Hey Jonah, great post, but I suspect you might be hiding something from yourself here. Verbal communication is much harder for people than written, and has it's own slew of failure modes (verbal speech has a lot to do with body language). I highly recommend treating them as separate issues, particularly since verbal communication is so socially significant.

I don't have an intuitive understanding of why I'm coming across as arrogant.

Think in monkey-terms. Humans are just hairless bipedal apes and status matters, a lot.

Statements of what you perceive as (fairly obvious) facts have implications, in particular social/status implications. Human conversations are simultaneously an exchange of information and an exchange of signals. Most people automatically process these signals on the slightly subconscious level and respond with signals of their own without necessarily being aware of it. Women, in particular, are quite adept at this.

People in whom the signal-processing mechanism is inefficient, miscalibrated, or just plain broken have trouble with navigating social interactions. The interaction flows on (at least) two levels but the invisible layer is malfunctioning and if you don't even know it exists you are confused why the overt information-exchange layer is doing so badly.

I suspect that if the subconscious mechanisms are not doing their job, you have to bring the signal-exchange layer into the territory of the conscious and explicitly manage it.

Accept that every conversation has two layers even if you don't see one of them. Evaluate all statements (verbal + body language, etc.) on two levels: (1) what does it say; (2) what kind of signal it sends, what does it imply.

To return to your original question, on the overt information-exchange layer you see your statement "I am smarter than almost everyone here" as a neutral fact about the world which you believe is true. Now, analyze that statement on the signal-exchange level. What does it imply to hairless bipedal apes?

I have several medical problems, yes. Changing my narrative is a good idea, thanks. Now, what will I change it to...

Hmm. Before you were exposed to the LW idea of heroism, how did you feel, motivation-wise? What did you spend your time doing?

Reading books, mostly. I had goals, but not ambitions, if that makes sense. I basically thought good things would just happen to me if I was a good/intelligent person. I've since learned that good things won't come to me, I need to go out searching for them and pounce on them if I want them. But doing that is just exhausting.

This sounds fine? Like, definitely underspecified as an actual plan, and maybe focusing too much on one path and neglecting all the equally valuable alternatives (I think that happens a lot with long term plans). But it doesn't reek too badly of "I must make desperate efforts to be heroic constantly!"

It's the intensity of the negative emotion which is a problem, more than the goals I'm aiming for. I'd like to be able to fail to achieve my best-case goals without hating myself.

This seems incompatible with "I do not, intellectually, believe that striving for this sort of heroism will be likely to have negative consequences, because I don't believe making the effort will significantly affect my actions." If aiming to be a hero doesn't effect your actions, it also shouldn't make the difference between being a "selfish couch potato" and not? But I feel like there's a lot of vagueness here, too. Can you taboo "selfish couch potato" and describe what you fear you would actually do? And compare it to what you're actually doing now? Versus what ideal you would do? Like, actual actions–"I get up in the morning, I go walk to the store..." Etc.

Current me spends almost no time on productive things when not at his job as a menial worker. Couch potato me would quit his job and try to get on government welfare, eating lots of food. Ideal me would quit the job and get a better one, while going back to school to complete and starting to exercise regularly.

My intellectual belief that heroism is important has served mainly only to emotionally torment me for failing, since I'm not even moderately successful in life by basically any standard you could name.

There was strong interest in the first two posts in my sequence, and I apologize for the long delay. The reason for it is that I've accumulated hundreds of pages of relevant material in draft form, and have struggled with how to organize such a large body of material. I still don't know what's best, but since people have been asking, I decided to continue posting on the subject, even if I don't have my thoughts as organized as I'd like. I'd greatly welcome and appreciate any comments, but I won't have time to respond to them individually, because I already have my hands full with putting my hundreds of pages of writing in public form.

Thanks a lot for continuing your work on this sequence; it’s been really interesting and seems potentially quite valuable given the mathematical nature of many problems in AI safety.

This post of yours reminds me of http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html When I read that essay of PG’s years ago, my reaction was something like: “This is highfalutin BS. At best, taste is when your intuition for what seems good/interesting happens to correlate highly with what actually is good/interesting according to some metric.” But when I think about this now, I realize that if this is indeed what taste is, it’s tremendously valuable, since it gives you the ability to find stuff quicker in large search spaces.

I took a few math classes in college with a great teacher who taught using the Socratic method, by asking questions. I answered a lot of his questions, and one of my classmates (who I had a lot of respect for) referred to me as a “genius”. However, I didn’t do very well on the tests my teacher administered, and ended up with a score around 79% both times I took classes he taught.

This blog post discusses a study using a construct called “clerical intelligence”; I wonder if low clerical intelligence is the sort of thing that would cause someone to be good at math “conceptually” but keep making frustrating mistakes in practice. (That’s the only reference I can find to clerical intelligence though, so perhaps it should be taken with a grain of salt.) I felt like as I’ve grown older, I’ve gotten better at thinking like a bulldozer, keeping track of my working memory, and making fewer mistakes.

Someone on Metafilter writes:

it was by reading Misteaks... and How to Find Them Before the Teacher Does that I began to grow competent at Math.

I’d be interested to know whether Scott Alexander felt like he was weaker in identifying strategies to solve calculus problems or doing the actual execution. If the latter, it seems like that might work with your hypothesis that he has high mathematical ability but low clerical intelligence. (This might be hard for him to know because if your answer is wrong, without a tutor you don't immediately know whether you chose the wrong strategy or made a small stupid mistake.)

Open source projects, especially (or maybe just most saliently for me) software projects, desperately need sidekicks. I write 'desperately' because most such projects die from 'over-forking', i.e. everyone wanting to be the leader (hero) of their own project (adventure).

What I've learned most recently is that being even a moderately competent sidekick is really hard. It takes a lot of work to even be able to contribute without creating lots of extra work for the heroes and their more-devoted sidekicks.

You might want to look at the recent thread on being a hero, http://lesswrong.com/lw/l6d/a_discussion_of_heroic_responsibility/ , in particular the comments which question the idea. A lot of the reasons why thinking of yourself as a hero are questionable apply to thinking another person is a hero as well.

It worries me a bit that several young LWers appear to be leaving paid employment to do (presumably?) unpaid work for their partners. What happens if these relationships break down? Are they going to be able to find paid work after a long break from the job market?

What are rationalist heroes supposed to do? And what can “sidekicks” do to help them?

(I ask these questions as someone who’s not that familiar with the rationalist community. I asked them on the Effective Altruism Forum and there was some discussion of them there.)

I'm looking for specific examples, particular ones which aren't already being done and so are available for new heroes to take on.

Ryan Carey said "A hero means roughly what you'd expect - someone who takes personal responsibility for solving world problems. Kind of like an effective altruist." He quoted this passage from HPMOR:

You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe,” Harry Potter said. “Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it’s always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she’s not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn’t an excuse, someone else being in charge isn’t an excuse, even trying your best isn’t an excuse. There just aren’t any excuses, you’ve got to get the job done no matter what.” Harry’s face tightened. “That’s why I say you’re not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall—that isn’t heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn’t your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn’t finished until you’ve done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently.” In Harry’s voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. “You can’t think as if just following the rules means you’ve done your duty. –HPMOR, chapter 75.

But in that case doesn't the sort of "sidekick" that Miranda describes count as a hero, because being a sidekick is plausibly one of the best ways that they can contribute to solving the world's problems?