In the late 1990s I began taking classes to be a sign language interpreter. Part of why I chose the profession was I believed it was safe from automation and thus secure as a career. In the 2000s the rise of interpreting over Internet video made me realize it could be outsourced to people who would work far cheaper than me. In the past 3-5 years, with the advances of machine interpreting and especially with the advent of the Motion Savvy tablet, I accepted I was wrong in thinking that ASL / English interpreting was automation-proof. As of December 2014 I have resigned from interpreting before the entire field vanishes (which I predict will happen in the USA by 2018). Now I do something else for my job.

I have been recently questioning how worthwhile it is to be perceived as smart. Since I have always wanted to be intelligent, having people affirm my intelligence has always made me feel validated, much more so than receiving other forms of compliments. Either in response to that form of approval or else in anticipation of receiving it, I have gone out of my way to present myself primarily as an intelligent person and to consider any other perceptions others may have of me as secondary to that one.

As I've begun to question whether this is a good image to promote, one of the things I've begun to think is that I was mistaken to seek to promote a single uniformed image of myself at all. Instead, I should try to tailor more to my specific context. When I've tried to think of how I should want to project myself in general, the best idea I have been able to come up with is that I would want people to find me interesting. But when I think about what would be a beneficial way to be perceived in various contexts, I quickly realized that there are context-specific labels that direct me towards how I should want other people to view me at various times. In the office, I should seek to be viewed as being "professional." When I'm looking for dates, I want people to think I'm "sexy." When I comment on LW, I should probably seek to be perceived as "rational." This all feels very obvious in retrospect, but while I was still focused on trying to appear "smart," I was unable to even ask the right questions that would help me present myself to the world in a more desirable way.

Complicating this decision is the realization that I have to transition away from feeling successful about my self image to feeling far less successful. A few months ago, I felt good about myself when my boss identified my intelligence as the greatest asset I brought to the company and also identified increasing my professionalism as the area where I needed to grow the most. Today, if I were to truly internalize the change that I have been making cognitively, I think I should regard the phrase "highly professional nitwit" as slightly more flattering than "unprofessional genius," in which case I need to change my view of the feedback I received. At the time, I felt like those two comments summed to feedback that was mostly positive. Emotionally, I still feel that way. But since this discussion was in a business context, and since what we were talking about had far less to do with what is actually true than it did with what my boss perceived to be true, I think I should view the feedback I received as indicating that I should make substantial adjustments to my behavior. E.g. I need to adjust my email response policy away from asking myself "Do I have anything worth saying to add to this conversations?" and more towards "Given that I don't have anything noteworthy to add to this conversation, is it more professional to acknowledge receipt of this particular email or to simply move on?" (I need to make dozens of small changes similar to that one, wherever I notice that some particular aspect of my behavior is based on my desire to appear intelligent.) Again, this feels very obvious now that I've begun to think about things in these terms, but I previously failed to even ask the necessary questions.

I find for me at least that most big changes of opinion happen slowly over time, so any recent changes are probably still ongoing and not clearly identifiable.

After initial success but then several bouts of plantar fascitis, new mystery leg pain and a heaping helping of denial I've finally given on up the minimal shoes thing.

I agree walking around in super comfortable shoes all the time probably makes us puny and weak, but I doubt paleolithic man walked and ran on hard city-grade pavement 50+ miles a week.

Not recently but over a longer time-span I changed my view on violence. As a youth I despised violence - both individual and collective - and in fact additionally any kind of emotional outburst. This was partly formed by a painful experience of violence. I believed that all conflict should be solvable peacefully by rational actors.

I was wrong.

The first inkling were arguments with my fiance that couldn't be solved factually. I realized that the strength of shown emotions is a measure of the subjective importance of a topic. What is the right thing to do when one preferrs X and the other not-X? Weigh X by the subjective importance. How do you know the subjective importance? Often you don't. You might try to attach numerical values but not everybody is so inclined and if - what does 0.5 mean anyway subjectively. How do you gauge that between persons? Answer: Via expressed emotions.

Other nails were the emotions and aggressions of my children. I could see first hand the successes and failures of aggression and sometime notable violence. I could try as I might rational arguments often just don't cut through - even if they are understood. And they don't work if the other party doesn't cooperate.

And then I got into a situation where I used violence in an affect. I who had commited to never use it. I mocked 'saint' had failed my own standards. How could that be? I was in state of humilty and it took some time to get back to terms with my imperfections. It also told me something about being human.

Today I still don't like violence and aggression and search ways to avoid and minimize it. But I'm no longer surprised by it and not only see its effectiveness but also the cases where it is the most rational choice. Compare this with Gains from trade: Slug versus Galaxy. Violence is just one way to realize the 'cooperation' of a much weaker opponent. 'Fair' isn't always in the middle if both parties are unequal. And if a stronger party force the other party to give in that party can only hope that the stronger party has friendly values. We have seen enough unfriendly natural intelligence.

I've dropped out of college twice, and had considered that I would never go back (financial reasons, motivation reasons, doing "work" things with my life now). I decided with the new year that I would try to break into a new field, one which historically hasn't required a college degree but one definite helps (software development), and have found that businesses in my area look for one.

In talking with a friend in the field and one of the employers who turned me down, I went to the local community college and found that their course-work, their prices, and their availability are far more manageable than I had realized. I'm now taking steps to apply for the summer semester.

I told at least three people I wouldn't ever go back to school two weeks ago, and I had no interest in it. Here I am, moving towards it. Feels weird, but like the right step.

After talking with a friend, I realized that the unambitious, conformist approach I'd embraced at work was really pretty poisonous. I'd become cynical, and realized I was silencing myself at times and not trying to be creative, but I really didn't feel like doing otherwise.

My friend was much more ambitious, and had some success pushing through barriers that tried to keep her in her place, doing just the job in her job description. It wasn't all that hard for her; I'd just gotten too lazy and cynical to do this myself after mild setbacks.

I discovered that one person is (or at least can be) less annoying than I thought, and another is less full of shit.

Not on anything big, but on a couple small issues I spoke without double-checking and freely admitted my error when the person I was arguing with called me on it. Not sure if it really counts, but it better than 90% of internet debaters...

I used to think that responsible citizens should not fear violence to themselves if other people are being hurt for political beliefs, and go help. I was okay with it, and my husband was okay with it, and we knew and respected this about each other.

Yet when a situation arose when we could go help, with risk of death and injury was orders of magnitude higher than usual workday levels, I asked him to let me go, and he said, if one of us should go, it is not you. (The other would have to stay to babysit.) And so neither of us went.

I think I changed my belief about the relative value of beliefs then. Before, I would have sincerely said that what an (adult) person thinks about themselves should have more weight in determining their actions than what others think about the person. Now, I don't seem to have a sincere answer.