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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I recently found a simple (albeit tedious) way to dramatically improve my experience of using Twitter, to filter out the specific topics which I hate, and I want to share this method.
It's simple: just keep identifying key words which you associate with below-average tweets being shown to you (according to your personal standards), and then keep adding those words to your muted words list. (Not just key words from top-level tweets, but also key words you associate with mediocre reply tweets as well).
This is mathematically guaranteed to make your life better, as long as those key words really are commonly found in your least-favorite tweets.
I have tried repeatedly letting Twitter know about specific tweets which I am not interested in, and over time it helps, but Twitter's algorithm seems to be very determined to "push" certain kinds of tweets (probably because those tweets are associated with higher overall engagement). The only absolute way to block these tweets is to block every single plausible unique word associated with those types of tweets.
To mute words on desktop browser, go to: Home > 3 dots (...) > Settings & Support > Settings & Privacy > Privacy & Safety > Mute & Block > Muted Words > "+"
Or set up a bookmark directing to https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords
(In the app it is a similar sequence of steps.)
Then decide how long you want to mute the word. (I usually mute words forever.) If you want to block a phrase, use quotation marks "". You can also choose to not mute tweets which are replying to your own tweets.
I know it's tedious to do this, but it will save you from reading thousands of awful tweets. It pays for itself in a massive way.
Also, Twitter will tell you which reply tweets have been muted, and you can display them if you want, to double-check that you are in fact muting tweets which aren't worth reading.
This is my list of muted words so far, in case you also want to block any of the tweets with these words, or just to see what this might look like. (One annoying aspect is that you have to mute literally every single permutation of certain words and topics.)
Muted words:
"#thread" savetonotion @savetonotion @threadreaderapp threadreaderapp @rattibha @readwise readwise "action shooter" fps santos shit insurrection j6 "gaming session" "ass up" rattibha unroll "my dude" misgender misgendering "biological woman" "biological female" TERF "gender critical" mutilate mutilation "biological male" "biological man" demons demon cucked cuck carroll doge "bitcoin prize" "exclusive content" puberty transitioning transition chevy "sexual harassment" "michael obama" michelle "IRA" hexican Litecoin cryptocurrency crypto bitcoin dysphoric dysphoria cdc flu "identifies as" pedo "minor attracted" pedophile "turning points" "charlie kirk" "vaccineinjuries" "vaccineinjured" "vaccineinjury" "james cameron" mtg "january6" "january 6" "jan6" "january 6th" avatar "sexual orientation" lindell pillow mypillow espn football basketball nba nfl crapper lgbwithoutthet fauci gates schwab WEF vaccines mrna gender tran troon trans covid vax unvaccinated vaccine "prince harry" markle incel trump impeachment impeached impeach hamlin damar aella Andrew Tate Kari Lake kari Kari's tates Tate's "Tate" Cobratate cobra tate "andrew tate" "andrewtate" repukkklican Hitler nazi "p e l o s i" nigga nigger "n word" hammering hammered hammers hammer bolsonaro bolsanaro lula qanon "piece of shit" truss underwear catturd2 catturd "name is david" berkeley nudist "body counts" "body count" "jake paul" prostitute's prostitute depape's depape "peter mccullough" ligma "gave the order" pelosi's pelosi vagina penis paul pelosi "paul pelosi" wordle shapecel wordcel autogolpe
One might think I was a liberal from reading this list, but actually I am a (mostly) conservative who is just tired of certain topics and would prefer to see other things now.
Also, some of these words do sometimes show up in great tweets, but not often enough for me to put up with all the worse tweets which contain those words.
I hope this is helpful!
I'd like to say that I'm confused.
My Twitter feed is nowhere near as degenerate as yours must be, if you feel the need to roll out such filters. After I've broken it in, mine seems better than even curated Reddit at finding things I might enjoy!
I realize I was possibly overly vague about the specific ways I admire you, vectors along which I would welcome tips from you at any time, if you cared to share them-
-You seem to be more perceptive & appreciative of a wider array of cultures, than most
-You seem to be less limited by any conventional forms of identity, and more open to transformation
-You seem quite smart, and you're a very good writer
-You seem quite friendly and happy
Tips always welcome! I am sure I am not the only person here who appreciates your influence a lot.
I'd chalk this down to being a very atypical India who is quite unhappy in India. If you don't like your native culture, you can't help but try and find out more about others.
Now, over the years, I've become less of a West-aboo, especially give the rise of Wokism. I can appreciate the aspects of it I care to nurture, like liberalism; while also appreciating certain aspects of my own. Extended families, more interest in academic performance, the optional fallback of arranged marriages, all of these are things I now appreciate. But the best part of the West, and why I'm moving there, is that you have a great deal more freedom to import your own cultural mores in addition to the local ones, as opposed to cultures that are more insistent on conformity.
I've been a transhumanist ever since I was a child reading sci-fi.
Ever since I realized the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel
There's no solution for me to share here, either you are simply highly open-minded and unattached to your current form, or you aren't. You could try psychedelics if you want to try and boost your openness to experience, but that has its own risks and downsides like becoming more susceptible to woo. As a doctor, while I consider the human body as a marvel, I can also see it as the machine it is, with obvious design flaws.
Thank you! I pride myself on my writing, and being significantly smarter than average, even if it's gauche to celebrate the latter. I've never taken an explicit IQ test, but based on standarized tests, I should be at least 99th percentile in terms of IQ, or ~130, which is also around what I got the times I solved Ravens Progressive Matrices (a very large component of modern IQ testing) online or with an app. Still wish I was smarter though, and while my mom was great at art and by dad at math, when it was my turn the both canceled out, leaving me a 99.999th percentile Wordcel haha
Unfortunately, there's no real way, easy or hard, to significantly boost your intelligence at all; and humans have been trying for a good while. Of course, if you're a Mottizen, you're already a cut above average.
