When I am well rested and exercised and just had a great lunch (but not too much) with a good friend, there is no social or emotional issue I can’t handle. Everything is just a problem to be solved, and I’m sure I can do it.
For a long time I worked on increasing my problem solving under perfect conditions, and I succeeded… under perfect conditions. But this was not very helpful for when I was feeling hungry, or lonely, or, god forbid, underslept, which is when most problems happened.[1] Worse, my fragile skills gave me the impression I was very good at handling [problem], so when I struggled I would either have to violate my vision for myself or blame the other person for not cooperating with my excellent social skills.
I can only really know that this problem existed in me, but looking around my social circle, I see people who sure look like they’re experiencing the exact same problem. I’d like to nudge the culture towards focusing more on “what you can reliably do under strain?” rather than “what’s the tallest tower you can build?”
The more complicated version would say that working on the skill ceiling can pay dividends in your skill floor, and maybe I was in that position initially, but I definitely moved out of it long before I noticed.
In the spirit of reverse advice, just today I found myself struggling with the thought of “I felt surprisingly good after that morning run, somehow it feels like my body has gotten better at actually enjoying exercise—but I feel reluctant to start doing more of it, because what if I only end up feeling good because I’m exercising and then I might lose those gains if I ever get a disability or become too old and frail to go on runs”.
This opposite extreme doesn’t feel very reasonable either. If I feel good and am more capable, then that’s not “wasted” just because I’m unable to sustain it indefinitely, and a refusal to ever have perfect conditions is not a good way to build capacity for the non-perfect conditions.
Some athletes deliberately train in lower-oxygen environments. Some exercise while wearing weights, and of course all exercise bikes I’m aware of let you turn up the resistance, and treadmills generally let you apply an incline. Claude says militaries “routinely” train in artificially harsh circumstances:
Q: Do militaries do some training in circumstances that are deliberately harsh, harsher than what they’re likely to encounter in the field?
Yes, militaries routinely conduct training in conditions that are intentionally harsher than typical operational environments. This approach serves several important purposes:
Deliberate stress inoculation: Training under extreme conditions helps soldiers develop mental resilience and the ability to perform under pressure. If you can function when exhausted, cold, hungry, and under intense stress, you’ll be better prepared for the unpredictable challenges of actual combat or missions.
Building unit cohesion: Shared hardship during training creates strong bonds between service members. When soldiers have endured difficult challenges together in training, they develop trust and teamwork that carries into real operations.
Examples of harsh training conditions:
Sleep deprivation exercises lasting days
Training in extreme weather (desert heat, arctic cold) beyond what’s expected in deployment areas
Physical challenges with heavy loads over long distances
Simulated prisoner-of-war scenarios
High-stress decision-making under artificial time pressure
Safety margins: Since training accidents are more controllable than combat situations, militaries can push limits in training to ensure soldiers won’t hit their breaking point in actual operations where the consequences are far more serious.
Elite units like special forces take this philosophy even further, with training regimens specifically designed to push candidates beyond normal human limits to identify those who can perform under the most extreme circumstances.
The underlying principle is that if you train harder than you fight, you’ll be over-prepared rather than under-prepared when it matters most.
The principle is eminently reasonable.
It’s not often done in purely academic environments, to my knowledge. I would guess one reason is that (from what I’ve heard) stress can interfere with memory (although Claude says it’s complicated and can go either way), and a pretty large component of academic learning, especially that which is tested on exams, is putting facts into your memory.
Emotional skills are a mind thing, and academic habits probably carry over to it (at least to any formalized “emotional skill training” program) by default… perhaps also the psychologist thing of “make the patient maximally comfortable, both physically and emotionally”. But I think emotional skills depend much less on memorized facts, and, really, the heart of it is indeed being able to respond well to potentially stressful situations. So “resistance training” for emotional skills seems pretty appropriate.
That seems too extreme to me. You should optimize for what you can do under ordinary circumstances, not under the worst strain. Eg, nothing wrong optimizing for something that breaks if you don’t get 8hrs of sleep, if you manage to get 8hrs of sleep 98⁄100 days.
For personal relationships, mitigating my worst days has been more important than improving the average.
For work, all that’s really mattered is my really good days, and it’s been more productive to try and invest time in having more great days or using them well than to bother with even the average days.
