Sorry, never been here before and know nothing about this place and all the other "stupid questions" here seem super formal so I feel really out of place here but, how common is it for the users on this site, the likes of whom likely all refer to themselves as rationalists to be misanthropes?

I hate humans. I hate humans so much. I used to think I could change them. I used to think every human who exhibited behavior I found to be inferior was simply ignorant of true rationality. Mines is a very long story that I no longer want to tell but it was months of thinking I could change every mind I found inferior before I came to the conclusion that humans are worthless and that they've simply devolved to the lowest common denominator, to the point where they retain not the capacity to grasp the objective breadth of rationality in this universe unless they lack the very things that make them human.

I have extremely strong opinions on everything I've cared to question, the likes of which I wish to express formally before I die but I hate humans so much. I wouldn't be doing it for the human. I am probably technically depressed at the moment and have been for a long time and was just wondering how many self-proclaimed rationalists consider themselves misanthropes, or at least exhibit misanthropic views...

As an example, I want to make a computer game. Programming has an advantage of providing a quick feedback, if you are doing it well. I decide to add a new feature, I write it, then I run the game, and I see the feature is there. I get some reward in form of seeing the new feature that works.

(And "doing it well" in this context means developing the program in small steps, where each step gives you some visible outcome. Small iterations. As opposed to doing some complex step that would take a lot of time while providing you no results until it is completed. Note that "visible outcome" does not necessarily mean something that is displayed on the screen during the normal run of the program. It is something that you as a programmer can see, for example a successful unit test result of a function that usually does not interact with the screen. I suspect that the impact of unit test on programmer's morale is more important than its impact on the correctness of the code.)

But this is still just a feedback from a computer. There is no social feedback here. So I need another support layer to get that. I have friends who are also computer programmers. So whenever I add some new feature to the program, I send them the program along with the source code by e-mail. I do not expect them to inspect the source code too much; usually just to start the program and click on the new feature I have added. But I know they are programmers, and that the possibility of looking at the source code is there. Also, as programmers they can better understand and appreciate the features I have added. (To a non-programmer often trivial stuff seems very hard, but with the hard stuff they sometimes even don't understand why that had to be done.) So now my programming has a social dimension, long before the program is finished. And we do it by e-mail (and a Skype talk once in a while, and meeting in person once in a month), so even everyday geographical proximity is not needed. Of course meeting more frequently in person would be even better.

You could try to find this kind of support here. Or anywhere else.

One important detail about this kind of "observer support" is that it works best if it provides you only positive feedback. That is, when you do something and send it, you get a "that's nice!" reaction, and when you do not anything for a longer time, you only get a gentle reminder. (As opposed to people criticizing you "hey, it was five days and you did nothing, man, wake up" or even criticizing your progress as insufficient "all you did in three days was this lousy green rectangle, this way you will not complete it in thousand years".) Any progress = good. Any lack of progress = neutral. There is nothing negative. (As a general rule, punishments are way overrated. They usually bring more harm than good, especially in long term.) Sometimes it is difficult to find people who give this kind of feedback; some people are not interested at all, some people are too eager and switch to slavemaster mode.

So, what would you like to have a social reward system for?

casual interactions as way to bond and build rapport

If you actually want to bond, you don't want casual interactions -- you want highly emotional shared experiences.

Edit: I don't live in the US (I feel this is worth sharing because it affects the advice/options available).

Where are you from?

Casual interactions work very poorly for me, and I have a feeling that that way to connect select against my particular mindset.

I understand what you mean, but think of causal interactions as a fast, cheap filter.

Finding people you'd really like to connect to will necessary involve a lot of trial and error. You would like to minimize the costs (in time and effort) of the trials and the errors. Causal connections basically allow you to do this: you have a limited, surface contact with a person and in the majority of cases that will be enough for you to filter that person out and continue looking.

Don't think of small talk as a way to bond -- think of it as ritualized low-effort behavior one engages in while evaluating the other person.

Why do you find it hard to meet like-minded people? Have you tried meetup.com? The only solution to not having a group of people you like is to meet more people. You're certainly not lacking for options. It sounds like you just need a better searching method.

A mental health professional that get's angry at you for pointing out that some advice doesn't work is either unskilled or is using anger as an alternative strategy to create pressure to change.

I'm myself not a mental health professional but do have quite a bit of coaching training and would never get angry at someone for him finding advice not useful. It's not even in my reservoir of choices if I think it would be helpful.

Unfortunately I don't think that a majority of academically trained psychologists have enough control over their own emotions to not get angry for bad reasons and go into self-justification.

I don't know whether your state reaches depression but to the extend that it does exercise is very important. Do you do exercise?

After exercise the second highest rated intervention on curetogether is to spend time with a pet. In the absence of human interaction, a dog can fill some of that niche. It can give you the feeling that there somebody who accepts you like you are.

