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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2383 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 3, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Can I request some career advice?

2 years of college, computer engineering degree, but I haven't attended since 2022. That same year I had an internship working with cloud suite software. College itself was a waste of time though and made me slowly dislike computing, I'd prefer not to go back if possible. They say some college + internship is more or less enough to find employment, but I'll need to pick up some skills, and I'm not sure what to aim for. All I really desire is a varied set of work that's not customer-facing. You guys know the market better than I do, so any advice/suggestions is much appreciated!

Data science?

I've never posted in the Wellness Wednesday thread before, but I've had a really interesting week that I'd like to talk about, and this seems like a good place for it. I'm curious if any of you have had a similar experience.

I've been struggling with anxiety-driven social isolation for about a decade now. Nothing bad enough to prevent me from going to work, hanging out with friends occasionally, and generally presenting myself as well-adjusted to the outside world, but I've had a hard time making/maintaining friendships, have hardly dated in years, and spend most of my time alone. I've been working on my mental health to limited success for a year or so, but it's been very slow.

Then, last week, I had one magical afternoon of lucidity where for some reason my anxieties and insecurities shut up for a few hours, and in that time I was able to finally force myself to start exercising, sign up for classes in hobbies I've long been interested in, and create an online dating profile for the first time. I had a brief moment when my executive function was running at 100% and in that time was able to make more progress in improving my life and mental health than in the prior 10 years combined.

Since then, I've managed to keep up the exercise regimen and I've been surprisingly successful with the dating so far. And things are starting to compound. The fact that I can get dates with desirable women is doing wonders for my confidence and self-esteem, which makes me more willing to put myself out there in other ways, which I expect will make me more attractive which will lead to more dating success, and so on. For the first time since school, I feel in control and that I'll actually be able to keep it up. It was like a mental dam burst and problems that seemed insurmountable two weeks ago now feel almost trivial.

I'm aware this feeling is unlikely to last, that a week and a half isn't a very long time, and I'm working to make as much of this habitual as I can while I still have the willpower. I've known enough alcoholics to understand that relapse is always just around the corner if you're not careful. This is going to be a constant journey that I'll probably never be able to stop struggling with at least a little, but it really does feel like I've turned a corner this time.

The weird thing is, I cant point to anything that may have caused this shift in perspective. I'm not on any medications (or off any old ones) or in therapy, I haven't experienced any unexpected good fortune, I didn't have any particularly meanigful conversations that day, I didn't have any sort of rock bottom "ok I need to turn my life around" epiphany. It's just that I suddenly found myself capable of taking decisive action that I hadnt previously felt capable of, for no discernable reason. The demons have largely returned since then, but they were on vacation just long enough for me to get the momentum needed to push through.

Has anyone here had a similar experience? Any idea what might have been going on? I'd like to figure out how to replicate it later on if I backslide (Note, I'm generally fairly even keeled, and have never been prone to mood swings. My mental health issues have never manifested as any sort of manic-depressive dynamic. I'm not accustomed to switches flipping suddenly like this).

I had severe depression for several years between 18 and 20. I didn’t go outside, had no friends, no social life, was in almost complete isolation except for rarely attending college classes.

It also suddenly cleared up one day, almost exactly the way you describe. I never figured out why.

Good to hear it's possible the change might be long term!

I had a relapse into severe depressive symptoms for 8 months 4 years after symptoms stopped. Again, it cleared itself up by itself, and hasn’t come back in the three months since.

Has anyone here had a similar experience?

I did after about 2-3 weeks on Atomoxetine.
In short, my way of thinking changed from:

No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, life will put more walls in my way.

to

There will be challenges in my future. I can overcome some of them myself and ask the people around me for help with others. And if there are any that are completely insurmountable, I can learn to live with them.

It's a very small difference in perspective but it had a very profound effect on my behaviour.

Glad to hear it! It's incredible how even small changes in perspective can impact your state of mind.

Yes, I have experienced some of the same, but in a slower way with some milestones/jumps, not all the huge changes all at once.

I have brought this about deliberately through diligent daily meditation. What you are describing might have been a sort of firmware update to your mind that the subconscious had prepared over a long time. Sometimes it saves up changes for one big breakthrough patch. It collects data when you ask it to. The common question might be something like, "can I function similarly or better with a lower amount of stress and suffering?". And the answer is usually yes. The average human mind is terribly unoptimized.

"Firmware update" is an interesting way of putting it. I've had some limited positive experiences with meditation, but nothing life-changing. Maybe I should give it another go.

What has helped me the most in changing past behaviors and to avoid slipping back into previous patterns is to view those old behaviors as something I did in the past but not something I do anymore. So acknowledging that at one time I would acted one way, but instead charting a different future and convincing myself all of the reasons I know for changing. Not fool proof, but this way of thinking has helped me the most.

Yeah I know that's helped me in the past with dieting. Reframing the thought from "I'm not allowing myself to order pizza" to "I'm not the sort of person who eats pizza by himself anymore" makes a bigger difference than I would have originally thought.

Any idea what might have been going on?

You reached the threshold to enter a positive feedback loop. You explained this yourself:

And things are starting to compound. The fact that I can get dates with desirable women is doing wonders for my confidence and self-esteem, which makes me more willing to put myself out there in other ways, which I expect will make me more attractive which will lead to more dating success, and so on.

The moment of lucidity comes down to pure luck, e.g. your gut microbiome temporarily aligning in just the right way. You were probably close to this threshold for a long time and never realized it, but that's super common. A lot of people in dire straits are a hair's breadth away from some positive feedback loop that would fix their lives, but they don't know how to pass the threshold. That's not to blame them; you need a period of initial success to enter the loop, which can be extremely hard to come across.

The idea that the little bugs living in my stomach may have literally just randomly taken the day off from bothering me, just like it felt is funny to me. And the idea that I'm probably never actually that far from a breakthrough even when it doesnt feel like it does give me a lot of optimism, thanks

You reached the threshold to enter a positive feedback loop.

I think the situation is the exact polar opposite actually. /u/Thoroughlygruntled briefly experienced an ideal that a lot of self-help books promise but that doesn't actually exist. The overwhelming majority of people alive are clearly not living this kind of life. And I know it's not for lack of trying because I've wasted more than a decade of my own life in the same kinds of attempts.
Unfortunately, human beings are not really built for long-term satisfaction or contentment or whatever you wanna call it. This is an issue based on genes and hormones and it probably has to be fixed physiologically as well. If it is even fixable.

For years now, I've considered myself borderline unemployable due to a combo of ADHD and zero motivation. Yet miraculously, I've discovered a routine that addresses both problems and appears to "just work" with zero drugs.

For ADHD, hyper-stimulate yourself all the time. Get a fan, put on a spotify playlist, drink some coffee, get a foot bath, fiddle with some object. Do all of this at the same time and work becomes orders of magnitude easier.

For motivation, design a hyper-specific goal and come up with plans to achieve it. This should be something difficult which takes a lot of thought and planning. You need to constantly renew your motivation by thinking of this goal, and should it ever run out, you need a new one ASAP. Staying motivated requires near daily progress so it can be pretty demanding, but if your goal is something intellectual, that's great since you can think about it wherever. Either way, make sure there's a lot of planning/thought involved since that's what spikes the motivation centers in our brain. You'll also lean into harder and more ambitious tasks over time, since simple one-off successes no longer become rewarding.

@FaibleEstimeDeSoi Yeah, I get you man. I started a Youtube channel up a couple years ago, and it received a nice number of views + recurring commenters. I could easily do it again, but even if it exploded and received a hundred thousand views, it wouldn't feel worth it. Because the whole point is the excitement, the novelty, planning it out, doing something that might not work. When you know it's easy and safe it's not fun anymore.

I’m very similar to you. The only ‘true’ solution for my natural laziness I’ve found is adderall (or, rather, lisdexamfetamine), and I refuse to take it for a variety of reasons/concerns. I have nevertheless achieved some modest career success, largely by convincing myself of the horrible social humiliation by my peers/boss/clients/etc that would follow me not doing work.

I currently drink a lot of caffeine and sometimes play ambient music in the background, but I will have to try the hyperstimulation approach. For motivation, can you give an example of one of the goals that have worked for you?

For motivation, can you give an example of one of the goals that have worked for you?

Getting back to work. Blogging is another great avenue, but there is the following problem...

It's a revolving door of motivation. A single spark lasts 1-2 days, but by day 3 that drive is basically gone and no longer provides energy for action, so you must either augment it or abandon it completely for another goal. In practice, this has meant daydreaming of killer blogposts, starting the research to fill them out, and then giving up by day 3 because the spark is no longer actionable. At which point you drop the project; rinse, repeat.

There is no way to prolong the initial spark, really; you have to augment the desire. This takes daydreaming. If you want to ex. read the Bible you may need to cycle through dozens of distinct motivations, but that doesn't matter so long as it gets done. I'm a beginner to this process so the explanation is pretty bad. Hopefully later this year I'll be able to explain better.

I refuse to take it for a variety of reasons/concerns.

Can you talk about this a bit more? It's kind of one of the things that stops me trying to get diagnosed.

Edit: I'm worried about drugs burning in neural pathways/endocrine disruption to the point that you can no longer function without drugs. Things would maybe be better off if you just found lifestyle/cognitive behavioral methods of addressing things?

I think it damages the imagination and creativity, certainly it did for me when I was on it, I think it turns people into worker drones. I like the part of me that daydreams, that imagines, even if I wish I could suppress it on occasion. To me ADHD drugs are like the opposite of weed; weed kills motivation but makes me feel relaxed and (ime) creative, ADHD meds make me highly focused (not necessarily productive, to be clear, you could easily channel your adderall usage into playing 14 hours of competitive video games a day or writing 15,000 words of Motte comments) but anxious and earnest.

