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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have any of you ever ended a friendship with someone due to them becoming epistemically closed off?
What really irks me here is someone that has started to selectively understanding/not understanding very obvious things in order to support his own positions (on everything from politics to his personal life). It's like he's become a conspiracy nut, only the conspiracy is that he is always correct about things. New data emerging only ever reinforces his viewpoints.
Yes, broadly. Is he conforming perfectly to some party line or other ideologically, and just doing whatever he wants to do personally?
What is he DOING in his interpersonal relationships?
Got specific examples? When I've seen this, they're generally doing a bit to get laid/advance themselves socially or professionally. They don't care about ideas for the sake of ideas, it only matters what's popular or useful in the moment.
He is tiredly following some "radical" political axioms, not particularly tied to a political party, but it's not very convincing, not the least because if those politics ever inconveniences him in any way he'll find rationalisations to do whatever is convenient to him instead.
More than anything I feel like he has checked out and is actively and blindly defending his biases as truth because that is mentally comfortable.
This rings true but I don't think there is any particular goal beyond lazy self aggradisment and a general checking out of intellectual curiosity and rigor. He just wants to dunk on "political opponents" and other enemies, as well as have a comfortable existence, without caring about anyone else (which is ironic given his stated politics). He doesn't even care if he is correct or not anymore, the thinnest veneer of an argument is enough, he's essentially clapping for his own applause lights.
Perhaps we're just getting old and this is how it's going to be with more and more people going forward for my generation. Perhaps it's happening to me as well.
Or maybe he is getting depressed and this is a part of broadly losing interest in life.
Sorry, I don't want to dox myself to this person if they're reading.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link