When I am well rested and exercised and just had a great lunch (but not too much) with a good friend, there is no social or emotional issue I can’t handle. Everything is just a problem to be solved, and I’m sure I can do it.
For a long time I worked on increasing my problem solving under perfect conditions, and I succeeded… under perfect conditions. But this was not very helpful for when I was feeling hungry, or lonely, or, god forbid, underslept, which is when most problems happened.[1] Worse, my fragile skills gave me the impression I was very good at handling [problem], so when I struggled I would either have to violate my vision for myself or blame the other person for not cooperating with my excellent social skills.
I can only really know that this problem existed in me, but looking around my social circle, I see people who sure look like they’re experiencing the exact same problem. I’d like to nudge the culture towards focusing more on “what you can reliably do under strain?” rather than “what’s the tallest tower you can build?”
The more complicated version would say that working on the skill ceiling can pay dividends in your skill floor, and maybe I was in that position initially, but I definitely moved out of it long before I noticed.
In the spirit of reverse advice, just today I found myself struggling with the thought of “I felt surprisingly good after that morning run, somehow it feels like my body has gotten better at actually enjoying exercise—but I feel reluctant to start doing more of it, because what if I only end up feeling good because I’m exercising and then I might lose those gains if I ever get a disability or become too old and frail to go on runs”.
This opposite extreme doesn’t feel very reasonable either. If I feel good and am more capable, then that’s not “wasted” just because I’m unable to sustain it indefinitely, and a refusal to ever have perfect conditions is not a good way to build capacity for the non-perfect conditions.
Some athletes deliberately train in lower-oxygen environments. Some exercise while wearing weights, and of course all exercise bikes I’m aware of let you turn up the resistance, and treadmills generally let you apply an incline. Claude says militaries “routinely” train in artificially harsh circumstances:
Q: Do militaries do some training in circumstances that are deliberately harsh, harsher than what they’re likely to encounter in the field?
Yes, militaries routinely conduct training in conditions that are intentionally harsher than typical operational environments. This approach serves several important purposes:
Deliberate stress inoculation: Training under extreme conditions helps soldiers develop mental resilience and the ability to perform under pressure. If you can function when exhausted, cold, hungry, and under intense stress, you’ll be better prepared for the unpredictable challenges of actual combat or missions.
Building unit cohesion: Shared hardship during training creates strong bonds between service members. When soldiers have endured difficult challenges together in training, they develop trust and teamwork that carries into real operations.
Examples of harsh training conditions:
Sleep deprivation exercises lasting days
Training in extreme weather (desert heat, arctic cold) beyond what’s expected in deployment areas
Physical challenges with heavy loads over long distances
Simulated prisoner-of-war scenarios
High-stress decision-making under artificial time pressure
Safety margins: Since training accidents are more controllable than combat situations, militaries can push limits in training to ensure soldiers won’t hit their breaking point in actual operations where the consequences are far more serious.
Elite units like special forces take this philosophy even further, with training regimens specifically designed to push candidates beyond normal human limits to identify those who can perform under the most extreme circumstances.
The underlying principle is that if you train harder than you fight, you’ll be over-prepared rather than under-prepared when it matters most.
The principle is eminently reasonable.
It’s not often done in purely academic environments, to my knowledge. I would guess one reason is that (from what I’ve heard) stress can interfere with memory (although Claude says it’s complicated and can go either way), and a pretty large component of academic learning, especially that which is tested on exams, is putting facts into your memory.
Emotional skills are a mind thing, and academic habits probably carry over to it (at least to any formalized “emotional skill training” program) by default… perhaps also the psychologist thing of “make the patient maximally comfortable, both physically and emotionally”. But I think emotional skills depend much less on memorized facts, and, really, the heart of it is indeed being able to respond well to potentially stressful situations. So “resistance training” for emotional skills seems pretty appropriate.
That seems too extreme to me. You should optimize for what you can do under ordinary circumstances, not under the worst strain. Eg, nothing wrong optimizing for something that breaks if you don’t get 8hrs of sleep, if you manage to get 8hrs of sleep 98⁄100 days.
For personal relationships, mitigating my worst days has been more important than improving the average.
For work, all that’s really mattered is my really good days, and it’s been more productive to try and invest time in having more great days or using them well than to bother with even the average days.
Taravangian-maxing