In addition, there are concerns about long term heart health, increasing tolerance necessitating ever higher doses, and getting to a point where you’d be completely crippled if you no longer had access to the drugs for any reason. I have known several long term (since childhood) users who have at great personal cost/pain weaned themselves off the drugs and I don’t want the same to happen to me. Some people in my life also said I was angrier and less patient on the drugs, and that’s obviously important to me too.

I will say that I’m not necessarily recommending against trying the drugs. They really do work, to an almost unbelievable extent if you’ve never tried serious prolonged-effect stimulants before. But it comes at a price.

Thanks for this.

I think it damages the imagination and creativity

It's something I've found too. If you stim up (with caffeine say)... there is just thoughts/focus and no daydreaming (and less night dreaming for that matter). You've said it well.

That's great that you have found something that helps you! I also read somewhere that putting white noise in the background can help (so this is in the direction of hyper-stimulation), so you can give it a try, but I haven't checked that myself yet. Edit: Oh, but you have a fan, so you already got that.

How to overcome your extremely low conscientiousness?

TL;DR: Basically the question in the title.

I have a problem that I believe is somewhat common among people here, at the least I'm definitely sure that, for example, @self_made_human mentioned something like this about himself - high intelligence(Hadn't taken any official test in psychologist office, but Raven Matrices or Mensa Norway test show 135+ IQ) hindered by low conscientiousness. It is monstrously hard for me to do anything other than to procrastinate, the only things that can motivate me to do something are the deadline tomorrow(even then I thinking about waiting till the next day's morning), need for a life necessities or a sudden bout of inspiration. Of course I still did and do things required from me by the society, like getting useless degree to secure myself from military conscription but I will always do the basic minimum, late and with much struggle.

I have a very nice remote relatively high paying job so I theoretically could just accept my own weakness in that department and live a life of enjoyable hedonism. But sadly in my mind mythical laziness lives together with countless ambitions and planned great lifepaths that I should immediately start working towards. Of course it sounds like self-imposed problem but I am genuinely at an impasse here. I tried the whole standard motivation spiel, dividing my goals into smaller ones, scheduling my tasks, being mindful and grateful(whatever it truly means), etc., and nothing worked.

I want to spend additional time to talk about currently popular notion of dopamine fasting: restricting yourself from the wonders of civilization and plain old masturbation. It also hasn't helped but I think my case slightly unique here because I was doing the opposite of restraining myself from hyperstimulation my whole life. From the moment I became literate, I read something basically every waking hour, I mean it quite literally, I woken up and then the first thing that I did was picking up a book that I was reading while falling asleep, after I would be going around doing my morning routine like brushing teeth, while holding it in my left hand. I even read on the go, nowadays with smartphones it's really common, but I'm emphasizing this so much cause I never met a person that did this thing with printed books. I'm continued this tradition to this day and majority of my procrastination consists of reading, mainly useless information that is not in any way related to my job, degree or surroundings. This became especially apparent when I learned enough English to read in it, I probably know much more about US politics, culture wars and general trends, than of my country's. I did try to limit myself, both in electronics and in the other things, nofap included. In the end it became clear that even in the absence of any stimuli I would still rather lay down and think about ideas for articles, posts, videos, memes, novels, businesses and world domination instead of actually doing something in that direction.

I have had some amount of success with a YouTube channel, several blogs on different platforms and meme pages, but it was always limited(4k subscribers not 40k) and this is always limited my motivation. Most of the time when I start and complete a project it's because I was inspired in that particular moment and finishing it brings me joy every time. Almost always reception to them is very good. Across all of them I have hundreds comments thanking, complimenting me or asking for more and it is great to hear. But these positive emotions just aren't enough for me to motivate myself.

I already got distracted several times while writing this so I sum up my problem: I want to do things, but I also can't force myself to do them regularly enough to reach some level of success and this situation is eating me alive.

P.S. Forgot to add this - I tried the medical route, but I live in the country where psychostimulants that work are prohibited and what was proscribed to me had either zero or no effect.

For the record I also grew up reading constantly all the time, to the point I got in trouble at school and home for it. You aren’t alone!!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W5HcGywyPoDDdJtbz/trigger-action-planning

  • Choose a goal (a desired outcome or behavior)
  • Identify a relevant trigger (something that will happen naturally)
  • Decide on an action that you want to occur after the trigger
  • Rehearse the causal link (e.g. with deliberate visualization)

Basically, you can find the trigger that causes undesirable behavior and change it through intention and repetition. You can also build productive routines using this algorithm.

P.S. Forgot to add this - I tried the medical route, but I live in the country where psychostimulants that work are prohibited and what was proscribed to me had either zero or no effect.

I wish I knew something else that worked my dude, India only has Ritalin as a useful stimulant, and while it's still a dirty feeling drug, it at least works. It's better than nothing, and I would be pretty screwed myself without it, at least when it came to academics. If you can't make do, such as by the grey market route, well, you work remote, and if this matters so greatly to you, you do have the option of moving to a country with more sensible laws.

From the moment I became literate, I read something basically every waking hour, I mean it quite literally, I woken up and then the first thing that I did was picking up a book that I was reading while falling asleep, after I would be going around doing my morning routine like brushing teeth, while holding it in my left hand. I even read on the go, nowadays with smartphones it's really common, but I'm emphasizing this so much cause I never met a person that did this thing with printed books

It's a good thing you pinged me, because while we haven't met, that's literally me, I used to read while walking, shitting, eating, brushing, in class under the table, whenever it was physically possible. I guess smartphones are a little more convenient, but I do mostly read on mine.

Now, shame I don't have a nice paying remote job, because I would absolutely embrace the unabashed hedonism. But the hospital yells at me if I don't show up for work, so I gotta make do till I become a senior doctor who can make $$ through telemedicine (unlikely to happen at the rate of AI progress).

How difficult was it to get methylphenidate(ritalin) prescribed in India?

Not particularly. I saw a pretty famous psychiatrist, and he largely took me at my word since I was a med student and read up on it, I was already taking modafinil, and he ended up agreeing that I should try Ritalin.

I recently spoke to another doctor with ADHD from the other side of India, and she said she has issues with the doctors there being much more leery about prescribing it, which is retarded IMO. It obviously has abuse potential, but I think the benefits of giving the millions of underdiagnosed people with the disease here their meds outweighs the small risk that some of them will abuse it.

I would say most psychiatrists aren't particularly gatekeepy about it, and worst case you can shop around. I know my diagnosis was legitimate, I'd have failed many of my exams in med school if I wasn't able to take it to study, and thankfully that never happened.

I live in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria) and I've had a VERY different experience. I've talked to about 4 different doctors up to this point. One didn't even know what ADHD is, another didn't believe it's a "real" thing, the third told me I can't possibly have it because I finished highschool. The fourth told me that I do indeed have ADHD (after a year of insisting my real problem is depression) but she doesn't feel comfortable being a "legal narcotics dealer".
I've talked to my fellow countrymen on forums and the consensus is overwhelmingly the same: doctors here won't prescribe methylphenidate and pharmacies don't stock it. It's wild to me that India of all places has a more functional medical institution in this regard. I am quite envious of your situation.

My condolences, but it could be even worse. For example, while ADHD is known to be an actual disease in Japan, all stimulants worth a shit are banned, so I guess I know which country I never intend to do more than visit.

Do you have the option of telemedicine and getting it delivered from a country more understanding? Or just driving/traveling over in person?

Do you have the option of telemedicine and getting it delivered from a country more understanding? Or just driving/traveling over in person?

I've got a list of 6 psychiatrists I've yet to talk to, at least one of them will probably prescribe it and I think I can find a pharmacy willing to stock it if I order a box. It's just been a very miserable experience, that's all.

In that case, make sure you stock up. I understand it's a pain, made all the worse because of the extra headache you're experiencing as someone with ADHD. Absolutely the last diagnosis worth gatekeeping, if you're making people jump through this many hoops, well, you're probably selecting out a lot of people who need the meds the most.

I used to read while driving. Still not sure how I am still alive after this and similar risks.

Hah I’ve done the same…

I can't drive, well, not legally, so I'm safe for now. At least you'll find out when you need more than reading glasses quickly!

Are you not worried that the Ritalin will stop working after a few years? I’ve had friends who have had meds stop working after daily use for 5+ years and it’s been very tough for them. Assume the plan is to pass all your residency/training/etc then coast in the NHS, but I’m curious.

Tolerance is a well known issue, but I'm not a daily user. When I'm cramming for exams, I average anywhere from 20mg to 50mg max, and that's about daily usage for 2 to 6 months.

That's interspersed with long periods of minimal or no use. My ADHD is mild, I don't need to take Ritalin to make it through a working day, and in fact, doing so is actively unpleasant. I may not be the most hardworking and zealous doctor around, but I certainly do more than the bare minimum needed to avoid malpractice litigation, heh.

So I take it so I can study, acquire knowledge, pass exams, then use said acquired knowledge in my day job. The job itself doesn't need it, and I doubt I'd take it through residency. My internship was terrible in terms of workload and what it did to my mental health, and UK Residencies, while still a slog, really can't compare. If I take my meds as a resident, it'll be if I'm expected to keep studying particular topics, or for exams like the MRCPsych. Besides, Psych isn't nearly as high intensity as something like surgery or critical care.

You can't tell I have ADHD in normal conversation, or in my work. It's only when the textbooks come out that my eyes glaze over, and my usual coping mechanism that worked through high school of forcing myself to study through a combination of personal tutoring, extreme stress and lethal doses of caffeine all failed hard when the books became both big enough to kill a calf and too long to cover in a few days of cramming.

So I've been taking Ritalin for about 5 years now, and I can't say I notice a tolerance. At most, after 3 or 4 months of continuous daily use, I'll end up needing 30-40 mg, and that's impossible for me to disentangle from just needing more of it so I can study longer.

And if said tolerance does develop, well, the UK is a more enlightened nation in that regard and I can cycle through the better alternatives that aren't available here. It's not something I'm worried about.

