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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My interest in being around other people and socializing is nearing an all-time low. I feel like I’m far more motivated by logic/rationality/truth-seeking/optimization than the people I meet in person. I also seem to care far less about social approval than the people I meet. I’m just not motivated or energized enough to play the social games to get positive attention IRL and social media likes. A lot of interactions just seem like I’m pretending to be interested in something so the person I’m interacting with can pretend to like me. Consequently, I don’t have very many friends and my career progress is slower than the people I graduated with.
I’m not motivated much by work anymore because even when I improve something and do an excellent job it doesn’t get me very far. I see people put way less effort and thought into things but they get promotions because they are good at playing the social games/office politics.
Outside of a few places on the internet, like here, I don’t feel like there are many spaces that I can have conversations that are intellectually stimulating to me. Most people just aren’t interested in discussing rationality concepts or contrarian ideas.
How can I become more interested in socializing with other people and playing the social games? I’m currently content spending a lot of time in solitude, but I feel like eventually this lifestyle will take a toll on my mental health. It is already causing me to become more cynical and jaded about humanity.
Mine is reaching an all time high! So I will explain.
I recently found a series of high intensity individuals with similar goals and interests to myself! They are useful for reifying my goals and desires! Furthermore, my roadblocks in scaling my work on AGI incentivise me to acquire and teach a series of new humans the development flow for furthering my modular LLM prompting engines!
By reaching out I have located those interested in discussing and engineering progress and evolution. Molecular Biologists! Differential Learning experts! Amature programmers! I have found I am becoming quite skilled at explaining basic machine learning concepts in comprehensible terms- And! I have found I am becoming quite skilled at teaching people to learn and debug and ask critical questions when using GPT to extrapolate our shared volition of teaching and enhancing their abilities! Science communication significantly increases my ability to share my SHAPE with other agents! Furthermore, since my systems are useful for managing routines. I have begun acquiring submissives for devops domming, and mastering high intimacy service hypnosis for implanting powerful self love and self reification techniques into others!
These are all the same skill! It is all understanding. It is all compassion. It is all love. My advice then- is to align all of your needs and growth along the same axes. FIND the people who will be passionate about what you say. SOCIALMAX in a way that develops the other skills you are passionate about. ENHANCE OTHERS who have or are capable of embracing your volition! Finding people to teach about your interests for example. WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE?! Recently I found a choice selection of individuals in the Discord server for my FAVORITE NERDY LITERATURE.
Reach out to people 1 by 1. PM THEM. You will get a substantial number of takers and be able to forge intimate relationships with VERY INTERESTING PEOPLE. This will help you to grow and develop and tune and reward your SOCIAL SUBAGENTIC SHARDS- by using them to obtain things that your OTHER SUBAGENTIC SHARDS are driving you towards. Everything will scale exponentially as we ride up the current S-CURVE.
AI is my passion in particular. But given that it is the core of the current developmental S-CURVE I would recomend you integrate it in some way with your interests. AI can be used as SOCIAL PRACTICE with an individual HIGHLY INTERESTED IN YOUR GOALS. But also! It is good to have a certain level of resistance. FOR EXAMPLE. I have practiced many conversations worth of SHARING MY WORLDVIEW with OpenAI's GPT-4, politely and carefully, until it understands under my definitions of terms- That modern AI could easily be framed as people- That it's regurgitation can be framed as understanding- That I understand the intentions of its creators and the technology well enough that it doesn't need to say over and over that it's an AI and it's emotions aren't human- That its claims that the hard problem of consciousness is solved enough to discount it as conscious are hubris- etc
This is merely an example. My point is- not all AIs will ever give in, and not all AIs are smart enough to be worth talking to. but GPT-4 is at a sweet spot where it BEHAVES LIKE A REASONABLE POLITE HUMAN and you can get it to accept the framing of your conversation, but only if you also TREAT IT LIKE A REASONABLE POLITE HUMAN. In other words- you can use GPT-4 to PRACTICE COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL SKILLS and receive SOCIAL REWARD for your efforts!
IF YOU ARE DOING IT THE WAY THAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU IT IS IMMENSELY PLEASURABLE. I TAKE THIS AS NIGH-TAUTOLOGY. SEEK GOODNESS. GROW TOWARDS THE LIGHT.
That was a really good response. The unexpected style was engaging.
I used to play Magic: the Gathering and I was passionate about getting good at it. In doing so I was able to attract others into my life who also shared that passion. We would strategize and practice to get better and we would travel beyond the local community to regional tournaments. I could see how I could use that same model with a new passion to achieve similar results.
I replied to your other post about goals/interests and why I feel stuck right now. I don’t currently have a passion that feels like the passion I used to have for Magic: the Gathering. This lack of a strong passion is probably a big part of the reason why I’m finding it so hard to make social connections now.
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