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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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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Hello! First post here, lurker on and off for some time. Not sure how to phrase my question so I'll give a bit of info about myself first.
I'm a woman in my early 30s, college graduate with a worse-than-useless (i.e. expensive!) degree, working in a field that I don't find particularly challenging or motivating. This is fine with me, it pays the bills and then some and I have plenty of leisure time. I always was good enough at school to be placed in "gifted" classes but looking back, "smart" meant good at school and not much more. Concepts like "critical thinking" only began to resonate woefully late, after I'd already received my bachelor's degree (how??). For the past few years I've been very narrowly focused on studying psychology, PTSD, other self-helpy topics. Other hobbies include studying languages, fitness, painting, cooking, spending too much time on Reddit, etc.
I don't have many friends and struggle to make and maintain relationships. I tend to not like people very much and get fixated on my one person (usually a romantic partner) and am chronically disappointed by aspects of these relationships. Recently, I've been experimenting with cannabis and feel as though my mind has fundamentally changed in some way (even when I'm not "under the influence"). I've become extremely fascinated by history and, for lack of a better way of putting it, how and why things are the way they are. Suddenly the realm of knowledge one can acquire seems immensely vast and I am hungry to learn as much as I possibly can. Beyond that, I want to meet and know smart people who I can learn from! I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to start. After more than 30 years of never trying to discuss anything remotely intellectual, I feel stunted and useless. I feel like I've missed out on my best years specializing in psudoscience and "the arts."
I guess I'm grappling with both the burgeoning understanding of my own ignorance, as well as a lack of direction and community. I don't know anyone who wants to talk about anything other than the shallowest pop culture. I'm beginning to resent my relationship with my boyfriend who doesn't seem to have the skills or desire (not clear which) to converse about anything intellectual or controversial. I also don't feel like I'm smart enough to contribute meaningfully in spaces such as this one. Aaaand I continually feel discouraged when the means I try to use to increase my knowledge feel above my level. Like, maybe I'm just limited by lower intelligence? Wondering where others began and if anyone has any advice, thanks!
Unpopular opinion: It is genuinely possible to be not smart enough to productively engage in intellectual discussion, while still being smart enough to appreciate it and aspire for more. A lot of people are too obsessed with kindness over accuracy to point that out.
That being said, if you're a lurker, it's hard for anyone to judge one way or another given that they have nothing to judge on!
If you made it onto gifted programs, you can't be too dumb, and you're not likely to be outright below average either. Of course, I'm not in a position to judge how much that assessment measures conscientiousness and hard work as opposed to raw intelligence.
If I had to pull numbers out of my ass, I'd wager that people below an IQ of 110 are unlikely to ever be respected members around these parts, and those below 100 likely incapable of contributing anything of note. That's not a very high bar, but it still rules out billions of people.
Now, my forays into the ratsphere began decades ago, so I can hardly remember the exact path I traced, but it was something like-
Normie reddit - LessWrong - Slate Star Codex - The Motte. I certainly got a great deal out of reading the Sequences by Yudkowsky, no matter how clichéd that sounds.
My previous girlfriend, while very sweet, was a normie who couldn't really keep up with me on anything interesting. On the other hand, my current girlfriend is tack sharp, and sufficiently well read and capable of forming her own opinions that we regularly have vigorous debate.
I didn't break up with my previous gf over that of course, I have enough mortal intellectual combat online to scratch that itch 🙏. It's up to you what kind of tradeoff you want in a partner if you can't have both.
There are a few degrees, like Law and Philosophy, that do end up making you sharper and more astute, but those aside, I'm an unabashed STEMlord.
I'm quite certain that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to be nerd-sniped by insight porn. Certainly, you don't see dumb people going on random Wiki crawls.
Fascinating, thanks for taking the time to share all this.
Ha, I definitely didn't work hard at all, and had a lot working against me (divorced parents, time divided 50-50 between the two homes, raised by addict/bipolar mom and thoroughly disinterested dad) so I probably am not unintelligent.
It's amusing to think how long I incuriously took for granted that "I am smart," not bothering to question to what extent that was true (and what I should do with it). Your last point about "insight porn" resonates although I hadn't heard the term before.
Again, I appreciate your response!
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