Dr_Manhattan comments on Insufficiently Awesome - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Cayenne 19 April 2011 07:28PM

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Comment author: D_Malik 20 April 2011 05:35:13PM *  74 points [-]

Oh MAN, I had a big long list here somewhere...

  • Frequently expose myself to shocking/horrific pictures, so that I am generally less sensitive. I've been doing this for a while, watching horror movies while doing cardio exercise, and it's been going well. One might also try pulling pics from (WARNING) shock sites and using spaced repetition to schedule exposures.
  • Become insensitive to exposure to cold water by, for example, frequently taking cold showers or ice baths. This apparently helps with weight-loss as well. I've done this with immense success. After you've practised this, you will literally feel like some weird heat is being generated from someplace inside you when are exposed to cold water, and not feel cold at all. See here.
  • Become awesome at mental math. I've been practising squaring two-digit numbers mentally for some time (school, what can I say) and I'm really good at it.
  • Learn mnemonics. I was fortunate to teach myself this early and it has been insanely useful. Practise by memorizing and rehearsing something, like the periodic table or the capitals of all nations or your multiplication tables up to 30x30 or whatever.
  • Practise visualization, i.e. seeing things that aren't there. Apparently some people lack this ability, and I don't know how susceptible this is to training, so YMMV. Try inventing massive palaces mentally and walking through them mentally when bored. This can be used for memorization (method of loci).
  • Research n-back and start doing it regularly.
  • Learn to do lucid dreaming. Besides being awesome in and of itself, this can help you practise things or experience weird stuff.
  • Learn symbolic shorthand. I recommend Gregg. I did this in my second year of high school, and it's damn useful for actually writing stuff and taking notes as well as as a conversation starter.
  • Look at the structure of conlangs like Esperanto and Lojban and Ilaksh. I feel like this is mind-expanding, like I have a better sense of how language and communication and thought works after being exposed to this.
  • Learn to stay absolutely still for extended periods of time; convince onlookers that you are dead. Being in school means you have ample opportunity for practice.
  • Learn to teach yourself stuff. Almost everything you can learn at high school or university can be taught better by a good textbook than by a good teacher (IMO, of course). You can get any good textbook on the internet.
  • Live out of your car for a while, or go homeless by choice.
  • Can you learn to be pitch-perfect? Anyway, generally learn more about music.
  • Exercise. Consider 'cheating' with creatine or something. Creatine is also good for mental function for vegetarians. If you want to jump over cars, try plyometrics.
  • Eat healthily. This has become a habit for me. Forbid yourself from eating anything for which a more healthy alternative exists (eg., no more white rice (wild rice is better), no more white bread, no more soda, etc.). Look into alternative diets; learn to fast.
  • Self-discipline in general. Apparently this is practisable. Eliminate comforting lies like that giving in just this once will make it easier to carry on working. Tell yourself that you never 'deserve' a long-term-destructive reward for doing what you must, that doing what you must is just business as usual. Realize that the part of your brain that wants you to fall to temptation can't think long-term - so use the disciplined part of your brain to keep a temporal distance between yourself and short-term-gain-long-term-loss things. In other words, set stuff up so you're not easy prey to hyperbolic discounting.
  • Learn not just to cope socially, but to be the life of the party. Maybe learn the PUA stuff.
  • That said, learn to not care what other people think when it's not for your long-term benefit. Much of social interaction is mental masturbation, it feels nice and conforming so you do it. From HP and the MOR:

    For now I'll just note that it's dangerous to worry about what other people think on instinct, because you actually care, not as a matter of cold-blooded calculation. Remember, I was beaten and bullied by older Slytherins for fifteen minutes, and afterward I stood up and graciously forgave them. Just like the good and virtuous Boy-Who-Lived ought to do. But my cold-blooded calculations, Draco, tell me that I have no use for the dumbest idiots in Slytherin, since I don't own a pet snake. So I have no reason to care what they think about how I conduct my duel with Hermione Granger.

  • Learn to pick locks. If you want to seem awesome, bring padlocks with you and practise this in public :P