Assume the plan is to pass all your residency/training/etc then coast in the NHS, but I’m curious.

I'm doubtful that most doctors will be employed after the 7 years it would take me to finish my training, leaving aside most humans, so after a certain point it becomes rather moot. I just don't currently have a better alternative than to act as if that's not going to happen, just in case it doesn't.

PSA:

For the love of all that is unholy, avoid Tinder if you find yourself at a point in your life that dating apps are appealing.

Hinge and Bumble are much better, at least from the perspective of a guy.

Why so?

Well, the women on Tinder are, in my experience, spoiled brats who expect male attention to be handed to them on a silver platter, as breakfast in bed. The design of the app, while more egalitarian than Bumble (which requires women to be the ones to approach you first, unless you pay), incentivizes much more mindless swiping. You are one cut of meat among many others, and the 1% of guys who are prime Wagyu are pulling most of the women (a mild exaggeration, it's probably more like the standard Pareto deal of 20% getting 80%). Even if you're lucky enough to match with a bored girl looking at all the options, they're congenitally lazy. Why wouldn't they be? They've got a million horny men to choose from and can afford to be picky.

In contrast, Bumble, by forcing the woman to make contact, is actually doing guys a favor. A hi or hello means a lot more when you know for a fact that she's into you, and trust me that low bar counts for a lot.

Even Hinge, with its focus on limiting matches daily (cynically, a ploy to make you pay for more), means that your profile is likely to get more consideration than a surface judgement. You can expect people to actually read the damn bio.

Your time and attention are far better rewarded on the latter two, though of course anyone blessed enough to be handsome will likely get what they desire on any platform. I'm hardly ugly, just average in terms of facial attractiveness (optimistically a 7 out of ten when I've grown out my beard and lost weight, as I have now), but I find that charm, wit and general markers of intelligence (like the ability to write a bio more entertaining than a dictionary), are more viable ways to stand out.

I'd rather not brag, but I'm frankly stunned at the sheer disparity. I tentatively wager that this isn't an India-only phenomenon, and if anyone is soured on online dating, branch out from Tinder. If you're a handsome Chad, by all means carry on, but if you need to sell yourself with something other than just looks or a Ferrari, give it a whirl. This presumes you don't have the option of dating in the workplace or hitting up bars, but you wouldn't be reading this if those were the case.

(I have a longer draft from when I was very drunk, and it's surprisingly well written, slightly more sober yet hungover me is impressed, but it says much the same)

PS: It's a damn shame that the OG OkCupid is dead and a conglomerate is wearing its corpse. But I wouldn't have been legal to use it when it was actually good, so what do I know.

Avoid any and all apps, meet women in good nightclubs. Infinitely better people and odds.

It's been working out surprisingly well dude, I remember you saying you're autistic right? But I have enough charm to manage online, and while I'm not as handsome as you, I manage. And sure, I look forward to doing lines and dancing my ass off, I just can't bring myself to dance at all unless I'm high or drunk to the gills.

Offline is always better and easier. Read the mystery method and make a befriend half the chicks you hit on so that you can access all the clubs for free, never drink there and for learning game stick to the book of yarelly, RSD material (I recommend pimp by RSD Julien and the Social Circle Blueprint (get both part 1 and 2), both are available on pimpmymind.net). Also pirate the book sex god method. Learning meditation, learning to fight, fixing my hair via hair loss meds, hitting the gym etc all made big impacts on my life so would recommend them as well.

For game, you will suck, you will feel worse but always assume that you will get better and you will one day. I had a girl stomp my heart out because I was a pussy and it will never happen again. I believe in you my man, dm me if you need help. I am a novice too but I can sure help you a bit. Online is suicide fuel at best.

I was never autistic, just severe adhd and doing lines off of a total fair-hipped(sanskrit word lol) hottie you just met when your life is in order has to be peak life. Also, how do you know what and how I look like? I am not attractive at all. I need to gain 20lbs of muscle and lose similar amounts in fat to look anywhere near halfway decent.

Intoxicants are only good sporadically, I meet girls sober everytime, drinking is reserved for family and friends, less than two times a quarter.

I get what you're saying dude and appreciate the concern, but I'm genuinely good in that regard.

I find nightclubs super loud and usually annoying, as well as fucking expensive with the overpriced drinks. I'm not a particularly good dancer either. I just get over it when I'm drunk enough.

I have plenty of game IRL. As in, I can talk to women, make them laugh and start crushing on me with relative ease. With or without alcohol involved. It's true, and that also means I don't have to worry about my success in the apps.

Also, how do you know what and how I look like? I am not attractive at all. I need to gain 20lbs of muscle and lose similar amounts in fat to look anywhere near halfway decent.

I'm pretty sure you linked to an Indian subreddit where people were arguing over a hot take you posted on Twitter right? I also recall you said the picture there was you, unless you're joking.

But autism certainty makes online dating harder, so you have my condolences. My ADHD only becomes an issue when I start slacking a few months into a relationship.

Besides, I'm not bad looking, I don't want to toot my own horn any further, but it's at least at the point where I can date women much hotter than me and not have it be a deal breaker. It's certainly not at the point where it can carry me solo, as is the case for those more blessed, but I make do.

If you're happy hitting up chicks in nightclubs, by all means, do what works for you. It's more of a fun/aspirational thing for me to do, since I'm single, but not a burning necessity in any way.

I'm pretty sure you linked to an Indian subreddit where people were arguing over a hot take you posted on Twitter right? I also recall you said the picture there was you, unless you're joking.

yes that was me but I do not think that I am attractive enough. Even if I were, I do not see it so go through life not caring much about it in my day to day interactions. I still feel that I need to be jacked like @FiveHourMarathon to get to a point where I can feel good about myself. I did join a gym for real this time instead of sticking to gimmicks like isometrics so hope I get jacked soon.

If you're happy hitting up chicks in nightclubs, by all means, do what works for you. It's more of a fun/aspirational thing for me to do, since I'm single, but not a burning necessity in any way.

Completely fair, what works for you should be used. I am a totally inexperienced guy so my suggestions are things that I have been recommended for me more than things I have tried out for years.

My experience with Bumble that women write a emoji or "Hi" then it's same as Tinder, they expect you to make a move. Don't use any of these, try meatspace

Second this. My experience with all dating apps is pretty much the same as far as number of matches go, few and far between, but on Bumble 3 out of 4 are going to turn into an actual date (which suits me because I do much better in person).

Personally, I've had 0 success on Bumble, and some moderate success on both Tinder and Hinge. Which app works best for an individual isn't very easily predictable.

I certainly can't claim with confidence this is universal, but at the least, your comment shores up my point that you should branch out and try the different apps instead of fixating on one.

I do know Tinder has a particularly bad reputation for anything but hookups, whereas Bumble and Hinge advertise themselves as at least modestly more cerebral.

My policy was to only swipe right on people I actually would be willing to date, based off both looks and what inklings of a personality could be gleaned from a bio. Hitting the maximum number of daily matches (without paying) on all 3 apps, and being picky with it, I get more matches on Bumble and Hinge, and said matches are also far more likely to progress further.

I've certainly become more attractive, at least comparing broke-ass med student me from 7 years back to slightly less broke doctor today, and being older is a good thing for guys till you're into the wrong ends of your 30s. I've got better pictures, I look better, and being a doctor does count for quite a bit. That all being said, my Tinder experience still remained roughly the same, namely god-awful, whereas I'm suffering from success on the other apps.

I must apologize if that comes across as bragging, but it's necessary to demonstrate my point that there genuinely seems to be major differences in the dispositions and desires of the girls on the different apps. An app being overly popular can be a bad thing too, from the increased competition, and by choosing an app that doesn't have the same rep as Tinder, you're also filtering for women who aren't themselves happy with Tinder.

And frankly speaking, Indian men have fucking negative rizz. I made all my previous longterm relationships by sliding into DMs outside dating apps, but the odd peek I get into the conversational skills of even the guys hotter than me makes me glad the competition is that trash.

And locations either. Sometimes your value changes on the interstate/international markets, one way or the other.

Silicon Valley CS majors and engineers NGMI 🫡

Born too late to try the only good dating site. Born just in time to read their research blog uncensored, before they got acquired and sanitized the findings.

I'm pretty sure the original versions are still out there, and while they might cause you to lose a little faith in human nature, still an excellent read.

At least you got yourself the lady you love out of it, may my quandary remain purely academic for you haha.

I'm pretty sure the original versions are still out there, and while they might cause you to lose a little faith in human nature, still an excellent read.

Gwern has archived a bunch, e.g. this one.

Thanks for tracking them down, I could have gone to one of the archival sites where I last saw them, but I really was drunk and dreading work the next day.

I see those graphs where people have thousands of swipes, dozens of messages and a handful of dates and it's just depressing.

I don't mean to defend dating apps but I suspect that there's a little bit of selection bias. I expect the type of men who enjoy making data visualizations not to have great prospects on the dating market. Also if you really enjoy data visualization but you find the perfect match on the first try, you'll probably make data visualizations about something else.

I would almost suspect some of these guys to subconsciously shoot themselves in the foot because they're too busy thinking about collecting data and organizing it instead of putting their best effort into optimizing their profile, making conversation and enjoying the date.

There have been quite a few experiments by data visualizer-types who allegedly set up a fake profile with male model pictures and raked in matches by the dozen. I don't recall any that were published somewhere more respectable than 4chan, though.

Also, it's always "top 1% male model" fake profiles, I'd be more interested in seeing how well someone closer to top 10% does.

I don't recall any that were published somewhere more respectable than 4chan, though.

You can't publish those types of experiments anywhere else because you'd be drowned in an endless sea of insults and strawmen.

I remember a particularly hilarious example where they used a picture of a model and a bio that straight up confessed to being a convicted pedophile who can't get close to schools.

