Metablog

OMG! Someone actually started a conversation with me on a dating site! Someone interesting and attractive? Yes! This is surely a first. Since she could read this, I will say no more about her directly. Besides, I don’t really know that much yet, having had only one short conversation with her. I am anxiously waiting continued conversation. And anxiously dreading the possibility that she, having lost her interest, due to our conversation (or worse yet, due to reading my blog) has stopped correspondence between us.

I have limited my emotional investment in the possibility from the beginning with this scenario and others in mind, but it’s not possible to limit it enough to obviate the pain of rejection entirely. (Even rejection still floating off in the land of possibility.) But it’s not really the pain, so much as it is the possibility and tension and fear in the situation—the anxiety of it all—that really gets to me, drives me crazy, and drives me to distraction.

This has really preoccupied me. It’s driven me to feel more suicidal. I’ve already been feeling pretty goddamn suicidal. I’m at the stage now where I’m seriously getting close. I haven’t yet purchased the tools I’ll use, but I’ve gotten close a couple days to going out and buying the stuff.

So what’s my point here? I guess that, even with all this stress and drama, I think it’s worth it. The possibilities, the hope, the potential, make it worth it. Because nothing in life is worth quite as much as a good relationship, I think.

Welcome to my online world! You know, I’ve thought a lot about building my own world. Like, you know, a personal vision of a fantasy world of some sort that’s immersive and expansive and provides an extended analogy to my psyche and whatnot. I guess I haven’t gotten crazy enough and single-minded enough to pursue such a vision yet. I’ve thought about doing such a world in a text-based environment, like a MUD, and in a graphical environment. The latter would require more tools (like a 3d modeler) and more time per unit of world, but be more immersive. (And more primitive, considering my lack of artisticalish skilz.)

I’ve found the main limitation in pursuing such a dream is the lack of inspiration. I don’t really have many ideas for worlds that are much different than our own, dull, dreary, miserable, dissatisfying world to draw upon. I’m not creative in that way. If I were, I would definitely have been creating such a world and wouldn’t be here now posting. I’m a very practical person. More interested in science than art. More interested in programming languages than programs.

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Also published at Less Wrong.

So, you wanna be a rationalist, huh? Then it’s more than likely that at some point you’ve had the thought: “I should be completely honest with everyone. I shouldn’t hide any truth.” And it’s likely you’re a bit more honest than the average human. (Robin Hanson might take issue here.) And it’s likely you’re nothing like completely honest with everyone. So where, and why, do these ideals fall short?

First, strict honesty is a form of vulnerability. You’re bound to say a particular thing in any given situation, regardless of how it may work to your advantage or disadvantage. You pass up opportunities to manipulate or obfuscate that could work to your advantage. In the game of life, you’re conceding ground. Now, this is made up for, to some extent, by the reputational advantages of honesty. Is the balance positive? Not hardly, in my opinion. (And we haven’t even considered the “telling it like it is” problem yet.)

Second, it takes a lot of active effort to stay honest with someone. And that effort needs to pay off for honesty to be worthwhile. Strict honesty can only pay off with particular people. You say you want honesty. No, what you want is honesty from someone who thinks rather highly of you and is committed to your well-being. Someone who doesn’t have much negative to say about you at all, compared to the positive.*

Really, I think what people are searching for with these honesty impulses is reciprocal honesty. Reciprocal honesty is much more practicable than strict honesty. You can be reciprocally honest in limited ways, with specific people on certain topics. You can pick and choose. (Do you feel an obligation to tell the truth to those who lie to you?)

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How much of the stability of our various economies relies on the relative rationality of the actors involved? I mean, it’s a common criticism leveled against economics that models fail to take into account ways in which humans are not rational actors. But this is a different point entirely. How much of the actual instability which we observe in economic systems is due to the stupidity of people? Could the housing bubble and current crisis have occurred in a world where people were more rational? Is trying to create economic stability hopeless with such irrationality to deal with?

