'oy, girls on lw, want to get together some time?'

MBlume

2:45:24 PM Katja Grace: The main thing that puts me off in online dating profiles is lack of ambition to save the world
2:45:35 PM Katja Grace: Or do anything much
2:48:03 PM Michael Blume: *nods*
2:48:07 PM Michael Blume: this is indeed a problem
2:57:55 PM Katja Grace: Maybe there is a dating site for smart ambitious nerds somewhere
2:58:25 PM Katja Grace: Need to set up lw extension perhaps
2:59:02 PM Michael Blume: haha, yes ^^
3:00:40 PM Katja Grace: Plenty of discussion on why few girls, how to get girls, nobody ever says 'oy, girls on lw, want to get together some time?'
3:01:14 PM Michael Blume: somebody really should say that
3:01:34 PM Michael Blume: hell, I'm tempted to just copy that IM into a top-level post and click 'submit'
3:01:48 PM Katja Grace: Haha dare you to

Maybe this bit of framing will help: Do you have any clue how hard it is to find people who are in tune enough with their own values to do what they want, in the face of societal pressure? Especially when that doesn't involve something that can be justified by being useful? The fact that you can do that implies a kind of functional self-awareness that I consider very valuable, no matter how you happen to be using it at the moment.

I'm not really sure that I actually am doing what I want to do. Indeed, I don't feel as though I'm actually doing anything at all. Playing video games and surfing the Interned is simply my default setting, my ground state, and it takes some outside influence to knock me out of it. I feel as though laziness has become the defining principle of my life; I'm not so much doing what I want as refusing to do what I don't feel like doing. Ever see the movie Office Space? There's this one scene...

Peter Gibbons: I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.

Joanna: You're just not gonna go?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Joanna: Won't you get fired?

Peter Gibbons: I don't know, but I really don't like it, and, uh, I'm not gonna go.

Joanna: So you're gonna quit?

Peter Gibbons: Nuh-uh. Not really. Uh... I'm just gonna stop going.

Joanna: When did you decide all that?

Peter Gibbons: About an hour ago.

Joanna: Oh, really? About an hour ago... so you're gonna get another job?

Peter Gibbons: I don't think I'd like another job.

Joanna: Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and...

Peter Gibbons: You know, I've never really liked paying bills. I don't think I'm gonna do that, either.

That's pretty much me.

Where are you located, by the way?

Central New Jersey.

Yep, that's the mental state I thought you were in; I spent several years there, with the significant difference that I had to support myself and perhaps have a bit more inclination towards self-preservation than you do. (We seem to have similar opinions on the morality of suicide; my long-term motivation for not taking that route is simple curiosity about the future. I doubt I'd last six months if the world suddenly became predictable, no matter how many options I had for exploring that predictability.) Most people don't seem to even be aware of 'don't li... (read more)