While I don’t think these are entirely serious (but if they are, that’s pretty awesome too!), I’d definitely love to see some posts on interpersonal relationships from a rationalist perspective. My own attempts at easing my girlfriend gently in (with Alicorn’s Luminosity sequence, which I think is about as gentle an introduction to some LW principles as you can get) was an unambiguous disaster; and this is with someone who expressed interest in increasing her rationality when we met.
Even if your story is not directly relevant, I’m sure there’s useful information in there for anyone who would like to be able to have a happy relationship and think clearly at the same time.
(edited for formatting)
Well, she has had depression issues and was going through a pretty rough period—our relationship was stressed (largely on account of it being long-distance at the time, with her in Colorado and me in Utah); she was under a lot of stress (finals in the senior year of her bachelor’s degree, which is the reason for the previous long-distance); medical problems that, being an uninsured student, she really had no way to pay for; and we were scrambling to find an apartment and get everything ready for her imminent move to live with me. I had just recently read the Luminosity sequence, and the techniques in it seemed like something that anyone who wanted to be happier could at least give a shot and put to good use.
I linked her to http://lesswrong.com/lw/20l/ureshiku_naritai/, hoping that she could use it, and was told that she felt insulted by it, that it’s against the way she operates, that sometimes she just wants to be miserable and that “fooling yourself into feeling ‘more than a 2’” is just kidding yourself. She said she’d try not to outright ridicule the method but after reading it twice, she felt an intense sense of derision, and noted that she sometimes hates “the analytical approach”.
I’ve also gone through pretty intense depressive episodes, and I know what it’s like to feel helpless. What I don’t understand is accepting that helpless feeling and just trying to deal with it. When I’m feeling that way I can’t always muster the energy and initiative to actually do something about it, but I desperately want to feel different. It’s certainly possible that she was not actually clinically depressed at the time, though she seemed like it to me. But even so, she was not happy, and I was trying to offer her a possible way to become happier.