Here’s a poem-ish thing I wrote several years ago. Do you think it’s any good? I still like it, but I suspect I’m really terrible at this sort of thing.

Crush

A simplicity, an unconscious grace,
fluid, natural, and inseparable
from her being,
that brightens her and her surroundings,

her presence demanding not awe,
but still, a happy appreciation,
instilling an insatiable interest,
immediate,

curves that admit of no criticism,
a smile, not of maturity, but of friendliness,
an innocence that has been happily forgotten,
discarded,

and the characteristic vitality of youth,
not tempered by any false religious wisdom,
not checked by pressures of purity, sanctity,
or excellence,

are what make her
my crush.

BTW, I was too chicken at the time to ever even talk to her. Ah, those were the days.

Why is it that it’s so hard to flirt until you stop caring about it? Why is it that it’s so hard to make friends while you’re lonely? Why is it that it’s so hard to find a partner until you’re no longer desperate for one?

Welcome to part two of this three part series on depression. (Index to other parts.) This would be part of part 1 except that Wordpress decided it wanted to cut off my post after it was halfway through.

Solomon, of course, faces severe apathy at the worst of his depression. I think the extent of this is best illustrated by a quote from the book:

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This is part one of a three part series on depression. (Index to other parts.)

I’ve not been very active recently on this blog. I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve had the same problem with my other interests and chores, too. They’ve mostly been remaining undone.

I have had a low level of energy, true. I’ve had trouble focusing. But those are just symptoms, too. What is the cause? How can I make sense of this state? Is it ADHD? Is it depression?

For a long time, I thought it was ADHD. So many of the symptoms fit. But the remedies don’t seem to, and the accounts of people with ADHD didn’t really strike a chord with me at all. So after a while, I began to suspect that depression would more accurately describe my problem. (Especially after I was diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist.)

So, a few days ago, I had a truly marvelous and unprecented idea. Why not read about depression? After all, I realized, I really didn’t know that much about it. Despite having lived with it since I was a teenager, I had somehow never actually read any book about it. So I strolled over to Barnes and Noble to take a look.

I picked up a book called The Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon. I read a couple dozen pages, and found it compelling enough to buy. (At $17 for ~550 pages, it’s not a bad value, either.) Solomon writes quite poetically, and though I found his anecdotes tended to draw on a bit excessively, they did a good job of illustrating what it feels like to go through depression. His factual writing is elegant and interesting, and taught me quite a bit about depression that I’m very glad to know.

(If you’re interested in the book, you might like to know that it covers, primarily, unipolar major depression, with many mentions and a few discussions of bipolar disorder. It doesn’t really cover atypical depression or dysthymia.)

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If you’ve just read my last post, you know I just got dumped. And if you’ve read this, you know that I’ve had a real problem with feeling apathetic. I now understand this problem as straightforward major depression, rather than ADHD. And, thanks to my most recent experience, I now understand this depression as being caused, in a major part, by social isolation, or loneliness. (Read on for the full story.) Continue reading »

What is it about neediness that’s so unattractive, even for people who are themselves moderately needy? Why is it that confidence is so very widely viewed as so desirable, even a requirement? People take this so far—to the point where even depressed and lonely people try to fake high confidence and energy in order to attract others.

I really don’t understand this well. For me, I’m attracted more to moderately needy people than to people who aren’t, because I like to feel needed. I like to feel important to others. I don’t want to be too independent. This relates to my own insecurities—because I perceive myself as not having a lot of charisma with others, of not being seen as attractive, I try to find someone who sees themself as having a similar lack of power, so that the relationship will be balanced, so I won’t be plagued with fear of abandonment.

Though it might not always be this way, I think that where I am now, I’m going to need to depend a lot, emotionally, on my girlfriend, (if and when I get one,) until I can get happier and more confident. And I don’t want to be taking a huge risk when I do that.

I really don’t understand what the reason behind being so attracted to confidence is, unless you yourself are that confident (in which case the reason seems obvious). Do any readers have any idea what it is?