Ways I’ve benefitted:
I’ve managed to stop an overwhelming tendency of self-sabotaging my efforts to preserve my self esteem. I still catch myself doing from time to time, but it’s nowhere as bad as in the past where it would have likely made me drop out of my university, given a couple more years or so.
My self esteem has increased and become more stable. I’m managing to interpret hard tests I could fail at as tests of my current skills and not of my stable, absolute worth, and I think that the whole becoming stronger philosophy was the main factor, combining with learning about the incremental mindset during my studies. If I don’t know how to do something, rather than retreating I try to tear down the problem and look for knowledge about it, which usually does the trick. I’m still struggling with stuff that actually proves itself to be way above my current level, that is still a hard blow, but at least I’m managing to not run from what I can do or learn to do if I try my hardest.
I’ve somehow become the prevalent voice of reason in my group of friends. This likely was the result of an interaction of rationality with my studies (psychology), but I’ve become really good at catching the irrationalities of their behaviour and nudging them in the right direction, when asked for help. This usually is mostly effective when they need to solve interpersonal conflict with one another, I’ve yet to see anyone change their habits for simply advice, but I’m still shocked by with how much weight my opinion is now being considered, having lived most of my life as completely clueless about interpersonal relations.
I’ve become better at making decisions when I take my time to think them through rationally. I still make mistakes, but I’ve moved from a stage where my brain would just keep suggesting arguments for one side or another until I went with what I’d chosen to do from the start to actually managing to weight the arguments and change my mind. I’m not yet at a level I’m satisfied with, but my feeling is that my accuracy went up considerably.
Related to the two above, I’ve become significantly better at understanding situations. I feel like I can see the factors influencing something as they actually are, rather than how society, subjective points of views or common sense frames them.
I’ve become better at predicting if my brain would fail me by acting instinctively and irrationally against my rational decisions, and arranging circumstances that would make me go along with them anyway. My best accomplishments in this regards are switching from a really unhealthy diet from an averagely healthy one, starting to practice a reasonable amount of physical activity almost regularly after years of not doing anything at all, and quitting smoking completely. I’ve not still managed to make an habit out of this and there are many instances where my dumb brain takes control and does what he instinctively wants to do, but so far I’ve managed to apply it to most of my specific long term issues.
I’ve become really, really better at science and at judging scientific evidences, which is really important for both my studies and my future job.
I’ve managed to choose something I want to protect, and I’m planning what to do after my studies accordingly. I’ve yet to accomplish any real result about it yet, but I think having this purpose is a considerable motivation for working to increase my abilities.
I feel like starting my journey as a rationalist had a huge impact of my life because I was the kind of person who would benefit the most of it (high intelligence, poor judgement, fluctuating self esteem that would force me into all kind of rationalisations and escheresque reasonings to make sure it was never, ever challenged by reality). So I likely benefitted a lot of it because I was suffering more from deficits it could help correct. Interestingly enough though, the one I feel most satisfaction from, and that I’ve felt more improvement with, doesn’t seem to have started as improving from a deficit, because:
I think that I’ve actually become smarter. I’ve always had an above average intelligence I were pretty bad at using it due the previous reasons and extreme akrasia (which is still to be solved at a satisfying level), but I feel like I’m thinking on a completely different mode than before. Finding rationality was like I had suddenly started pressing the gas pedal of my brain, hard. I remember that when I had just started learning it I would often get headaches by how much I thought about something, and that I got a tremendous emotional kick by rejoicing at all the new kind of thoughts and strategies I were suddenly having. I’d often start thinking at a difficult problem while I walked just to amuse myself and be impressed by how smart I was feeling (yes, I know how that sounds). All of a sudden, I could plot, I could find new, interesting strategies that likely had a lot of overlooked flaws I weren’t seeing yet. I felt like I was thinking at my hardest, and after a while I felt like I wasn’t really exerting myself as much as before anymore but that my normal thinking was just at that new level. I feel like from that point improvements were slower to come, but I still happen to look back at how I thought months or a year before now and it feels like I could reliably outsmart my older self. External reality seems to confirm my inner feelings, as I’m finding significantly fewer problems I’m unable to grasp, I manage to come up with plans that works most of the time for everyday life problems I face for the first time and most of my friends just team up against me every time there’s a strategy game of some sort (which is both frustrating and exhilarating). If anyone manages to get past the point were I got excited about it while I was writing (read: started bragging) I’d be really interested to know if other people had a similar experience.
My working theory is that Putin could be worried about some kind of internal threat to himself and his power.
He’s betting a lot on his image of strong, dangerous leader to keep afloat. However the Russian constant propaganda that keeps up that image was starting to be more and more known and ineffective.
Europe also has been trying to get rid of Russian influence through gas for a while, and would likely have managed in a few more years. Then they’d be free to be less accepting of his anti-human rights antics.
Ukraine joining Nato would have made him look extremely weak, and it would have made it easier to make him look weak in the future.
Once his strong image faded he might have been worried of reforming forces within Russia to manage oust him out of office with an actual election and mass wide protests if the ball got rolling enough, or he might be worried about someone taking a more direct approach to eliminate him (he killed enough people to be extremely worried about being murdered, I think).
So this is his extreme move to deny weakness. Better to be seen as the tyrant who’s willing to do anything if provoked, than the ex-strong leader who can be taken out of office.