And they were still getting matches. And the women were thirsty even though the fake user kept reiterating the point. As someone with a far more handsome brother, I should have seen this coming, but still, bruh.

It’s this and only swiping on women more attractive than they are. You could be an average guy perfectly capable of finding a date on Tinder or whatever, but if you only swipe on beautiful women it’s plausible you could go a very large number of matches before getting reciprocated.

The male strategy used to be to match every single woman and then go through the dozen of matches and decide which ones are worth your time.

In the past few years it seems that they tweaked the algorithm to stratify users.

This is what I think happens now: on the first day they show all the women, including the most attractive ones, but if the swiping has a low match ratio, they stop showing them. The user gets ranked among low match ratio users and it's basically over for them. I think they may be able to buy premium options after that.

I swipe on women more aesthetically appealing than I am. And that works fine, if you have other qualities that make up for it, which I do. It's worked for me in the past, and works fine now.

Most men are frankly terrible at making profiles and selling themselves. As @4bpp claims, I can corroborate that the original OKC researchers found that men rate women on a normal curve, whereas women rate most men as "below average" in terms of looks. They're just far more picky.*

And dating apps break the cycle of assortative mating too, with a small number of very hot guys having anywhere from supermodels to average women clamoring for them.

*Too drunk to chase down links. But we've seen the same blogs.

And dating apps break the cycle of assortative mating too, with a small number of very hot guys having anywhere from supermodels to average women clamoring for them.

This is a misunderstanding of female sexuality. It is true that many average women could find a hot guy to hook up with on Tinder. But it’s also interesting that comparatively few women do this, certainly with any regularity. Many women I know have never had a one-night stand. If they find themselves in ambiguous ‘situationships’, it’s typically with men they’ve met in real life. The fact that they could fuck a guy with a six pack in an hour via Tinder holds no appeal to the average woman, whatever her hotness.

It is a projection of male sexuality onto women. Men, if they could have NSA sex with hot women out of their league via the apps would be doing it every single day, at lunch, after dropping grandma off at the grocery store, whatever. And indeed this is how a lot of gay men’s sexuality works, it’s why Grindr is proximity-based, because it really is about finding the nearest guy you want to fuck right now as soon as possible.

This also ties into the general phenomenon of men driving themselves crazy trying to attract the small minority of highly promiscuous women (who, sure, are going to be pretty superficial) and then extrapolating their behaviour to everyone else.

This also ties into the general phenomenon of men driving themselves crazy trying to attract the small minority of highly promiscuous women (who, sure, are going to be pretty superficial) and then extrapolating their behaviour to everyone else.

There are no large dating apps/sites for non-superficial people. So probably non-promiscuous women are about as superficial as promiscuous.

Dating apps, in general, attempt to service two separate yet overlapping sets of users:

  1. People looking to hook up. These are far more likely to be men, no doubt about it.

  2. People looking for a steady relationship. I would imagine that this is nearly equal.

This is not a paradox when you understand that both userbases overlap.

Men do want more flings than women, as you've stated. However, only the hottest of them will find steady success, and it's a winner take all field. Or most, at least. The women who want flings will obviously desire them with the most attractive men around. Said men are usually happy to oblige, and service the entire market while the rest standby dicks wagging in the cold breeze.

When it comes to steady relationships, there are certainly women who don't opt for flings. They're also still going to try and get the best possible guy they can, and will eventually, through repeated rejection if nothing else, find someone of equivalent Sexual Market Value (an ill defined but still useful term).

I hardly blame them. Everyone is acting according to their incentives.

Unfortunately, said incentive systems are simply not built for the scenario they find themselves in, which is an endless gamut of people to flick through on a whim.

Many women I know have never had a one-night stand. If they find themselves in ambiguous ‘situationships’, it’s typically with men they’ve met in real life. The fact that they could fuck a guy with a six pack in an hour via Tinder holds no appeal to the average woman, whatever her hotness.

Well, while I sincerely doubt I know the women you know, none of this is a surprise to me.

I'm not speaking about all women. I'm talking about the women (and men) who are using dating apps. Which now hold the preponderance of the market, in terms of where people try and find people to fuck, marry kill.

I'm not a red-pilled PUA, I'm not dismissing all women as inconsiderate, or delusional. You'll just find more of them on Tinder. After all, both the women and men on dating apps are being selected from the set that isn't doing shit outside (mostly).

After all, people do meet IRL, or through friends of friends, which has the benefit of a great deal of vetting and sanity checking, and an implicit belief that the two of them are fit for each other. This is how things were done before (and even Indian arranged marriages are closer to family-vetted serious dating), but it's being devoured by the monster that is online dating.

A few men swallow up the entire market for female sexual promiscuity (again, not all women, not even most of them, for most of the time, but when they crave it).

Men are unhappy because they feel ignored and undervalued. Women are unhappy because the guys they're able to sleep with won't commit to them. This isn't a particularly original observation, but it's still true.

I'm just lucky in some ways, fuck, if I wasn't tall, or a doctor, or (list of attractive traits), there but for the grace of God go I. I certainly empathize more with the men, but having seen some of the pathetic shit guys try, I feel for the women too. Few people are happy about how it works.

I would much prefer to date in real life, but I'm lazy and rather busy. And that's easier said than done for a working professional. Especially one who intends to emigrate sooner or later. Hence the apps it is.

What's the attractivity metric here? If we define it in terms of absolute attractivity to the other sex, in the below-40 bracket most women are more attractive than the median guy (see also those OkCupid blog men-rating-women/women-rating-men charts). I'm not so sure that the "swiping on women more attractive than they are" thing is true if the rating is on the curve for their respective sex.

Trying to do more fiction writing (given the sheer number of story ideas I have piling up), but I keep getting discouraged. Why bother putting in the effort, I keep thinking, when the result is guaranteed to suck and nobody's going to want to read any of it? Because "write what you know," and I don't really know anything, because I've not had much of a life (being a useless subhuman parasite any sane society would have put down over a decade ago). Because "three-dimensional characters" are key, and I'm too autistic to get into another person's head well enough to write believable human beings. And the amount of research each story demands, in order to get all the details exactly right, just keeps growing and growing, even as the advice all says to spend less time researching and more time writing (so I'm doing that wrong, too).

Without going into too much detail, I think I have, to some degree, similar problems to yours*. And I write. Sometimes I get good reviews from people online, sometimes not. Whether the reviews are good or bad, I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy having done it once I've finished. I would even go so far as to say that it's "therapeutic".

I don't think I'm good with character either. I'd like to be someday. But Lovecraft seemingly couldn't write dialogue, and most people would say dialogue is important. And yet Lovecraft did rather well for himself (posthumously). He wrote stories where the lack of dialogue wasn't important. If you have glaring weaknesses as a writer that you're struggling to overcome, or just don't feel like overcoming, just play to your strengths. I think a lot of successful writers have weaknesses, to some extent.

Also: if you want people to read what you write, try short stories. You would be maximizing for number of readers and not number of times a page of what you wrote has been read by someone.

*Except I don't research too much. Or if I do I'm not burdened by it.

I think you’re kinda overthinking it. Most of the advice (beyond the absolute basics) is written for people who want to be professional writers. I do believe in structure and planning, but if you’re just doing it for fun, a lot of the the advice is completely over the top where you need every detail exactly right and to have a twenty page description of your world building and the 15-point beat sheet and know what your characters eat for dinner every night is overkill. Even more so if what you’re writing is short fiction.

If you’re not going pro, I think that getting a blog and putting your stories on there is probably saner. Get a substack or a live journal or even a tumblr blog. Publish short stories there and see what happens. You can break that up with meta posts about your writing, thoughts about various topics, pictures or whatever you want. And because it’s just a blog, you’re not under the same pressure that everyone trying to become a serious author (a field that’s overcrowded even before you get to people who publish and can’t write in standard English let alone plot a story), and you can do whatever you actually want to do. Unless you’re really looking for a career, and willing to put full time into writing and promoting your writing, trying to publish or self publish isn’t going to work. Just have fun for now, and don’t worry so much about publishing unless you’re seeing a big following.

If you want an audience regardless of the quality of your writing, write fanfiction. You'll get a few readers who desperately want more fandom content as long as your writing isn't totally unreadable

Arthur C. Clarke was too autistic to write good three-dimensional characters. You know what he did? Got a co-author.

Written primarily by [Gentry] Lee, Rama II has a distinctly different writing style than the original, with a more character-driven narrative and a closer-to-contemporary mindset, ambience and human relations than the first novel's more futuristic tones.

Fantastic ideas require fantastic execution, but most comic books have separate writers and artists. Many of them have separate pencillers, inkers, and colorists.

I myself can write a good scene with decent characterization, but I can count on one hand the number of completed stories I’ve written.

Writing advice is meant to be absorbed and then ignored. You have to do your due dilligence and take it all in, and of course you need to get the fundamentals down (don't skip the fundamentals), but you should know how to ignore advice.

Some writers will tell you two different things if asked the same question at different times. The value of the corpus of words words words which constitutes writing advice is simply that it exists in all its sprawling horror. It is there to be consulted when you're lost. It won't teach you everything you need to know right now. It's an immanent tool, not a fixed pattern. It is the I Ching with mildly better results.

That said, some writing advice.

  1. Do you have a coherent message? Can you put it in words, in a paragraph or two?

  2. Signal-to-noise ratio is the single most important thing after message. You can equally damage the communication by mulling over things too much which the reader won't care about, even if it is of high technical quality. On the other hand, some things work simply because high techical quality was the point. What's important is if the message is transmitted.

    You only need so much of each aspect as to get the message across effectively, and too much takes the focus away from the message. Your readers aren't stupid. Give them what you value in a form which they can accept, and they'll fill in the gaps themselves, sometimes by doing their own research.

  3. There really is no substitute for words outputted as far as getting off the ground goes, assuming that you haven't written lots and lots of words already. If you struggle to rack up words with a project which seems important to you, find a really dumb one which you won't take seriously (you don't have to hate it), anything that you can actually just write (you don't have to publish). You can't reflect on your writing if you have no writing to reflect on, however bad, and the mind seems to do this automatically.

