I haven’t been barred from the IDF entirely. They gave me the option of volunteer service with limited qualifications. As far as I’m concerned this defeats my purpose entirely.
As far as I’m concerned this defeats my purpose entirely.
Your purpose is what? Why is it so important to you to enter the IDF?
Misdiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome is ruining my life.
Catastrophic self talk is a sign and a generator of depression.
There has to be something wrong with this, some way that I can appeal.
No there doesn’t. Sometimes, you just lose. Sometimes, you don’t get what you want. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be fair. Shit happens.
But it doesn’t have to mean that your life is ruined.
I just have no idea where to turn, no idea how to do anything, and have no allies whatsoever. I feel like my life is collapsing,
Feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. Feeling alone. Feeling like something horrible is coming, and you can’t prevent it.
These are all the marks of depression.
Did you read HPMOR? Do you remember when Harry figured out that he was under the Dementor’s influence?
It was too late for him, he’d already sunk too far, he’d never be able to cast the Patronus Charm now—
His life was ruined.
That may be the Dementation talking rather than an accurate estimate, observed the logical part of himself, habits that had been encoded into sheer reflex, requiring no energy to activate.
Think of the Dementors’ fear as a cognitive bias, and try to overcome it the way you would overcome any other cognitive bias. Your hopeless feelings may not indicate that the situation is actually hopeless. It may only indicate that you are in the presence of Dementors. All negative emotions and pessimistic estimates must now be considered suspect, fallacious until proven valid.
I suspect that symptoms of depression may be rather frequent among rationalists.
Most people are more optimistic than would be epistemically rational; they systematically underestimate the risks and overestimate their abilities. However, this kind of bias may be instrumentally useful: it makes people do things, even if most of the things will not bring the outcome they imagine. Because of some quirks of human brain, people who perceive reality better often have problem to motivate themselves. This hypothesis is called depressive realism.
But I believe that is just a part of the story, and maybe the less important part. It is the part of the story that fits into the just-world narrative. You get something (precision), you lose something (motivation), the harmony in the universe is restored.
The other part of the story is that better epistemic rationality can bring you some social problems. If your friends are not interested in being epistemically rational, you will feel alone with your thoughts. If you perceive how things can go wrong, and others deny it, of couse you see a danger where they don’t. The danger is real, the helplessness is real (if a larger cooperation is needed to prevent the danger), the feeling of being alone (in your mental landscape) is real.
I am not merely using different words here. Here is the anticipated experience: -- If we create a rationalist community in real world; under the hypothesis of depressive realism, nothing should change. Putting more depressive people together should probably just make things worse, as they would confirm each other’s depressive thoughts. But under the hypothesis of “epistemically rational people are alone, there are real problems, and the cooperation is needed to overcome them”, rational people in a rationalist community would be more happy, because they wouldn’t be alone, could make other people see the same problems, and could cooperate in overcoming them.
(I also consider it likely that LW readers could actually come from both groups. If we would bring all of them to one village, some of them would focus on debating the end-of-the-world scenarios, and some of them would focus on becoming stronger and changing the world.)
Most people are more optimistic than would be epistemically rational; they systematically underestimate the risks and overestimate their abilities. However, this kind of bias may be instrumentally useful: it makes people do things, even if most of the things will not bring the outcome they imagine. Because of some quirks of human brain, people who perceive reality better often have problem to motivate themselves. This hypothesis is called depressive realism.
But I believe that is just a part of the story, and maybe the less important part. It is the part of the story that fits into the just-world narrative. You get something (precision), you lose something (motivation), the harmony in the universe is restored.
The other part of the story is that better epistemic rationality can bring you some social problems. If your friends are not interested in being epistemically rational, you will feel alone with your thoughts. If you perceive how things can go wrong, and others deny it, of couse you see a danger where they don’t. The danger is real, the helplessness is real (if a larger cooperation is needed to prevent the danger), the feeling of being alone (in your mental landscape) is real.
However, this kind of bias may be instrumentally useful:
I agree, but I think there is another bias at work—not understanding one’s own motivations. In this case, Zohar doesn’t seem to understand why exactly he wants to be inducted so badly. People have a tendency to choose the most flattering explanations for their own actions and desires and believe them. Or at least to avoid thinking about the unflattering but likely true motivations.
(In this case, I suspect what’s really going on is that Zohar is worried that he has serious mental problems and the IDF is basically the bearer of bad news. )
Anyway, in life it is often useful to conceal your true motivations from other people. Not only that, there are times it might be helpful to conceal your true motivations from yourself.
Addressing the motivations of him directly when he makes a choice to not be open about them would be bad form.
But in general people are seldom completly open when they speak about personal issues on the internet. I also do have a mental model of him and in general of why people want to go to the armed forces.