Otherwise find a tribe. LW meetups are good. Joining a sports team is also good.

The obvious suggestion is going to (or starting) a local Less Wrong meetup. They're a good way to meet people who can become your "tribe."

Another option (and one that worked very well for me for quite a while) was to move most of my in-group needs online. I don't make a strong distinction between cyberspace and meatspace friendships, so this worked out pretty well. The "bonobo rationalists" of tumblr have a skype group that has general conversation, if you need something to try out.

What is important to keep in mind is that "having a tribe," means that most of your interactions will (and maybe should?) be trivial and banal. You need to build a rapport with the people, so that your brain will more readily accept their praise and advice.

I've recently had a discussion about ethics here in this thread, and the conclusion I've arrived at is that a big reason for my lack of motivation is lack of social support.

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, nor am I fully clear on what kind of response I am expecting. I guess I would like advice and emotional support with this issue.

I have basically been in shutdown mode for the past year because I'm not getting the kind of support I need, and I have my doubts I will ever get the kind of support I need.

I am in my mid-twenties, highly intelligent and have nonconformist opinions - I also have had personal difficulties and not lived a very happy life so far. I find myself unable to connect to other people when it comes to personal stuff because most people, even well-meaning ones, can't understand what's going on for me. That goes for mental health professionals as well. And unfortunately people, even mental health professionals, can be surprisingly mean if I point out that their well-meaning opinions or advice aren't working for me - which usually ends up with them going into a death spiral of self-justification and/or hurt feelings.

I doubt therapy would work for me (based on previous experiences), because of the personal connection with the therapist not working, and the information and strategies offered to be of rather mediocre quality - mostly things I already know, things that are rather obvious, things that aren't generally true and things that don't apply to me. I doubt anything would actually work for me actually, except actually solving the underlying problem which is that I don't have a support network, "tribe", or whatever you want to call it. Or at least having a possible solution in sight.

It's not so much about receiving support (although that's a part of it) - I guess I would like to have something meaningful to do. Right now I have an at least partially altruistic mindset, and nothing to direct it at, because I have a hard time liking "people" at large. I would like to have a personal connection to a person or people who I actually feel that I like - because otherwise when I feel like being doing something positive either for specific people or for the world, I don't even have an accessible example of someone who I would want to benefit from the results of that.

So yeah. I'm not sure what to do about this, because I'm not feeling very hopeful at the moment. I find that for whatever reason even things I imagine to would be very basic (like being understood by other people) are really hard to find in reality.

...I notice I am feeling confused about this, because the particular set of experiences I just described seems to be extremely non-typical among people in general, and I'm not expecting it to be

Edit: I don't live in the US (I feel this is worth sharing because it affects the advice/options available).

What you feel is perfectly normal. Humans are not automatically strategic; we use adaptations instead of maximizing values. Think about your brain as a machine built with some heuristics... it works okay on average, in the ancient jungle. Do not overestimate it; it does not have the magical power of doing the right thing. As a rationalist, you should see the limitations of your own mind.

If we want to achieve more, we have to be strategic (or have luck). Find out what realistically motivates you: (1) punishments and rewards, (2) peer pressure. This is your environment. It may support you in your goals, it may actively work against your goals, or it may just move you in a random direction. And you do not have a magical power to overcome that pressure.

All you can do is find a few moments of extraordinary willpower and clearness of mind, and use those moments strategically to (a) steer your life towards a better future, and (b) increase the probability of having these lucid moments in the future. For example, if your environment works against your goals, you may change your environment so it works less against you in the future. Or try to create a habit that would push you in the direction you want to be pushed. If you do it strategically for a longer time, these small changes may add together, and your life may change.

I do recognize making the world a better place a good thing, I just don't feel much intrinsic motivation to actually do it.

This is what a human brain does when it does not receive social rewards (and possibly receives social punishments) for thinking about making the world a better place.

thinking or being told that I'm "obligated" to do something actually decreases my motivation

I guess in the past "being told you are obligated to something" was probably a good predictor of coming punishment (if you fail to fulfill your obligation). Also "obligation" often means that if you do it successfully, you will not receive a reward because, hey, you merely did your duty. Of course you hate these all-pain-no-gain obligations.

I don't see myself being able to do something I really don't enjoy for long enough that it produces meaningful results

That's how human brain is built. You can't enjoy something you don't receive rewards for. The difference between humans is that some of them were trained to give themselves internal rewards for doing some stuff; then they can enjoy doing that stuff even without visible results.

I estimate that I'm more likely to accomplish things with social benefit if I focus on my own needs and wait until I feel inspired to do something for others

...or you could try to create some social reward system. Which is easier said than done, but maybe you could find a group of people with similar goals, tell each other about good stuff you did, and then provide to each other social rewards.

Human brain is designed to work according to some rules. You cannot overcome these rules, but you can try to change your environment so that these rules start working for you instead of against you.