If you suggested that given the value of socialization, people should spend more time stopping strangers in the street to hold conversations with them
To be clear, I didn't intend to suggest this at all. I was responding to the situation where you want to approach but then you think vaguely that their feelings may be disturbed by this. I'm not suggesting introverts stop strangers in the streets to talk to them, just that if people (introverted or extraverted) have already formed the intent to approach a person then they shouldn't allow it to be derailed by vague concerns fueled by anecdotal 'data'. I'm just trying to say "Trying to connect is ordinary, don't accept the proposition that it's not."
On another note, if feelings don't have much worth in decisions, what does? What else would you want any kind of success for?
It's fine to enjoy good feelings -- and they are often the result of living well -- but unless you are extraordinarily grounded/anchored to reality, you can't trust them as any kind of benchmark for your current or future situation. By the time your goals arrive, you've changed (and your feelings may well have too).
A possible exception is the feeling of discomfort, as long as you take a challenging interpretation : "I need to go there", instead of the usual "I mustn't go there!" interpretation. Comfort zone expansion, you probably get the idea.
In general I guess what I'm trying to point at is, any given immediate feeling is usually untrustworthy and essentially useless to pursue. Reproducible emotional trends (for example, feeling better about life when you go for a walk or run, which is well documented) and other types of mental trends (flow?, habits of thinking you have or want to have) are a much more sound basis for decisions and planning. You still have to deal with your feelings on a moment-to-moment level, but it's smart to treat them like children that you have to parent rather than reliable peers.
...To be clear, I didn't intend to suggest this at all. I was responding to the situation where you want to approach but then you think vaguely that their feelings may be disturbed by this. I'm not suggesting introverts stop strangers in the streets to talk to them, just that if people (introverted or extraverted) have already formed the intent to approach a person then they shouldn't allow it to be derailed by vague concerns fueled by anecdotal 'data'. I'm just trying to say "Trying to connect is ordinary, don't accept the proposition that it's not.&qu
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.