Peer is not currently ready to be a minion in any kind of stressful environment. Every authority figure he’s had so far has been of the ‘I won’t respect you unless you stand up for yourself’ type and not very sane, and as a result of that Peer has some very dysfunctional habits when it comes to interacting with such people. I’m already working on fixing that, but I expect that it will take at least a year before he’s able to deal with normal expressions of disapproval in a sane way, voluntarily communicate important information that the recipient might not like, and correctly parse the relative importance of an order given previously which was stated to be very important vs. an order given recently with more emotional weight behind it but no other statement that it’s unusually important. I’m confident he’ll get there, but it’s going to be a while. (This is also why I’m involved at all—the more neurotic aspects of this issue are painful to watch, leading me to want to try to fix it. I’m not sure if I’ll turn out to like having a minion around enough to keep one in the long term—it’s possible, but I also like living alone. In any case, Peer wants to be working for someone who’s actively involved in x-risk prevention, and I’m not.)
We’re also going to be working on practical skills; if anyone thinks they’ll be interested in taking Peer on when he’s done learning how to interact with sane people, it would be good for them to contact me about any skills they think they’d like him to gain. (My plans so far are pretty basic with a geeky twist: Cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, Lojban and/or sign language, computer hardware skills, social skills, organizational skills, etc. Peer already programs.)
Once we’ve settled into some kind of routine, I plan to set up a blog where Peer will document his progress. I’ll make a point of announcing it in the discussion section when that happens.
Peer turned out to be higher-maintenance than I expected, to the point where it obviously wasn’t going to work out. He went back home, and has been working on self-improvement there, with some amount of apparent success.
I’ve pointed this question out to him in case he wants to give more details.
Relevant details:
Peer is not currently ready to be a minion in any kind of stressful environment. Every authority figure he’s had so far has been of the ‘I won’t respect you unless you stand up for yourself’ type and not very sane, and as a result of that Peer has some very dysfunctional habits when it comes to interacting with such people. I’m already working on fixing that, but I expect that it will take at least a year before he’s able to deal with normal expressions of disapproval in a sane way, voluntarily communicate important information that the recipient might not like, and correctly parse the relative importance of an order given previously which was stated to be very important vs. an order given recently with more emotional weight behind it but no other statement that it’s unusually important. I’m confident he’ll get there, but it’s going to be a while. (This is also why I’m involved at all—the more neurotic aspects of this issue are painful to watch, leading me to want to try to fix it. I’m not sure if I’ll turn out to like having a minion around enough to keep one in the long term—it’s possible, but I also like living alone. In any case, Peer wants to be working for someone who’s actively involved in x-risk prevention, and I’m not.)
We’re also going to be working on practical skills; if anyone thinks they’ll be interested in taking Peer on when he’s done learning how to interact with sane people, it would be good for them to contact me about any skills they think they’d like him to gain. (My plans so far are pretty basic with a geeky twist: Cooking, cleaning, home maintenance, Lojban and/or sign language, computer hardware skills, social skills, organizational skills, etc. Peer already programs.)
Wow. The concept is fascinating.
Once we’ve settled into some kind of routine, I plan to set up a blog where Peer will document his progress. I’ll make a point of announcing it in the discussion section when that happens.
How’s it been going?
Peer turned out to be higher-maintenance than I expected, to the point where it obviously wasn’t going to work out. He went back home, and has been working on self-improvement there, with some amount of apparent success.
I’ve pointed this question out to him in case he wants to give more details.