If you want your kids to be smart, suppress the urge to marry hot bimbos, and choose a smart partner. Rich dudes who marry trophy wives with an empty display case in their skulls are doing their kids a disservice.
As for writing, well, once again largely immutable, but with significant effort, you can improve to a degree. Additionally, writing a lot will obviously improve your quality and output. Now, you can also use GPT-4 as a writing aid, albeit for me it's often not worth the hindrance since I still think I can write better than it can if I care to.
I do my best to be nice to people until they give me good reason otherwise, be it online or IRL. This can be improved with practice, though my parents inculcated a great deal of politeness in me, and in my adulthood I've noticed you can get quite far by being kind and considerate.
Unfortunately, I am anything but happy IRL, even if my efforts to be more expressive and enthusiastic than most give that impression. I'm pretty depressed, to the point that I'm mostly just holding on till I can find a definitive cure, perhaps ketamine therapy in the UK, or electroconvulsive therapy, albeit the latter scares me due to memory loss.
Still, I do try to be nice, and mostly avoid descending into bitterness in my interpersonal relationships.
We are very lucky to have you in the West! I hope you will always be well-treated.
I dislike the lack of nuance most Westerners bring to immigration. Every person is different. There are some native Westerners I wish we would kick out, and some immigrants I would bribe to bring in. But almost nobody else wants to take things on a completely case-by-case basis.
Maybe we are both grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side types. I don't like the USA very much, but I hope it will do well for the sake of my loved ones. And for the sake of my Indian friends, I hope India will do well, too!
Powerful words!
Nice perspective :).
It shouldn't be considered gauche, IMO. A lot of high-IQ people aren't actually smart enough to celebrate it, because if it were more celebrated, it would change the culture towards encouraging people to develop their intelligence more. This would benefit society at large, and it would especially benefit the high-IQ types.
This seems to be one of many perverse tradeoffs I have observed with high IQ. High IQ people should by a narrow theory be utterly dominant, especially in an age like ours, and yet they aren't, for a variety of strange reasons like this self-abnegating tendency (including having so few children, although perhaps in the future that won't matter).
I mostly agree with you, yet I also think it's strange and can't really be true... How is it that we can change our muscular strength so much, but our intelligence so little??? What evolutionary purpose does that serve?
Not only does it seem so hard to improve overall intelligence, it seems quite hard to even change our type of intelligence.
Haha, amusing advice, and probably good advice!
I would need the help a lot more than you do, so I will try it :).
Good for you & for everyone else.
Oh no! I truly wouldn't have guessed that. I am so sorry.
I was once very depressed for many years, over a decade ago. Eventually, with enough changes to diet, sleep, exercise, beliefs, and social circles, I became much happier (but barely any smarter, which frustrates me).
My general suggestion is to keep trying new things, but to first maximize your trials with safe and highly varied experiments.
Only once you have tried all of the safe herbs, supplements, diets, beliefs, meditations, sleep aids, exercises, sunlight exposure, hobbies, people, environments, etc., should you try something like ECT, IMO. (Although maybe ECT has been improved since the version used by a highly intelligent friend of mine, which had a horrible long-term effect on her mind and didn't even make her feel any better.)
(Maybe ketamine, especially starting with a low dose, might be quite safe, I never researched it. But it seems like a weird idea to use an anesthetic to become a better person.)
Also, my experience is that lots of 0.1%-3% improvements will add up to a huge and resilient overall improvement. Small improvements really are enough, and a more diverse set of experiments and solutions yields far more self-awareness.
Unless I have a severe accident, I doubt I could ever be severely depressed again. For other people, if their pill stops working they are SOL, and they won't understand themselves any better than they did before.
That is admirable. It shows you still have fight in you, and standards.
Thank you!
On the topic of why intelligence isn't easy or even merely difficult to improve:
Unlike larger muscles, more intelligence didn't have any inherent downsides in the ancestral environment. Today, smarter people are more likely to end up in dysgenic IQ shredders like cities, or simply have less children, but that wasn't really the case before.
If you go from being a normal dude to being absolutely jacked, your basal metabolic rate can go from like 2500 to 4000, which is absolutely massive. That's even leaving aside exercise. In earlier times, when we weren't effectively post scarcity for calories, if being twice as strong didn't allow you to get literally twice as much food, you're going to starve to death while a scrawny dude might scrape by.
Thus, our bodies are programmed such that they refuse to hold onto to extra muscle unless it's being both actively used and well fed.
On the other hand, both Einstein and a village idiot have nigh identical brains that born burn 20 watts regardless of whether they're deriving E=mc^2, or going ooga booga.
In genetics, there's strong evidence that intelligence is a consequence of health, that every deleterious mutation decreases intelligence and there are very few mutations that increase it. The greater the mutational load, the lower the IQ. If you had an cloning machine that could create an individual who had the literal average of everyone's genes, they'd likely be significantly smarter than the average person because the errors would be canceled put.
(Brain size is a component, but that's the gist of it)
Since intelligence is so useful, there have been strong evolutionary pressures to increase it, such that the low hanging fruit has been long plucked by evolution itself. Most pharmaceutical aids are simply tradeoffs, such as Adderall increasing focus but decreasing creativity.
IQ scores can be increased by practise or education, but only to a small degree. That's because IQ, while a very good proxy got intelligence, is still a proxy that can be gamed. But the gains are limited, you can't take a 100 IQ person and get them to score 140 no matter how much you train them, and I doubt they could make 120 either. So in practise and reality, intelligence is largely immutable after birth.
Thank you for probably the most informative reply comment I've ever gotten online!
These reasons satisfactorily explain to me why it is so hard to become more intelligent, thank you.
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