    Everyone is telling you to do this because we've all been there. At some point, it clicks, and it seems to do so simply by the amount of words. When you're there, at least you'll have a more realistic idea of where you stand and what your prospects are. The way you sound, I wouldn't trust your opinion of yourself.

At a certain point, you need to stop giving a fuck about it and write.

Unlike you, I retain modest confidence that I'm a good writer, and so far, I haven't been disabused of that notion. Whether your critique of yourself is warranted, I can hardly say without reading what you've written.

I made it a point to unashamedly write something that is niche. To a fault even, it was explicitly designed to be the kind of fiction that I wish I could read, and that came first, and eventually, I noticed that people enjoyed it. Hardly a chart topper, but it turns out there's a non-zero market for people who read incredibly nerdy hard scifi set in the wake of an abortive singularity, and in turn, I pull no punches, I think about shit before putting it in, and I make it a point that if readers notice some inconsistency in the world building or unseen implications, I either address it later, or show that I've thought things through.

I used to struggle writing characters. And that got better with practice. Don't feel ashamed to steal archetypes or relabel tropes, if that's what you need to do to get started. Writing is an ancient tradition by now, and you're fooling yourself if you think that complete originality is feasible or even necessarily desirable.

Just write. Accept feedback if it's in coherent English. Ask an LLM if you want. Or don't. But unless you actually put things out there, you'll never know if you were cooking or experiencing fevered dreams from a leaky gas line.

you need to stop giving a fuck about it

And how do I do that? After all, that's part of what I was asking to begin with.

Don't feel ashamed to steal archetypes

Except even that doesn't work for me. Because how do you figure out how Stock Archetype X behaves in Situation Y? That's no less mysterious than figuring out how Character X behaves in Situation Y. How do I calculate out the utterly unpredictable behavior of any mind that isn't my own?

Accept feedback if it's in coherent English.

The last time I got feedback — from a SF/F writers group, it was that everybody in the group hated everything about the story, that I should throw it out completely, and start over, ideally with a ripoff of "Game of Thrones." (Then they went back to discussing the paranormal romance novels they were writing, and trying to figure out how to keep the love scenes sexy and the love interest hot and dominating while also following norms of affirmative consent.)

And how do I do that? After all, that's part of what I was asking to begin with.

Just write already. Put it out there. If you're too worried about your reputation, there's a reason they're called pen names.

It's not that hard. After all, you're not doing an interpretive dance right now.

Unless you're planning to give up your day job (well, in the metaphorical sense) and take up writing full time, you have nothing to lose barring some self esteem if the peanut gallery isn't initially appreciative. If you never try, you'll never know.

How do I calculate out the utterly unpredictable behavior of any mind that isn't my own?

Well, there's always self-insert isekai fiction. Not the most glamorous work, but there's a market.

Don't tell me you don't have any theory of mind. That's not true even of the autistic, or at least the kind capable of talking to people over the internet. Worst case, ask an LLM. Don't worry, nobody will know unless you literally regurgitate its wording. Ask it for help, like what a character with X and Y traits will do in Z situation. Adapt accordingly. Or just ask a very patient human I guess. Why don't more people realize we have, for free, alien intelligences with the ability to think? Pay for Claude Opus if you want the best when it comes to fiction, including advice on narratives.

The last time I got feedback — from a SF/F writers group, it was that everybody in the group hated everything about the story, that I should throw it out completely, and start over, ideally with a ripoff of "Game of Thrones." (Then they went back to discussing the paranormal romance novels they were writing, and trying to figure out how to keep the love scenes sexy and the love interest hot and dominating while also following norms of affirmative consent.)

My condolences, but as long as there's no money involved you shouldn't give a fuck what they say. I bet IRL groups are probably the worst in this regard.

I posted my work in a niche subreddit, /r/rational, because:

A) If I'm browsing it, that means I know what I like.

B) I expect sensible feedback. And to the extent that nobody who doesn't like what I do will be there, it'll be feedback I can use.

But again. Write. Post. Rewrite. Repost. Change names and try again if you're ashamed of the reception. If this doesn't seem to work, well, it's entirely possible you're just not cut out for it, and that's not meant as a personal attack. But you need to put something out there before more than a dozen randos can judge you.

MBTI types are somewhat useful for this even if the theory is bunk. The descriptions are detailed enough that you can predict what people who share those traits will do in a given situation. It gives strengths and weaknesses for every type, which you can use to predict that your ESFP character might well do something stupid before he completely thinks it through, while your INTP will spend several hours studying a theory and not take any action.

The theory's not bunk, it's just obsolete. Even the upgrade from binary scores to continuum scores just isn't enough to catch up to something like OCEAN that generates bases for continuum scores via PCA rather than Jung+guessin.

Because "three-dimensional characters" are key, and I'm too autistic to get into another person's head well enough to write believable human beings

writing advice is useless, so do not worry about things like character development and the like. no one who writes a great story originally set out to check those boxes of what constitutes good writing, and following such advice will not make a story any good.

so do not worry about things like character development and the like.

In other words, don't worry if it's worth reading? But if it's not worth reading, wasn't it a waste of time to have written it?

I'm a professional artist, and as a hobby I occasionally teach art classes for kids.

The biggest obstacle to learning art is, to put it bluntly, a lack of willingness to draw and paint badly. The only way to get to the good art is to get through all the bad art first, to practice and polish your skills and senses until you actually get good at it.

I've done a bit of writing as well, and I think it works the same way. First drafts are never good, unless you're a once-in-a-century prodigy or insanely lucky. What stops you from getting a good finished product is fear of making bad product, because you have to make the bad version before you can sift through and refine out the good version. What you put on paper is never as good as what you see in your head, at least at first, but what's in your head is worthless. Only what actually ships has value.

The only way to get to the good art is to get through all the bad art first, to practice and polish your skills and senses until you actually get good at it.

Assuming you get better. But if you never actually improve from all the practice…?

As my childhood karate instructor liked to say "practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." If you keep doing the kata wrong, all you do is ingrain bad habits.

I know my first draft will be terrible, but when the fifth draft is just as terrible, as is the sixth, the seventh…

Some bridges you just have to cross when you get to them. Planning out your whole life, or even a medium to long-term project, will make you paralyzed.

I've found that it helps to write either very early in the morning or late at night, when you're not so hung up with logical worries like that. Also, if you put it online in the right places, usually someone will read it, even if it's weird crazy people who give you crazy negative feedback.

early in the morning or late at night, when you're not so hung up with logical worries like that

I don't know what you mean here — I've not noticed any such pattern.

Also, if you put it online in the right places

Such as?

even if it's weird crazy people who give you crazy negative feedback.

But if everyone who reads it hates it, then what good was writing it? Would my time have not been better spent doing something else?

My feeling is that those are all the sort of analytical, logical questions that get in the way of fiction writing, which is why I recommend doing it early or late. Or at least, when you're feeling more free and creative. But I don't know man, do whatever works for you.

which is why I recommend doing it early or late.

Again, why would time of day affect "the sort of analytical, logical questions that get in the way" or how "free and creative" I'm feeling?

You dont notice your mood and thinking change over the course of the day? Youre able to switch instantly from something like writing code to writing fiction? If you can, great, its just not easy for most people.

You dont notice your mood and thinking change over the course of the day?

Not really. At least, not with regards to this sort of worrying — what other people tend to call "catastrophizing" and I call 'the identification of how things can fail as a necessary precondition to take the necessary measures to prevent such bad outcomes' and 'not going blithely through life with a naïve optimism that everything will just somehow work out for the best for me with no real effort on my part.'

Youre able to switch instantly from something like writing code to writing fiction?

No, because, despite ~30 years of effort, I still can't really code.

Can anyone explain to me what's happening exactly?

I decided I'm at the point in life when I can/should start "giving back". Of course, giving money is one way. But I thought I could volunteer my autist ML and Data skills too, I'm pretty sure charities all over need some numbers crunched and visualizations made. I decided to do this because me (and people with similar skills) are going to be too expensive for most charities and what I can offer will be thus relatively high leverage.

Not a single local or global charity got back to me. What gives? Do they not need numbers crunched and visualizations made? Or they just don't have the bandwidth? Or am I overestimating how much I can actually help or how much of my help is required?

As someone who works in the non-profit world, they just don't feel like they can rely on volunteers for anything more important than door-knocking campaigns. Most volunteers are incompetent, flaky, or both. Which is fine if all you're looking for are warm bodies to stand on the street corner getting people to sign a petition or something, but serious number-crunching work is not something most charities will be willing to risk on some rando. They've been burned too many times relying on whackjob retirees and volunteers who suddenly get busy and ghost halfway through projects, leaving the full-timers to work long hours cleaning up the mess.

You'll probably have more luck the smaller and more local you go. All-volunteer community organizations are going to be far more grateful for (and much more in need of) your assistance than big national-level non-profits. Or perhaps start volunteering somewhere in a more menial capacity so they can get to know you, then offering to provide more high-skilled work once some trust has been built up.

I could be mistaken, but I also have a vague memory of a website thats like a non-profit version of Fiverr where organizations who are actively looking for freelance help can go and solicit for volunteers.

You want LessWrong. Or the EA forum.

Seriously, if you're a competent programmer looking to do charitable work, I can't think of anything better, unless you want to deal with Linus I guess.

I went in for an ultrasound, and baby #3 is looking good as far as they can tell, and is a boy.

