I think I‘ve read something about the value of seemingly procrastinating behaviour a while ago. Right now, I have plenty of work to do, yet I am reading your reply and answering. Is this lost time or procrastination as commonly understood? I don‘t think so. It seems like meaningful exchange to me. And maybe updating my own self-model with the help of others is exactly what I really need right now to do better work later.
As for the feeling that something is going wrong with me: Increased awareness of the downward spiral does not easily translate into being able to stop or transform the process. It‘s part of my daily struggles.
Despite a little tear on the ego, it has some advantages not to be the smartest in the room. Having read here on LW a couple of years ago and now bit by bit picking up some of the stuff that happened back then and in the meantime, the dominant feeling for me isn‘t envy of the capability of others, but relief that there are enough minds in the world entertaining thoughts that at least partially reflect my own shallow ones on topics that I deem important, but have no one to talk about.
Unless it involves some mathematics that I am not accustomed to, it feels as if I can follow and understand the majority of thoughts shared on this platform. That provides me with enough encouragment to delve deeper into the topics I am interested in, maybe even enough to work more actively on myself. In any case, it is more than I could hope for hanging out with the guys in the village, where most talk is about cars and gossip.
Yet, when asking myself what I possibly could contribute, the only things that I can come up with are sharing highly subjective experiences of my mind falling apart during manic psychoses, stitching myself together in the aftermath, and making a decent living job-wise and in terms of family life in spite of receiving very pessimistic prognoses for my future when I was in the process of rehabilitation.
I wish I could give more, but I had been spending much of my time playing video games and hanging out with people for senseless fun during my youth. Now, regardless of the degrees I‘ve received, I feel much less educated and capable than I could be.
No one is responsible for his genetic predispositions or his upbringing, but one is responsible for how one acts relating to the values one holds. I fell short on focused self-actualization, so maybe I‘m now the dumbest among the smart.
Now, what is the advantage that I have been talking about? I can probably learn from most of you in a mostly passive consuming style, whithout being obliged (by my morals) to contribute more than this mostly anecdotical comment.
Regarding the issue of hard-coded algorithms determining one‘s cognitive abilities: I‘m not sure about the malleability of deep cognitive processes in general, but I find myself to have undergone significant changes in meta-cognitive abilities as a result of recovery from psychosis. It has the character of some pre-conscious feeling about different trains of subconscious processes, involving both emotions and thoughts. Sometimes it extends to over-reflection that loses hold on some concrete issue and becomes circular, sometimes it helps to steer thinking and general behaviour into a desired direction. I can not remember having said impressions before falling ill and recovering. Thinking about these abilities gives me the impression that highly automated and reinforced sub-conscious routines might not be easily changeable to the more effective or efficient by themselves, but they might be integrated into some higher-order routines, changing their eventual output. These could be more and more automated themselves, thereby achieving an increase in fluid intelligence.