain of the “impossible”, you lose access to even those systems that have been put in place explicitly to protect people from being sodomized with a baseball bat or sprayed in the face with battery acid, because the bad people want it to happen, and the good people are incapable of acknowledging that “modern society” is still that capable of savagery.
I’ve misspoke in some of my other threads—I’m not stupid, compared to most of the people here. I’m just optimized for things like “talk my way out of a police officer putting a gun in my face and joking that no one would care enough to look for the body”, rather than things like “give a rousing TED talk”. I’m more optimized for “figure out which pack of young college-age males is more likely to attempt to dislocate my shoulders as a game” than “figure out which group of venture capitalists is more likely to fund my start-up”.
And frankly, looking at the world that way, I think I’d rather be dead than continue to perform in this environment. So all my attempts at “motivation” and “effort” get tainted by that evaluation.
That makes your situation make more sense. You might find Scott Sonnon’s work useful—he started out from a situation roughly as bad as yours (possibly less death threats, but with relentless bullying, learning disabilities, and a connective tissue disorder) and was able to put a good life together, including high achievement He works specifically with lowering one’s panic level.
The resources on this site seem to be mostly oriented toward raising somewhat above-average nerds up to truly exceptional levels. Sounds like you need a different set of resources, for a different sort of step up, possibly something like ‘feral/marginal’ up to ‘serving and being protected by a worthy master.’
Sure, but the problem is that I still have all the status-seeking instincts of an above-average nerd. I’m no good serving a master, worthy or otherwise. When I was younger, my problem was that every master I served was demonstrably less intelligent than I was, so I spent a lot of time trying to grant the wishes they would have made if they were smart enough to wish right, rather than granting the wishes they did make.
In status-oriented situations, this is a HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE, and taught me to understand that I am a bad samurai.
In the past few years, I’ve been ronin for so long that my bushido has gone rusty—and anyways, in this corporate market, no one wants a ronin in the first place.
There are non-corporate jobs. Personally, I sort scrap metal.
Perhaps we could come up with a pitch for an autobiography disguised as an anti-self-help book, “How to completely cripple yourself in just six years, with no drugs, exercise, or gimmicks!” put it on Kickstarter and see how much money people throw at you?
I must disagree, based on the technicality that there was actually some strenuous physical exercise involved with the volunteer firefighting thing.
On a more serious note, would you actually like to try doing this? Whatever else is wrong, you’re self-evidently capable of expressing yourself coherently and concisely in text. Most of the other prerequisites of being an author can (at least in principle) be handled as arm’s-length transactions, which minimize the need for any sort of personal trust.
I’m willing to entertain any idea; can you describe further? (note: private messages on this site have not been appearing reliably for me. Is there an easier process for identity exchange?)
How silly are you willing to be about the identity-exchange thing? I could, for example, give you my username on Nightstar’s forums, compromise of which would cost me nothing. You create an account there, send me a PM through that forum, I reply with some piece of information which you then repeat in reply to this comment, and (a secure channel having been established) I could then send you my e-mail address through Nightstar’s private messages.
And frankly, looking at the world that way, I think I’d rather be dead than continue to perform in this environment. So all my attempts at “motivation” and “effort” get tainted by that evaluation.
A certain kind of personal trap has been laid out and described, quite well. There is a set of ideas or “takes” on reality that have been accepted as real, but ideas and takes are never real. The error is widespread and normal, even encouraged, but when the content goes awry, the results can be devastating.
The key in the above statement is “this environment.” There is no “this environment.” As Buckaroo Banzai said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Any environment contains ample evidence to support almost any interpretation, and our ability as human beings to invent interpretations is vast, so everywhere we look, we can find what we have believed.
We may imagine that the goal is to invent interpretations that are “true.” But interpretations are neither true nor false. The problem with the value-laden interpretations being invented here is the effects they cause. There are useful interpretations, that empower us, and ones that don’t.
There are two kinds of interpretations. The first, and fundamental kind, is predictive, it takes raw sensory data and predicts what is coming next. That’s not the problematic kind, though if we get stuck in an inefficient predictive mode, believing our predictions are “true,” confirmation bias can still strike. Still, this kind of interpretation can be readily tested.
The problem is in the second kind of interpretation, the division into good and bad, sane and insane, and hosts of these higher-level interpretations. They are much further from reality than the first kind of interpretation, and it is far more difficult to test them. How do we test if the world (“this environment”) is actually good or evil, friendly or hostile?
We are continually creating our world, but we imagine that we are only discovering it. So we are easily victims of “how it is.” Yet we make up “how it is”! That’s a judgment, it is actually a choice.