People keep asking if I'm excited, and I just look awkward, because I don't feel excited, but think it's probably the right thing to do, and that I will probably be glad to have a son later on, I hope. Nurses keep having me take depression questionnaires as a matter of course (I am not and have never been clinically depressed, but half the symptoms overlap with pregnancy, they also strongly overlap with sleep deprivation such as just after giving birth, and they like to give it to pregnant and postpartum women multiple times. I give some credence to Abigail Shrier's observation that the medical establishment likes to give depression screenings out too much, and get people who are just feeling neutral but going through physical changes to second guess that). There are no parenting questionnaires, but I can sign up to enroll in a baby brain study if I want. I feel like some of this is related to the current fertility problem.

Congratulations! I'll be looking in the news for the latest disaster related to a gender reveal party haha

Thankfully that's not a problem here, because pre-natal sex determination is illegal. Or at least it is unless you know people who know people.

Nurses keep having me take depression questionnaires as a matter of course (I am not and have never been clinically depressed, but half the symptoms overlap with pregnancy, they also strongly overlap with sleep deprivation such as just after giving birth, and they like to give it to pregnant and postpartum women multiple times

Differentiating between baby blues, postnatal depression and postnatal psychosis hurts enough that I want to crawl back into the womb, sadly my mother had a hysterectomy and I wouldn't fit in the first place. Barely did at all, the doctors scanning her diagnosed me with IUGR, but it turned out I was just a long boi.

because I don't feel excited, but think it's probably the right thing to do, and that I will probably be glad to have a son later on, I hope.

Did you want a daughter instead?

I'm ambivalent, I just tend not to feel excitement over babies in general. I want the children in the long run, but many of the parts I don't like are front loaded.

You should be proud of how forward thinking you are.

Also:

Do not circumcise. It is a horrific abuse of the rights of a person who is, at the end of the day, not your property, and whose body belongs to himself. Think critically about the arguments proponents give in favor of the practice. Remember that most of the world considers it to be a bizarre and gruesome thing to do. Obviously I could share my full set of arguments for why I believe what I believe, if for some reason you wanted to discuss it.

There is a documentary called American Circumcision which I think is good, and which is available on Kanopy, a free streaming service that comes with any US library card.

My parents say that they mutilated me because no one ever suggested that they might not do that. It supposedly never occurred to them not to do it. You won't have that excuse.

Interesting, I hadn't really thought about it. I asked my husband, and he is but doesn't mind it. Our religious tradition goes both ways, with no particular opinion on the matter. We'll consider.

Quick list of bullet points. You don't have to read them. I realize you didn't ask me to give you a summary. I understand this is perhaps a strange or unpleasant subject, but silence has historically been how a variety of horrible things have gone on for as long as they did.

  1. Sensitivity and sexual function:

  • The foreskin has densely packed nerve endings.

  • The foreskin prevents the penis from being desensitized (keratinized) by continuous contact with fabric.

  • The foreskin's gliding motion functions as a physical lubricant which is beneficial to both partners.

In most circumcised men, the most sensitive part of the penis is the circumcision scar. Most circumcised men do not realize they have a circumcision scar or what it is.

I could go on about sensitivity but you get the idea.

  1. Anesthetic:

A lot of doctors and religious functionaries don't use adequate anesthetic, or any anesthetic at all. In my case, no anesthetic was used. If Wikipedia is to be believed on this subject, "It is now accepted that the neonate responds more extensively to pain than the adult does, and that exposure to severe pain, without adequate treatment, can have long-term consequences."

  1. Risk of a botched circumcision: (somewhat speculative compared to the other two)

Here's a man talking about his botched circumcision: https://youtube.com/watch?v=n-N5XlH3DyU

(He is on the autism spectrum.)

Although circumcision proponents claim the odds of a botched circumcision are very low, there is some evidence to suggest that the risks may not be as low as suggested. A United States anti-AIDs program in Africa called PEPFAR ceased circumcising children below the age of 15 because the rate of botched circumcisions was higher than they could tolerate, and higher the younger the child was.

In the documentary American Circumcision, the suggestion is made that an infant's penis which the doctors claim was always malformed was actually disfigured by circumcision. It's been a while since I've seen it and I forget the evidence presented, but it's conceivable to me that lies of that nature exist and contribute to the supposed rate of botched circumcisions being less than actuality.

A lot of doctors in the US are sort of clueless about intact penises and give erroneous suggestions. Please be skeptical about what they tell you, and about what they don't tell you.

In most circumcised men, the most sensitive part of the penis is the circumcision scar. Most circumcised men do not realize they have a circumcision scar or what it is.

This is amazing because I was just trying to find a non-weird way to ask guys here if they had a very sensitive spot at the top of the shaft right behind the head, where the foreskin folds back to.
(There isn't really a non-weird way of asking that, is there?)

That's what the internet's for.

Yes, there are specific points around the 'ring' that are more sensitive than others.
No, it's not a surprise that the remnants of the cover will retain some of the cover's effects when that cover is amputated since that's where the nerves would normally pass through.

Honestly, cutting that piece off is as stupid as the routine tonsillectomies were, for the same reasons (apathy, anger). Penises are supposed to have that ferrule installed for the same sorts of reasons they're on fiber optic cables (so that the thing covered by that ferrule remains as sensitive [to light] as possible). Of course, since this ferrule is biological in nature, it requires maintenance (and can malfunction) for reasons and in ways similar to the female end of quick-disconnect air hoses.

Well if it's a question worth asking then it might be worth the weirdness.

@Gaashk, I wanted to, uh, toss my foreskin into the ring from the other direction and agree with Campire. I'm uncircumcised and it would take at least six figures to buy it off me.

You hear a lot more from people who wish they weren't circumcized than are glad they aren't, so hopefully it counts for something

Congratulations in any case, to the mother down the road (years, perhaps). As a dad I could never share my wife's physical upheaval during those years. Even now (when our sons are teens) I suspect in moments of the inevitable subterfuge and insolence that she feels differently than I do. "Your mother carried you in her womb for nine months, is it too much to ask that you take the goddam plates to the sink?" (I do not say this, certainly not in this way.)

I took a pause on my War and Peace reread to read some other books. I realize the critique of the "finishing quantity of books" approach to reading, but I stick to it anyway, sometimes I just need the feeling of closure. I decided I wanted to read Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches to get more insight into War and Peace and Tolstoy's philosophy, then I saw a review of Day of the Oprichnik and thought it would be fun to dive into some modern Russian Lit, then I was traveling for Easter and wanted a light physical book to read so I grabbed my wife's copy of Trust The Plan a reporting book about the QAnon world. One of the reasons I think both E-Readers and physical print has a place in the world is because of social conventions. At a town meeting where I'm not actually working while they're handling other topics but I have to sit quietly for several hours, I can get away with reading on a tablet and no one will really question it, I can at least pretend I'm working or looking at material related to the meeting; while sitting on a tablet at the beach with my in laws is kinda less social and acceptable than sitting with a book.

All three were around 200 pages, and easy reads. Thoughts on them:

-- Sevastopol Sketches is fascinating, it really is Young Tolstoy. You can feel the immediacy of the work, Tolstoy served there. You can see how the rhythms of Sevastopol, of siege, really played into his portrayal of other military campaigns, and of military life generally. My feeling on this re-read of War and Peace has been that the core theme of the work is questioning what is real. There are all these parallel forms and spheres of life in the book going on at the same time: Russian high society, the Russian peasantry, the soldiers in combat, the General staff and their politics, the intelligentsia and the intellectual world, the Freemasons and other reformists. You can see the germ of this idea forming here, the focus is purely military, but you have the same passage of officers between the town and the batteries, between life in Russia and life at the front, and decisions being made to privilege one version of life or the other, and the work questions which is real. In many ways War and Peace takes that core conflict of Sevastopol and multiplies it in fractals, adding civilian life and intellectual life and politics and secret societies. If you wanted to read Tolstoy but didn't want to tackle 1400 pages, I'd recommend it, it's a quick easy read and the characters don't suffer from being impossible to keep track of, no character-web necessary here, just a quick tight military novella.

--Day of the Oprichnik I didn't really get. It felt a lot like reading bro-lit in 2024, like Christopher Moore whose recent work I got for christmas or Chuck Pahluniuk or (I'm gonna get in trouble here) Cormac McCarthy, with the gross-out aspect of the daisy chain orgy and the rape scenes feeling kinda unnecessary. I kinda rushed through it by the end, I was getting bored by it once I realized nothing was really going to happen. Reading the Wikipedia I guess there's strong elements of satire of other Russian works I hadn't read, and symbolism rooted in Russian literature and history I didn't get. There's an interesting aspect of "was this predicting the future of eg Prighozin?" but I didn't get a ton out of it to be honest.

--Trust The Plan was ok. I'm glad I read it, but it felt so cowardly. It reminds me of how critically I read most media compared to the average person. The book covers Q from birth to present day. I feel like the overview gave me a better understanding of the ecosystem, and the vignettes of some of the criminal shit believers have gotten up to gave me a taste of just how depraved and insane some of this shit is. I came out wondering at what point Q itself comes to court as a criminal conspiracy, what with all the fugitive harboring? But I felt like the author chickened out when it came to asking the Big Questions about conspiracy theorism. Epstein gets only a passing mention, how do you talk about conspiracy theories and not mention that? The orthodox theory of conspiracy theories I remember from a million history channel documentaries growing up was that people believed conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination because they wanted it all to mean something and not just be a coincidence. At the very least, even if you believe the official Epstein story, that theory fits right in: people want to believe in a pedophile cabal because it's actually in some ways less horrifying than a single pedophile conman who could just, you know, do that. Epstein also vastly undermined the arguments against Q: Jewish financial elites aren't abusing children on secret islands, except that one time they did, but it was a one-off. Or the rest of MeToo, while the author tries to both-sides a little on conspiracy stuff, the world was suddenly full of secret-elite rapists, and Q is in many ways just a mass-hallucinatory-expansion of MeToo. Or the War in Iraq, or the Great Recession and the Subprime Crisis, all cases where elites knew something was fake and gay and going to go horribly wrong and sold the American people a line of bullshit about it.