  • Learn how to walk without making a sound.
  • Learn to control your voice. Learn to project like an actress. PUAs have also written on this.
  • Do you know what a wombat looks like, or where your pancreas is? Learn basic biology, chemistry, physics, programming, etc.. There's so much low-hanging fruit.
  • Learn to count cards, like for blackjack. Because what-would-James-Bond-do, that's why! (Actually, in the books Bond is stupidly superstitious about, for example, roulette rolls.)
  • Learn to play lots of games (well?). There are lots of interesting things out there, including modern inventions like Y and Hive that you can play online.
  • Learn magic. There are lots of books about this.
  • Learn to write well, as someone else here said.
  • Get interesting quotes, pictures etc. and expose yourself to them with spaced repetition. After a while, will you start to see the patterns, to become more 'used to reality'?
  • Learn to type faster. Try alternate keyboard layouts, like Dvorak.
  • Try to make your senses funky. Wear a blindfold for a week straight, or wear goggles that turn everything a shade of red or turn everything upside-down or an eye patch that takes away your depth-sense. Do this for six months, or however long it takes to get used to them. Then, of course, take them off. The when you're used to not having your goggles on, put them on again. You can also do this on a smaller scale, by flipping your screen orientation or putting your mouse on the other side or whatnot.
  • Become ambidextrous. Commit to tying your dominant hand to your back for a week.
  • Humans have magnetite deposits in the ethmoid bone of their noses. Other animals use this for sensing direction; can humans learn it?
  • Some blind people have learned to echolocate. Seriously.
  • Learn how to tie various knots. This is useless but awesome.
  • Wear one of those belts that tells you which way north is. Keep it on until you are homing pigeon.
  • Learn self-defence.
  • Learn wilderness survival. Plently of books on the net about this.
  • Learn first aid. This is one of those things that's best not self-taught from a textbook.
  • Learn more computer stuff. Learn to program, then learn more programming languages and how to use e.g. the Linux coreutils. Use dwm. Learn to hack. Learn some weird programming languages. If you're actually using programming in your job, though, make sure you're scarily awesome at at least one language.
  • Learn basic physical feats like handstands, somersaults, etc..
  • Polyphasic sleep?
  • Use all the dead time you have lying around. Constantly do mental math in your head, or flex all your muscles all the time, or whatever. All that limits you is your own weakness of will.

So anyway, that's my idea-dump. Tsuyoku naritai.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 23 April 2011 01:49:52AM 2 points [-]

Frequently expose myself to shocking/horrific pictures, so that I am generally less sensitive. I've been doing this for a while, watching horror movies while doing cardio exercise, and it's been going well. One might also try pulling pics from (WARNING) shock sites and using spaced repetition to schedule exposures.

Just curious what the benefit is.

Comment author: D_Malik 23 April 2011 11:22:54AM 4 points [-]

I was thinking it might generally help you to suppress your emotions, which I think is the key to success in many areas. Watching a horror movie is a conflict between your caveman-brain screaming at you to run and your rational brain telling you not to. If you can listen to reason rather than instinct on this, perhaps you will be better able to do so when faced with other situations. For example, if you are in a religious community your instinct tells you to conform, whereas your reason (hopefully) tells you the religion is false.

I also think it might help with general rationality - it's not good to have massive holes in your mental map where there are things you're too scared to think about.

Ironically, ever since I've started watching horror movies, I haven't had a single nightmare, whereas I used to have them rather often.

Comment author: Cayenne 23 April 2011 02:08:30PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not sure that this is the best way to do this. Feeling revulsion about things seems like a useful survival trait.

Controlling your emotions is probably better-taught by participating in an adult-literacy program, or voice-only technical support

Edit - please disregard this post

Comment author: gwern 12 July 2011 01:03:01AM 6 points [-]

It may be a useful survival trait in some sense, but it's not useful in others. Often I run into situations where people lose their heads over something that is not a real issue.

"EEWW!" "Oh, the bucket is full of maggots? OK, let's go dump it in the woods." "Oh, I couldn't possibly do that! EEWW!"

Or people will freak out over some feces or urine, and stand around discussing how disgusting it is rather than just cleaning it up.

I imagine doctors have similar opinions about normal people and blood (not a reflex I've had much luck with controlling consciously).

More importantly, this is a kind of mindfulness meditation, which generalizes - if you can step back from maggots or feces and ask yourself 'is this really something to be perturbed by?', then surely you can do the same for many other issues. (I have read that sometimes Buddhists or Hindus would meditate in front of rotting corpses, but that's probably taking it a bit too far.)

Comment author: D_Malik 23 April 2011 06:28:48PM 1 point [-]

Feeling revulsion about things seems like a useful survival trait.

I'm not planning to lose my sense of revulsion any time soon, only to become able to ignore/suppress emotions when they're not useful, like when deciding on a charity to sponsor or whether to eat revolting celery or non-revolting cupcakes.

Controlling your emotions is probably better-taught by participating in an adult- literacy program, or voice-only technical support

Horror movies are entertaining, and if you have cardio equipment you can easily do 2 hours of exercise painlessly while watching one. If you already use spaced repetition, it might take at most 10 hours total over the course of your lifetime to get a hundred shock pictures and rate the due ones daily for how much you flinched when you saw them.

The first option in particular seems orders of magnitude more efficient than spending hours answering boring tech-support calls for low pay.

Comment author: Cayenne 24 April 2011 04:55:55AM *  0 points [-]

Oh, nono. I didn't mean for low pay, I meant for free. Sorry about that. A senior citizen computer program would also work well for the same reasons (immediate feedback about communication)

Working or volunteering at a rest home might be even better. Controlling revulsion might be useful, but controlling frustration and helplessness may be even more useful.

Edit - please disregard this post

Comment author: Kimber1234 18 April 2015 06:01:25PM 2 points [-]

Just the image of the OP doing situps while watching ISIS propaganda is so very Patrick Bateman in American Psycho...