Social conversations with co-workers are also good

Isn't this supposed to be a major dividing line in human personalities? That is, extroverts can recharge by talking to people, and introverts need to recharge after talking to people?

Your probability of updating downwards should be (more or less; not exactly) equal to one minus your original probability, i.e. if your original probability is .25, your probability of updating downwards should be around .75. This is obvious, since if there is a one in four chance that the thing is so, there is a three out of four chance that you will find out that it is not so, when you find out whether it is so or not.

Conservation of expected evidence doesn't mean that the chance of updating upwards is equal to the chance of updating downwards. It also takes into account the quantity of the change; i.e. my probability is .25, and I update upwards, I will have to update three times as much as if I had updated downwards.

What worked for me in a related situaton was leveraging comparative advantage by:

1) Finding somebody who isn't broken in the same specific way, 2) Providing them with something they considered valuable, so they'd have reason to continue engaging, 3) Conveying information to them sufficient to deduce my own needs, 4) Giving them permission to tell me what to do in some limited context related to the problem, 5) Evaluating ongoing results vs. costs (not past results or sunk costs!) and deepening or terminating the relationship accordingly.

None of these steps is trivial; this is a serious project which will require both deep attention and extended effort. The process must be iterated many times before fully satisfactory results can reasonably be expected. It's a very generalized algorithm which could encompass professional counseling, romance, or any number of other things.

Oh hey, you're girl!me. Maybe what helped me will help you?

Getting on bupropion stopped me being miserable and hurting all the time, and allowed me to do (some) stuff and be happy. That let me address my executive function issues and laziness; I'm not there yet, but I'm setting up a network of triggers that prompt me to do what I need.

This will hurt like a bitch. When you get to a semi-comfortable point you just want to stop and rest, but if you do that you slide back, so you have to push through pain and keep going. But once the worst is over and you start to alieve that happiness is possible and doing things causes it, it gets easier.

So I'd advise you to drag yourself to a psychiatrist (or perhaps a therapist who can refer you) and see what they can do. If you want friends and/or support, you could drop by on #lesswrong on Freenode, it's full of cool smart people. If I can help, you know where to find me.

RIT can be a pretty miserable place in the winter, I know from personal experience. Maybe you have some seasonal affective disorder in addition to your other issues? Vitamin D in the morning and melatonin in the evening might help, and of course exercise is good for all sorts of mood related issues - so joining one of the clubs might be a good idea, or take a class like fencing (well, I enjoyed the fencing class anyway...) or start rockclimbing at the barn. Clubs might be a good idea in general, actually - the people in the go club were not stupid when I was there and it was nice hanging out in Java Wally's.

First of all, I encourage you to take advantage of the counseling and psychological services available to you on campus, if you have not already done so. They're very familiar with psychological pain.

Second, I encourage you to go to a Less Wrong meetup when you get the chance. There's a good chance you'll find people there who are as smart as you and who care about some of the same things you care about. There are listings for meetups in Toronto, Albany, and New York City. I can personally attest that the NYC meetup is great and exists and has good people.

Finally, I wish I could point you to resources that are especially appropriate for trans people, but I don't know what they are.

I really hope that you will be okay.

You could start or attend a lesswrong meetup, maybe you'll find some like-minded people.

Or talk to some of your professors, some of them should be pretty smart. Maybe also try meeting new folks, maybe older students?

Go to okcupid, search for lesswrong, yudkowsky or rationality and meet some like-minded people. You don't have to date them.

I know, it's pretty hard, I myself don't click with 99,9% of all people and I'm definitely under +3 sigma.

I know there's at least 3 MtF semi-regulars on this board, and one more who turned down Aubrey de Grey for a date once; so it's not like you're alone here. But I agree with Kawoomba that there are resources focused more closely on your problems than a forum on rationality, and these will help better and quicker. If you cannot intellectually respect anyone there enough that talking would help, Shannon Friedman does life coaching (and Yvain is on the last leg of his journey to becoming a psychiatrist).

If there's a sequence that would directly help you, it's probably Luminosity.

I think I understand. There is something of what you describe here that resonates with my own past experience.

I myself was always much smarter than my peers; this isolated me, as I grew contemptuous of the weakness I found in others, an emotion I often found difficult to hide. At the same time, though, I was not perfect; the ease at which I was able to do many things led me to insufficient conscientiousness, and the usual failures arising from such. These failures would lead to bitter cycles of guilt and self-loathing, as I found the weakness I so hated in others exposed within myself.

Like you, I've found myself becoming more functional over time, as my time in university gives me a chance to repair my own flaws. Even so, it's hard, and not entirely something I've been able to do on my own... I wouldn't have been able to come this far without having sought, and received, help. If you're anything like me, you don't want to seek help directly; that would be admitting weakness, and at the times when you hurt the worst, you'd rather do anything, rather hurt yourself, rather die than admit to your weakness, to allow others to see how flawed you are.

But ignoring your problems doesn't make them go away. You need to do something about them. There are people out there who are willing to help you, but they can't do so unless you make the first move. You need to take the initiative in seeking help; and though it will seem like the hardest thing you could do... it's worth it.

It sounds like you have some extremely strong Ugh Fields. It works like this:

A long, long time ago, you had an essay due on Monday and it was Friday. You had the thought, "Man, I gotta get that essay done", and it caused you a small amount of discomfort when you had the thought. That discomfort counted as negative feedback, as a punishment, to your brain, and so the neural circuitry which led to having the thought got a little weaker, and the next time you started to have the thought, your brain remembered the discomfort and flinched away from thinking about the essay instead.

As this condition reinforced itself, you thought less and less about the paper, and then eventually the deadline came and you didn't have it done. After it was already a day late, thinking about it really caused you discomfort, and the flinch got even stronger; without knowing it, you started psychologically conditioning yourself to avoid thinking about it.

This effect has probably been building in you for years. Luckily, there are some immediately useful things you can do to fight back.

Do you like a certain kind of candy? Do you enjoy tobacco snuff? You can use positive conditioning on your brain the same way you did before, except in the opposite direction. Put a bag of candy on your desk, or in your backpack. Every time you think about an assignment you need to do, or how you have some job applications to fill out, eat a piece of candy. As long as you get as much pleasure out of the candy as you get pain out of the thought of having to do work, the neural circuitry leading to the thought of doing work will get stronger, as your brain begins to think it is being rewarded for having the thought.

It doesn't take long at all before the nausea of actually doing work is entirely gone, and you're back to being just "lazy". But at this point, the thought of doing work will be much less painful, and the candy (or whatever) reward will be much stronger.

All you have to do is trick your brain into thinking it will get candy every time it thinks about doing work. Even if you know that it's just you rewarding yourself, it still works. Yeah, it's practically cheating, but your goal should be to do what works. Just trying really, really hard isn't just painful; it also doesn't work. Cheat instead.