In other personal news, I successfully completed a side-quest new year's resolution: I went swimming in the Long Island Sound in March. Just under the wire. It was so cold at 6am that at first it felt like dying, but then I'd settle in and swim a half mile. On Saturday I was alone except for two golden retrievers and their owner, it took forever to get into the water because the dogs kept looking at me going into the water and going nuts. What the fuck are you doing you idiot, it's cold!

I'm still losing weight, surprisingly Easter at the in-laws didn't derail me. I brought a single 20kg kettlebell, and did a pentathlon Easter morning, I figured the best way to honor the season was to put some holes in my hands. Maybe I'll get back on that for another season, this time last year I really enjoyed it. Hope everyone had a happy Easter.

I realize the critique of the "finishing quantity of books" approach to reading, but I stick to it anyway, sometimes I just need the feeling of closure.

I'm also breaking this rule but it has been very enjoyable. Being able to listen to audiobooks at work has paradoxically increased my reading pace by a lot. Sure you can read much faster than you can listen to someone read aloud, but 6-8 hours of slow listening each day still adds up to more than however many hours I could realistically devote to sitting down and reading after work when I'm tired and have the internet to distract me.

I'm still pessimistic about the use of audiobooks for denser stuff like history and philosophy, but another hack that works here is to bring a kindle to the gym and spend 40 minutes reading on the exercise bike. You can read between sets while lifting too (24 2-3 minute rest periods is a decent chunk of time) but I'm not confident that all the stopping and starting is good for comprehension.

I'm still pessimistic about the use of audiobooks for denser stuff like history and philosophy

It just depends what you are looking to get out of it. I've listened to plenty of non-fiction history audiobooks, and it's entertaining and I learn a lot from it, but the takeaways are going to be narrower than if I really put the effort into a book on paper. I'm not going, to by any means, memorize all the facts in an audiobook. I'm less likely to remember particular facts or names, so it varies by book. Europe's Tragedy was hard to follow on tape, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was excellent.

I'm a big audiobook guy but that tends to be a different category for me, and I still try to read in print.

I'm not going, to by any means, memorize all the facts in an audiobook

In my case, unless I set out to study it, this is also true for reading. My problem with audiobooks is more practical: I get distracted by something, the audiobook plays on regardless, I realise I've missed a few steps in the argument/missed some important turn of events and fumble about on my phone's touchscreen trying not to accidentally jump back 20 minutes. With reading getting distracted usually just means you stop reading for however long your attention is elsewhere.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was excellent

I might take your recommendation and give it a shot, I haven't noticed myself getting distracted too often with this recent run of fiction audiobooks so maybe I've just gotten used to the format over time.

I don’t know, to me the Q thing feels like an Alex Jones thing. Very rich and powerful men fucking teenage concubines is something that has always happened and probably always will. But by extension that suddenly means we have to believe in the deep religious / spiritual / satanic / conspiratorial explanation offered by QAnon? To me it seems very similar to the Kennedy assassination; something bad happens, there must be an explanation. It can’t just be that a very rich man used his immense wealth and extensive connections built up over decades to get away with fucking poor teenage Eastern European models and kids from broken homes in East Palm Beach, likely with tacit approval of intelligence to get kompromat on some powerful people. It must be this satanist thing, with satanic imagery scrawled alongside other questionable scrawled upon the walls of a DC pizza restaurant, with eschatological implications, with Deep Lore tied to a bizarre hybrid of new-world and old religious institutions.

The biggest problem with conspiracy theorists is this gish gallop of theories. It’s in the suggestion that one conspiracy being proven means that they’re all true, or at least plausible, when this isn’t the mechanism by which any hypothesis of this kind could or should possibly be judged. Most individual conspiracies are highly flimsy, but their credibility with their supporters is built on their resting, one billion miles down, on the faintest grain of truth.

I’ve always struggled to understand this gap between plausibility and reality among conspiracists. Yes, some super rich people get away with fucking teenagers. No, that doesn’t mean Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. It certainly doesn’t mean that the federal governments had aliens on ice under Area 51. It doesn’t even mean most Epstein conspiracies are true (“anyone who flew on the plane was involved” lmao these people don’t understand how rich people culture even works etc etc). He probably did kill himself, many people would in his situation facing guaranteed jail for the rest of his life, likely in complete isolation.

It reminds me of kitchen-sink conspiracy settings like Assassin’s Creed or Funcom’s largely forgotten ‘Secret World’ MMO. Believing in everything doesn’t look smart, it just makes you look goofy. The harsh reality of the age old ‘elites are molesting kids’ isn’t that they aren’t (some are), but that the rate of sexual deviancy is in fact much higher among the plebs than the elites. But, of course, that’s much less interesting.

Q I think started life as a troll, but a lot of it seemed just to perfectly viral and too “addictive” to followers over too long of a period of time to have been simply a random troll. It was pretty sophisticated, having a lot of ARG elements (codes based on capitalization of certain words, date and time stamps having a meaning, phrases repeated, etc.) as well as the repeated phrase of “we go all” which interestingly enough stopped around Jan 6 2020. Some of the sex stuff and the child adenochrome stuff seemed pretty calculated to paint the elites in question as uniquely evil and depraved, and something that would absolutely make any believer willing to take some sort of action to stop the elites. Child sex slavery and child torture are obviously meant to be provocative, and the kind of accusation that denials don’t exactly make go away.

As to why conspiracy is attractive, I’ve often held it to be a form of political and social Gnosticism. Part of the attraction is that it provides a kind of Political and Social theodicy— things are not bad because of incompetence, or individual greed, or bad incentives producing bad policies that make people worse off. It’s deliberate, THEY (whoever they may be) are doing it all on purpose. And this not only gives the impression that the problems are being produced to harm us little people, and those doing it know what they’re doing. It also give the believer the feeling of being in the know, and thus part of a secret group that gets it. This in itself is empowering as it gives the believer the idea that since a lot f people get it, that there’s a resistance movement (or maybe they actually form one). They seem more common when things seem bad and are getting worse. There weren’t a lot of conspiracies in good times, or if there were, they weren’t taken seriously. In 1990, it was UFOs probing people, maybe the government was reading your emails, but nothing seemed serious. In 2020, the government pushed a “clot shot” to depopulate the planet, and stole an election and want to confine people to one section of their city. The difference is that 2020 was worse for the average citizen than 1990.

Sure, you quickly get into the Foucault's Pendulum type stuff, and I'm not going to argue for every insane theory. It isn't even necessary to argue for Epstein conspiracy theories truth value. But we're talking about the book here.

When we're studying "Why did QAnon rise right now?" which was the premise of the book, why would we not include this very suspicious and very public thing that happened, widely cited by the primary sources as proof? It seems a very odd omission. The author seems to want to place blame purely on the believers, that they are 100% responsible for choosing to buy into Q, but at that scale we have to look at it in terms of societal causes, and ask how we can prevent it. And part of that should be, hey our institutions need to regain credibility.

As I pointed out, in some ways to the human mind a pedophile cabal is less horrifying. "Lmao you don't know rich people" is a funny gag sure, but which is worse: that the current rich people are pedos and we need to throw them out, or that rich people just don't care that he was a pedo, that they're indifferent to it? An organized moral universe is a comfort, even if it is a dark one.

less horrifying. "Lmao you don't know rich people" is a funny gag sure, but which is worse:

Worse is the ultimate horror, the one they can’t confront, which is that in every American town, in working and middle class communities across the country and the world are people who have done worse than Epstein. Bur because they’re not rich, because they’re not ‘elites’, because those who turn a blind eye to their misdeeds are commoners rather than elites, the jealousy that drives most of the outrage at those on top can’t exist, and so they’re much less interesting.

Ok depressives, hop in.

For once on this forum, I'm really going through it in my personal life. Been a tough winter. Grandparents are dying in slow motion. Marriage is imploding. PTSD is acting up. Even broke down and went to the VA to see a therapist. That was back in January, they've scheduled me to see someone to evaluate whether I should talk to a therapist sometime in May. You know, normal bureaucracy.

I'm in my mid forties and my life is coming apart at the seams.

But lads, this is my year. One way or another, it's going to end better than it began. As bad as things are right now, I am entirely confident in my ability to turn it around.

To psych myself up a bit, I want to talk about my luckiest day. The real hinge point in my life. The reason I'm talking to all of you, or to anyone at all. A dummy-rigged IED just outside Iskandaria nearly twenty years ago.

Just wasn't injured badly enough. Hadn't planned on living. I was clawing my way up the ranks of the pointy bit of the US imperial project. The whole point was to get as high as possible before my luck ended and I bled out in some dingy alleyway or Afghan hillside. My luck though, was even better.

By a combination of the vast sums of money America spends on protecting its troops, and the inferior grade explosives used by the Iraqis, the rocket that should have killed me by any rights instead fizzled. I was left “disabled”, but not enough to feel sorry for myself about. Given the options, of course.

A lot changed that day. My career was over, and with it identity and status. I wasn't going to get to die. I was going to have to live, broken. And be a civilian. Took me a few years to get my head around it. The plan was always live fast, die young.

I had to change. Adapt. Re-orient. Re-motivate. Learn new skills. I spent twenty-five years becoming someone, and then I had to become someone else.

I gotta say, it's been excellent. Even with current troubles, I've had another twenty years with my grandparents, reconciled with my parents, seen my siblings grow up and grow families of their own. Met a great woman, and we had ten good years. I've been happier (and sadder) than I ever thought possible at twenty-five.

This is all bonus round for me. I should have died a long time ago. I've been hurt worse, I've rebuilt from less.

Yes, it sucks right now. Currently at “forcing myself to leave the house” stage, and started crying in public at my boot guy's place yesterday. It's gonna be a long year, but I'll get there.

Life is pain, anyone tells you different is selling something.

You're a good writer. It's not just that the content is compelling, you're a good storyteller. I'm rooting for you.