We imagine that we are constrained in our choices by our identity, but the identity does not exist. That’s ancient rationality. the self is an illusion. Let’s put it this way: if it comes from causation from the past, that’s not a choice, it’s just a machine.
Is there anything other than the machine? You have a choice in how to answer this question! One of the choices is “No.” That, then, will create you—and continue to create you—as a victim of the past, while at the same time, if you are normal, you still think that you are “real.” That’s actually inconsistent.
Far be it from me to confine anyone to only two choices, but there is at least another choice. “Yes,” there is something else, which can be experienced. But it is not a “thing” other than the machine. We are machines, but what we don’t know is the capacity of the machine. It may be that the machine can do things we never dreamed of.
Including, by the way, connecting with other people so that we are no longer limited by individual identity. Doing this may take training, it is not necessarily automatic for all of us, and especially not for those of us who were asocially intelligent. (Like me, for example.)
It’s highly likely that our friend here has experienced situations like what he describes, and being caught in a belief that this defines his future is obviously painful. But what do those situations have to do with today and tomorrow, unless he keeps recreating them?
ialdabaoth, I hope you won’t give up. I don’t think you need to learn something new, exactly, you need to unlearn stuff that you have accepted routinely, and for a long time. Rather than MoreRight, you need to be LessWrong. See what remains when you start dropping stuff that maintains the trap, that doesn’t help you.
You will continue to think the thoughts that you thought, but you don’t have to believe them. The ancient technique is to identify them as what they are, made-up interpretations, chatter, coming from the past. Some will be useful, so use them. Many will be other than that. Keep your eyes open, you will know the difference. Test ideas, don’t imagine that they are truth. They are tools.
Rule 0 is this one, and Rule 1 is a subcase of it, but rules 2 and (especially) 3 wouldn’t work for me—I seem to function better when my status and (especially) my self-esteem are high than when they’re low. And I don’t understand Rule 7.
The thing is, my rules have evolved to deal with the fact that I’ve ALWAYS been low-status. Most of my rules have evolved to ensure that my self-esteem stays low, because as a child and young adult, I was repeatedly punished whenever my self-esteem exceeded that of my high-status superiors. So, for me, destroying my own self-esteem and status are defensive mechanisms, designed to prevent the pack from tearing me apart (sometimes literally and physically).
Also, rule 0 (“Do the impossible”) is great if you’re some kind of high-status wunderkind like Eliezer, but when you’re some scrawny little know-it-all that no one WANTS to succeed, it’s just an invitation to get lynched, or sprayed in the face with battery acid, or beaten with a lead pipe, or sodomized with a baseball bat.
And once you’re in the domain of the “impossible”, you lose access to even those systems that have been put in place explicitly to protect people from being sodomized with a baseball bat or sprayed in the face with battery acid, because the bad people want it to happen, and the good people are incapable of acknowledging that “modern society” is still that capable of savagery.
I’ve misspoke in some of my other threads—I’m not stupid, compared to most of the people here. I’m just optimized for things like “talk my way out of a police officer putting a gun in my face and joking that no one would care enough to look for the body”, rather than things like “give a rousing TED talk”. I’m more optimized for “figure out which pack of young college-age males is more likely to attempt to dislocate my shoulders as a game” than “figure out which group of venture capitalists is more likely to fund my start-up”.
And frankly, looking at the world that way, I think I’d rather be dead than continue to perform in this environment. So all my attempts at “motivation” and “effort” get tainted by that evaluation.
That makes your situation make more sense. You might find Scott Sonnon’s work useful—he started out from a situation roughly as bad as yours (possibly less death threats, but with relentless bullying, learning disabilities, and a connective tissue disorder) and was able to put a good life together, including high achievement He works specifically with lowering one’s panic level.
The resources on this site seem to be mostly oriented toward raising somewhat above-average nerds up to truly exceptional levels. Sounds like you need a different set of resources, for a different sort of step up, possibly something like ‘feral/marginal’ up to ‘serving and being protected by a worthy master.’
Sure, but the problem is that I still have all the status-seeking instincts of an above-average nerd. I’m no good serving a master, worthy or otherwise. When I was younger, my problem was that every master I served was demonstrably less intelligent than I was, so I spent a lot of time trying to grant the wishes they would have made if they were smart enough to wish right, rather than granting the wishes they did make.
In status-oriented situations, this is a HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE, and taught me to understand that I am a bad samurai.
In the past few years, I’ve been ronin for so long that my bushido has gone rusty—and anyways, in this corporate market, no one wants a ronin in the first place.
