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Miller comments on Ego syntonic thoughts and values - Less Wrong
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I am going to take the unflattering guess that your expectations for yourself are generally unrealistic, and that you are unwilling to face this fact. This is not a conscious thing but an emotional and subconscious expectation trained into you during childhood (possibly). Quite simply, hard work and small incremental gains are beneath you. Failures on inconsequential steps are unacceptable. If only a simple solution were found, the key would turn, and an uber-awesome-individual emerge.
Many of the subjects addressed on this very website are grandiose in nature. By involving yourself, the signal is that you can participate in them: research topics from the deepest corners of academia, immortality, fate of humanity, superior general problem solving on all subjects, etc. We flock to them because we recognize they are important, and we flatter ourselves to recognize they are important, and yet our contributions to them are negligible. Sure we can admit we are horrible at decision theory or quantum mechanics or any specific item, but there must be something that can be found that will demonstrate the grand plan that features us as the hero. Even failing at quantum mechanics is better than the guy that thinks it's a magazine that sits next to Motor Trend in the garage lobby, right?
This is narcissism spectrum stuff and very ego syntotic. It's my new hammer and everything looks like nails, so I can easily be wrong. The (unconscious) decision is ultimately between living in a false fantasy of grandeur or living in a real world where you are one of many: striving for marginal gains, and doomed to grow old and die.
The guy that wrote this is mostly describing himself, is controversial, and is substantially more screwed up than almost anyone, but tell me if it rings any bells. He goes on elsewhere to differentiate cerebral from physical varieties of narcissism. It's a word that kind of needs tabooing, but the underlying symptom is vehement subconscious guarding of a false fantasy persona. We aren't secretly Harry Potter.
I notice that you don't mention other people in any of your solutions (except #9 where you are causing an attention fueling ruckus). Why not?
Appreciated. I follow Crocker's Rules, so don't hesitate to call out my bullshit.
That rings very true. Intellectually, I've learned over the last few years how wrong this attitude is and how crucial hard work is. Also, there were things I did work hard on, say programming or writing, but this ability has essentially disappeared by now and I'm unsure why, though it very well might be because I'm getting less attention nowadays. I'll look into that.
Same goes for the link. The description is quite fitting.
This in particular gets an "Ouch! Yeah, I might be doing that, I guess... ".
However, I notice my pattern of "Oh, that's a cool idea, that must be it!", but it doesn't entail any actual improvement.
Thing is, I'm totally willing to accept that I'm fairly narcissistic and a "special snowflake", but I realize that this is causing me suffering and is not a good self-image to have. Consciously, I see the value of small improvements and how disastrous and crappy my past approach is, so I'm interested in changing that. Whatever is causing the problem, I wanna get rid of it, not "merely" understand it.
I suspected (because of MoL) that I was only changing my personality on a very superficial level, but the unconscious need for specialness and attention was unaffected and just undid my changes every time. But trying to mentally access these unconscious needs or modifying them hasn't worked out at all so far.
I have already given up hope of a silver bullet that will fix everything at once, but maybe I wasn't nearly as thorough about giving up this fantasy as I should've been. I'll try working on that.
Because I'm not very social. I don't find other people particularly interesting or helpful to be around, so I'm not. (This doesn't include appreciating all their useful outputs, but only the people themselves.) I can enjoy spending time with friends (introvert style), but actually talking to people is very boring most of the time. (And I'm no exception here. I'm nowhere near the most interesting person in the world.)
I have tried talking about my problems / finding solutions with friends, but I found it to be ultimately useless or inefficient. (I can introspect much faster alone when I don't have to explain myself all the time.) It's the general psychotherapy problem. I end up with lots of "great insights", even have fun, get some "deep emotions", but it doesn't actually change anything in the long run.