Sorry to hear that. I had a near death experience that was much less exciting or interesting than yours, but I do sometimes think back and think about how grateful I am to live, to have lived, even if I died tomorrow, another ten excellent years. Like you I kind of have that feeling, that this is ‘bonus’, and I can’t really complain if there are tough days. I don’t mean to tell you you’re lucky, but to make it to your forties with grandparents alive is a huge blessing, even if the end is always painful.

Thanks for the sympathy.

I am lucky, in many ways. I could think of it all as bad luck, but that ignores the full range of possibilities. I know how bad things can actually get, and complaining about my relationships on the internet from my climate-controlled townhouse is far from the worst possible outcome.

That's all pretty bad, and I'm sorry to hear about it.

How do you plan on turning this year around, considering all those things? What kinds of strategies are you looking at? In short, what is the list of problems you will face and what are your solutions for solving these?

Perhaps the solutions themselves don't even really matter, and it's just the will to solve them that matters, and you've definitely shown a resolve to move forward in this post.

Life is pain, anyone tells you different is selling something

This gets at the heart of something I've been thinking about lately. As much as this forum advocates for people to have kids, I wonder why anyone would think it a good idea to do so, considering this fact. You're right. Life is pain. So why bring more in? Especially from a non-religious perspective, as I have unfortunately lost my faith entirely.

Maybe I'll ask more about this later, but I kind of dislike the idea that I would be furthering the downer feeling of these threads.

You're concentrating so much on the pain and so little on the life.

Life is pain.

Everyone is in pain, but not everyone is using it well. Exercise and getting fat both hurt. When you understand the Myth of Sisyphus, you understand the universe.

As to plans, I figure it will probably take me a few months to get everything in order for a clean break. It's a lot of work, especially in secret. I expect to be ready to file mid-summer.

Life is pain, but if you don't figure a way to understand life (including the pain) as having value/meaning/significance you're not gonna make it. That's the way I see it. Easier said than done, though.

but if you don't figure a way to understand life (including the pain) as having value/meaning/significance you're not gonna make it.

Should we "make it," though? What if life doesn't have "value/meaning/significance"? This gets back to Camus, that the real question is whether or not life is worth living. What if the answer really is "no, it's not worth it"?

Camus didn't think so, and neither do I.

You're touching on a concept that was summed up nicely in Beiser's Weltschmerz -- the problem of evil. The fact is, from a materialist lens all suffering is inexcusable. All discomfort is tragedy. When something bad happens in 20XX, we consider it a suboptimal move like we're chess engines analyzing life and trying to build the perfect path. The result is ennui. A game developer once said, "Give players the means, and they will optimize the fun out of the game". The same applies to life. Your favorite art was influenced by experiences that were almost certainly terrible. There is no Lord of the Rings without the second World War, yet if any of us were asked, "Does LOTR justify the war? Does Remarque justify the war?" none of us could answer in the affirmative. We bemoan the artificiality of the current world, but when presented with opportunities to really experience adventure, us conscientious adults shirk back in fear.

Look, the secular world view doesn't have to be this way. But when you place "comfort" as your guiding star, that's what happens. You become a chess player. You are a Hamlet in a world fashioned by Quixotes. You sit, you stand, you stare at your watch. There is nothing else to do. Hamlet is apparently terrified of death, yet he does nothing the entire play but make droll, apathetic remarks to people he doesn't care about. Is such an existence really worth protecting? Even before the old king's death, do you really imagine he lived well? No. Death was never the issue for him. Hamlet is terrified of life.

The one good thing Hamlet ever did was forced on him by complete chance. The real Hamlets of the world never have that moment. Parenthood is the one test of our ability to value something beyond ourselves. It's 2024, and everyone is failing. We're all Hamlets, and the world is dying.

Tolkien said that his LOTR wasn't an allegory for anything, including either of the world wars, but that some of his personal experience in the first World War probably slipped in. I don't know if he'd agree or disagree with the statement that LOTR wouldn't have happened without WWII, but I suspect he would want to deemphasize the connection, as he did many times when he was alive.

Source: wikipedia

Look, the secular world view doesn't have to be this way.

Doesn't it? It looks like you laid out an argument for why a materialist view will end up in this place.

We're all Hamlets, and the world is dying.

Maybe it should.

Doesn't it?

No. The materialist world is where we live, but we humans are sentient. Meaning we don't live solely in the materialist world, we interface with it through our brains, which are full of delusion and fantasy. Delusion and fantasy are how we overcome the randomness of the universe.

This is all old existentialist philosophy, with roots in stoicism. Camus said that the whole point of life was the revolt against death. To live and experience is to deny death for one more day. Through our offspring (genetic, artistic, ideological, political) we live beyond our own lives, and deny death into the future. It is our task to live our lives as seems best to us, to enjoy what we can, overcome what we cannot, and fight it out to the last.

The last act is bloody, however brave be all the rest of the play. But our own personal experiences are tiny, insignificant things, important only to us. There's six billion people breeding and fighting, all trying to get to the next stage, the next generation, into the future.

A materialist view can end up anywhere it pleases. We place comfort at the fore and abscond from reality? Our lives become mediocre and empty. You don't need fancy logic to create values here. Just look around.

A materialist view can end up anywhere it pleases.

No it can't. You can't simply summon up any arbitrary set of values out of the facts of reality.

You don't need fancy logic to create values here.

You cannot create values. Values, to be values, must be real, must come from outside us.

I disagree. Value can only come from within.

My philosophy is that value is created by sacrifice.

Things, people, institutions, are only worth what people give up to get them.

To become a better man, a greater man, you must find more to sacrifice. This is why the ancients burned their children, the ultimate evolutionary sacrifice.

There is no objective value in the Universe. The universe does not care.

Only our subjective experience imputes value to the randomness of nature.

And our subjective experience grants value to those things we give the most to get. By definition. That which is easily attainable is not valuable. Value is scarcity. Suffering is cheap. Making it produce something positive is hard.

You should read Nietzsche.

It's a line from the film The Princess Bride, which I have shown to my two sons, albeit when they were younger. A fun movie. (You may already know this )

Having written that, I admit that the line does resonate as a bitter truth, but not in any sort of complete version. For some, I have little doubt that life is almost completely pain, unforgiving, constant, merciless. I would like to think even for those people there are moments of calm, or peace, even happiness--or, if I really push it, beauty, though that may be too optimistic. And certainly I have had years, particularly my teens, where everything seemed rotten inside, people seemed rotten, false, groups even worse, all the world a shithole, full of liars and thieves and brutality. And you do not need to look far to find people, even adults, who will nod in agreement to all that.

I'm not going to attempt to lay out the glory here or convince you of life's endless bounty. But having kids--even when I know someday one or both of them may have to watch me, as I watched my own father, die in a weakened, much diminished state--provides, or has the possibility of providing (it provides me, let's say that) a great deal of seemingly boundless joy--bundled of course with pain, frustration, anger, etc. Like life itself.

I actually missed the The Princess Bride reference! I have watched the movie, and I like it, but it was quite a while ago now.

I realize, reading what you say, that I already knew that life is a vast smorgasbord of emotions. I didn't realize until now that I was quite focused on the negatives of life for at least a month now. I think what made me understand was my reaction to @roche's comment ("but that's all effort, which seems impossible; I just want to live without doing anything"). Which is something I've experienced before, but it really crept up on me this time. I can concede my brain just isn't in the right state of mind to make any solid decisions on the kid thing.

Hey man. I'm sorry. Here I was feeling mighty sorry for myself with how things have been, but while the pain of others is not a real solution for your own, perspective always helps. My problems could be much worse, and I'm sorry yours are.

Is it too late to save your marriage? Do you even want to?

If you want to talk in private, DM me, I'm by no means a legitimate psychiatrist yet, but I can at least see if the VA isn't doing the whole motril and walk it off approach to your mental problems.

Is it too late to save your marriage? Do you even want to?

Barring some highly unlikely miracle scenarios involving lightning strikes, brain tumors or religious conversion, I think so. And yes, yes I would. I would and have given damn near anything to make it work. We don't control other people. We can only control what we do in response.

This is correct, I think. I've never been a soldier, i've never had a personal near death experience, but in my lifetime I have lost a son to a childhood disease and a wife to cancer. I've been closer to elite power than I ever thought I would, and then I abandoned that as it was making me a worse person. I uprooted my life and moved to a different continent.

The person I am today is a product of all my experiences, good, bad or awful. A product of how I reacted to those experiences.

I hope things get better for you. Probably they will, but that doesn't stop them being painful in the now. If life is pain, then pain is life. The fact these things hurt shows you are alive, that you can move past the pain and emerge out the other side. Maybe not better, but perhaps at least wiser.

Good luck!

I feel you dawg. The girl I was seeing, well, we didn't end up marrying each other, but it was something we both looked forward to one day. I can only imagine how painful it would be when you already have a life together.

I suppose that while I can't help with the others, if you want you or a near and dear one to get a brain tumor, I can give decent advice.

How does one deal with envy and jealousy?

You could think about the things you have going for you, or people who have it worse than you.

Usually, I write George Bataille esque diatribes about the unrelenting awfulness of the universe.

Envy and jealousy tend to have to do with status seeking. Are you unhappy with your status relative to peers? Have you been marginalised or wronged? Is engaging in envy and jealousy helping you to improve your status? Or would you be better served setting up specific, reasonable targets for specific ways to improve your own status? To the extent it's even necessary to worry so much about this stuff - maybe you need to decrease the emotional stakes you put into this, too.

Non-productively?

A spiral into self loathing and day drinking, or taking out your rage on the object of your dissatisfaction.

Productively, as I presume you want to know?

The best way is self betterment. It's a sad fact that some people will always be strictly better than you on most criteria people, including you, care about, but the only way to handle that well is working on yourself, or at least trying to make peace with it.

Then again, envy and jealousy come in so many flavors, and we need to know what you're envious or jealous about before anyone can do more than speculate.

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