There are non-corporate jobs. Personally, I sort scrap metal.
Perhaps we could come up with a pitch for an autobiography disguised as an anti-self-help book, “How to completely cripple yourself in just six years, with no drugs, exercise, or gimmicks!” put it on Kickstarter and see how much money people throw at you?
laugh it at least has the charm of complete truth in advertising.
I must disagree, based on the technicality that there was actually some strenuous physical exercise involved with the volunteer firefighting thing.
On a more serious note, would you actually like to try doing this? Whatever else is wrong, you’re self-evidently capable of expressing yourself coherently and concisely in text. Most of the other prerequisites of being an author can (at least in principle) be handled as arm’s-length transactions, which minimize the need for any sort of personal trust.
I’m willing to entertain any idea; can you describe further? (note: private messages on this site have not been appearing reliably for me. Is there an easier process for identity exchange?)
How silly are you willing to be about the identity-exchange thing? I could, for example, give you my username on Nightstar’s forums, compromise of which would cost me nothing. You create an account there, send me a PM through that forum, I reply with some piece of information which you then repeat in reply to this comment, and (a secure channel having been established) I could then send you my e-mail address through Nightstar’s private messages.
Heh, that’s a little more elaborate than necessary, I think. I’m bdill(at)asu(dot)edu; it shouldn’t be too problematic to make that public.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD And I thought of myself as someone who used to be low-status...
Anyway, “do the impossible” was intended to be a paraphrase of your Rule 0, which apparently I had misunderstood.
A certain kind of personal trap has been laid out and described, quite well. There is a set of ideas or “takes” on reality that have been accepted as real, but ideas and takes are never real. The error is widespread and normal, even encouraged, but when the content goes awry, the results can be devastating.
The key in the above statement is “this environment.” There is no “this environment.” As Buckaroo Banzai said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Any environment contains ample evidence to support almost any interpretation, and our ability as human beings to invent interpretations is vast, so everywhere we look, we can find what we have believed.
We may imagine that the goal is to invent interpretations that are “true.” But interpretations are neither true nor false. The problem with the value-laden interpretations being invented here is the effects they cause. There are useful interpretations, that empower us, and ones that don’t.
There are two kinds of interpretations. The first, and fundamental kind, is predictive, it takes raw sensory data and predicts what is coming next. That’s not the problematic kind, though if we get stuck in an inefficient predictive mode, believing our predictions are “true,” confirmation bias can still strike. Still, this kind of interpretation can be readily tested.
The problem is in the second kind of interpretation, the division into good and bad, sane and insane, and hosts of these higher-level interpretations. They are much further from reality than the first kind of interpretation, and it is far more difficult to test them. How do we test if the world (“this environment”) is actually good or evil, friendly or hostile?
We are continually creating our world, but we imagine that we are only discovering it. So we are easily victims of “how it is.” Yet we make up “how it is”! That’s a judgment, it is actually a choice.
We imagine that we are constrained in our choices by our identity, but the identity does not exist. That’s ancient rationality. the self is an illusion. Let’s put it this way: if it comes from causation from the past, that’s not a choice, it’s just a machine.
Is there anything other than the machine? You have a choice in how to answer this question! One of the choices is “No.” That, then, will create you—and continue to create you—as a victim of the past, while at the same time, if you are normal, you still think that you are “real.” That’s actually inconsistent.
Far be it from me to confine anyone to only two choices, but there is at least another choice. “Yes,” there is something else, which can be experienced. But it is not a “thing” other than the machine. We are machines, but what we don’t know is the capacity of the machine. It may be that the machine can do things we never dreamed of.
Including, by the way, connecting with other people so that we are no longer limited by individual identity. Doing this may take training, it is not necessarily automatic for all of us, and especially not for those of us who were asocially intelligent. (Like me, for example.)
It’s highly likely that our friend here has experienced situations like what he describes, and being caught in a belief that this defines his future is obviously painful. But what do those situations have to do with today and tomorrow, unless he keeps recreating them?
ialdabaoth, I hope you won’t give up. I don’t think you need to learn something new, exactly, you need to unlearn stuff that you have accepted routinely, and for a long time. Rather than MoreRight, you need to be LessWrong. See what remains when you start dropping stuff that maintains the trap, that doesn’t help you.
You will continue to think the thoughts that you thought, but you don’t have to believe them. The ancient technique is to identify them as what they are, made-up interpretations, chatter, coming from the past. Some will be useful, so use them. Many will be other than that. Keep your eyes open, you will know the difference. Test ideas, don’t imagine that they are truth. They are tools.