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Swimmer963 comments on The problem with too many rational memes - Less Wrong
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SOOO true about me. To the point that I sometimes end up angry and conflicted because I'm in a situation where doing one thing with upset one person, and doing another thing will upset a different person, and I literally have no option that will allow me to please everyone. Obviously situations like this are unavoidable, but a part of my brain always screams that they are not fair and then gets subconsciously annoyed at the people involved and their stupid incompatible preferences because they are preventing me from fulfilling the part of my utility function that involves "keeping everyone on your good side all the time." Even though this is obviously impossible...
I came face-to-face this year when dealing with my landlady, who believes I am practicing witchcraft against her, poisoning her with sulfur gas, etc. It became clear that my usual strategy of apologize-and-try-to-please would not work here, and that this was definitely about her and not about me. Learning to not care about her opinion of me was a new (and very useful) skill for me. Not that I deliberately provoke her, but when she's upset by things that are obviously not my fault I don't let it upset me.
Beware; history tells us that those accused of witchcraft do not fare well. Consider other accommodations.
We're moving next month. But she, like most paranoid people, is probably more of a danger to herself than us.
Yup.
I am by my nature inclined to this sort of people-pleasing as well, and it's been a lot of work over the last couple of decades to learn to resist the impulse. Part of that process involved explicitly telling myself, over and over, that (a) people who are displeased when I fail to agree with them don't deserve to be pleased, and (b) they don't actually have the ability to make me suffer if I displease them nearly as much as I make myself suffer trying not to.