johnswentworth comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 01 November 2014 11:12:29PM *  19 points [-]

Personality problems and pattern ordered by difficulty to change according to Seligman:

  • Panic - Curable

  • Specific Phobias - Almost Curable

  • Sexual Dysfunctions - Marked Relief

  • Social Phobia - Moderate Relief

  • Agoraphobia - Moderate Relief

  • Depression - Moderate Relief

  • Sex Role - Moderate Change

  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Moderate/Mild Relief

  • Sexual Preferences - Moderate/Mild Cange [*]

  • Anger - Mild/Moderate Relief

  • Everyday Anxiety - Mild/Moderate Relief

  • Alcohol Dependency - Mild Relief

  • Overweight - Temporary Change

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - Marginal Relief [except for rape which shows Moderate Relief]

  • Sexual Orientation - Probably Unchangeable [*]

  • Sexual Identity - Unchangeable [*]

From 'What You Can Change and What You Can't*' by Seligman pg. 244 of the reviewed ('vintage') edition of 2006, explicitly confirmed to be still state of the art.

Just read the book and thought this table to be quite quote-worthy even though it isn't prosaic.

* These terms have specific and possibly somewhat non-standard definitions in the book. Seligman gives a convincing theory for formation of aspects of sexuality of different 'depth' (a core concept of Seligman) based on biological facts around expression of genes and hormones. See chapter 11.

Comment author: johnswentworth 03 November 2014 02:41:11AM 21 points [-]

Someone should write a post called "Open Problems in Self-Improvement".

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 03 November 2014 06:49:05AM 1 point [-]

Maybe you? Apparently you have some specific Open Problems in mind - I don't. Could you spell them out?

Comment author: johnswentworth 05 November 2014 06:45:01AM 11 points [-]

Alas, no. I just saw the bottom half of that list and my physicist instincts said "ah, some nice person has provided a list of interesting and difficult unsolved problems".

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 05 December 2014 09:27:15PM 3 points [-]

Meanwhile (in the sense of meanwhile which means a month later), my physicist instincts said, 'Aha, conserved quantities!' and then, 'can we apply Noether's theorem?'