Addressing the motivations of him directly when he makes a choice to not be open about them would be bad form.
But you just did that. If you don’t want to discuss his motivations, fine. But in that case you shouldn’t contradict my hypothesis.
But in general people are seldom completly open when they speak about personal issues on the internet.
Agree. Did I suggest otherwise?
I also do have a mental model of him and in general of why people want to go to the armed forces.
Well you also need to have a mental model of why people say they want to go into the armed forces. But you don’t want to discuss it—fine. My point stands.
Anyway, if you want to engage with me you will need to be clear about your position. If you play “hide the ball” again I’m going to close things out pretty quickly this time.
After having explored in detail the doctor’s possible motivations, I think this discussion has reached the point where, in order to give you any actually useful advice, we’re going to need to know your motivations. Exactly why do you want to enter the army?
One more point. Clearly they suspect more than just Aspergers, given their guidelines.
Also, what’s wrong with volunteering for National Civil Service?
I haven’t been barred from the IDF entirely. They gave me the option of volunteer service with limited qualifications. As far as I’m concerned this defeats my purpose entirely.
Your purpose is what? Why is it so important to you to enter the IDF?
Catastrophic self talk is a sign and a generator of depression.
No there doesn’t. Sometimes, you just lose. Sometimes, you don’t get what you want. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be fair. Shit happens.
But it doesn’t have to mean that your life is ruined.
Feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. Feeling alone. Feeling like something horrible is coming, and you can’t prevent it.
These are all the marks of depression.
Did you read HPMOR? Do you remember when Harry figured out that he was under the Dementor’s influence?
His life was ruined.
I suspect that symptoms of depression may be rather frequent among rationalists.
Most people are more optimistic than would be epistemically rational; they systematically underestimate the risks and overestimate their abilities. However, this kind of bias may be instrumentally useful: it makes people do things, even if most of the things will not bring the outcome they imagine. Because of some quirks of human brain, people who perceive reality better often have problem to motivate themselves. This hypothesis is called depressive realism.
But I believe that is just a part of the story, and maybe the less important part. It is the part of the story that fits into the just-world narrative. You get something (precision), you lose something (motivation), the harmony in the universe is restored.
The other part of the story is that better epistemic rationality can bring you some social problems. If your friends are not interested in being epistemically rational, you will feel alone with your thoughts. If you perceive how things can go wrong, and others deny it, of couse you see a danger where they don’t. The danger is real, the helplessness is real (if a larger cooperation is needed to prevent the danger), the feeling of being alone (in your mental landscape) is real.
I am not merely using different words here. Here is the anticipated experience: -- If we create a rationalist community in real world; under the hypothesis of depressive realism, nothing should change. Putting more depressive people together should probably just make things worse, as they would confirm each other’s depressive thoughts. But under the hypothesis of “epistemically rational people are alone, there are real problems, and the cooperation is needed to overcome them”, rational people in a rationalist community would be more happy, because they wouldn’t be alone, could make other people see the same problems, and could cooperate in overcoming them.
(I also consider it likely that LW readers could actually come from both groups. If we would bring all of them to one village, some of them would focus on debating the end-of-the-world scenarios, and some of them would focus on becoming stronger and changing the world.)
Story of my life.
I agree, but I think there is another bias at work—not understanding one’s own motivations. In this case, Zohar doesn’t seem to understand why exactly he wants to be inducted so badly. People have a tendency to choose the most flattering explanations for their own actions and desires and believe them. Or at least to avoid thinking about the unflattering but likely true motivations.
(In this case, I suspect what’s really going on is that Zohar is worried that he has serious mental problems and the IDF is basically the bearer of bad news. )
Anyway, in life it is often useful to conceal your true motivations from other people. Not only that, there are times it might be helpful to conceal your true motivations from yourself.
I don’t think that’s the case. It’s rather that he’s reluctant to publically state them on LW.
Why do you think so?
Addressing the motivations of him directly when he makes a choice to not be open about them would be bad form.
But in general people are seldom completly open when they speak about personal issues on the internet. I also do have a mental model of him and in general of why people want to go to the armed forces.
But you just did that. If you don’t want to discuss his motivations, fine. But in that case you shouldn’t contradict my hypothesis.
Agree. Did I suggest otherwise?
Well you also need to have a mental model of why people say they want to go into the armed forces. But you don’t want to discuss it—fine. My point stands.
Anyway, if you want to engage with me you will need to be clear about your position. If you play “hide the ball” again I’m going to close things out pretty quickly this time.
After having explored in detail the doctor’s possible motivations, I think this discussion has reached the point where, in order to give you any actually useful advice, we’re going to need to know your motivations. Exactly why do you want to enter the army?