It seems to me that since Alex is an expert on his own life, we should give his opinion that good internet peers are more valuable to him than lousy real-life peers very substantial weight. But perhaps someone with a different sort of personality would derive less value from internet peers.
Hm—thanks for the feedback. I’ve decided to edit my answers to think them out more (so that they’re hopefully more convincing—though they might not be convincing yet). Of course—this is not the goal of rationality. I’ve just realized that some of my past rationalizations suck.
I am very well aware that people generally suck at evaluating themselves (especially given sunk costs and post hoc rationalizations). But I emphatically assign an extremely high probability to getting AoK as being one of the best decisions of my life ever (some of the other things I’ve bulleted though—I actually assign lower probabilities to).
It seems to me that since Alex is an expert on his own life, we should give his opinion that good internet peers are more valuable to him than lousy real-life peers very substantial weight. But perhaps someone with a different sort of personality would derive less value from internet peers.
The OP is an expert on the facts of his own life. One of the standard LW lessons is that people tend to suck at evaluating themselves, though.
Hm—thanks for the feedback. I’ve decided to edit my answers to think them out more (so that they’re hopefully more convincing—though they might not be convincing yet). Of course—this is not the goal of rationality. I’ve just realized that some of my past rationalizations suck.
I am very well aware that people generally suck at evaluating themselves (especially given sunk costs and post hoc rationalizations). But I emphatically assign an extremely high probability to getting AoK as being one of the best decisions of my life ever (some of the other things I’ve bulleted though—I actually assign lower probabilities to).
Especially if OP has ASD. People are more tolerant of “weirdness” on the internet.