While I agree that society tends to dissuade women from math, it doesn't really work in my specific subset. I grew up with more female math-related role models than male. (Mom was chemistry major, dad majored in education partially because he sucked at math.) And the B is a massive outlier- it takes a lot of work for me to keep a C, usually. But thank you for the input.
Hi, I'm Alexandra. I'm turning 18 tomorrow, and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I have GOT to be more rigorous in my self-improvement if I'm going to manage to reach my ambitions.
I'm not quite a new member- I've lurked a lot, and even made a post a while back that got a decent number of comments and karma.
I discovered Less Wrong through HPMOR. It was the first time I'd read a story with genuinely intelligent characters, and the things in it resonated a lot with me. This was a couple of years ago. I've spent a lot of time here and on the various o...
I like this idea. Sort of a "this journal article showed that this technique was statistically useful, this one said another technique was not" kind of thing?
Wow. You've been thorough. Note to self: modafinil is probably something I want to avoid if it can exacerbate anxiety that badly.
I got the anxiety book, and I'm starting to go through it. I absolutely recommend it- a few pages in and I was thinking "This guy just completely destroyed a lot of my justifications for having low self-esteem."
I sometimes think that LWers actually underestimate the help that individuals suggesting ideas can be. More than once, a friend has said something that made me think, "holy crap, I've approached this not just from the wrong angle, but the wrong freaking plane." I also have noticed that suggestions without disclaimers tend to get downvoted here, so I suspect the cached reaction is a good cached reaction.
Also, thanks for the giggle.
Huh. That actually does sound like what I do. Everything I've come across has suggested that's what you're supposed to do, though. And it is very relaxing.
I have no idea if any good teachers are around, but if they were, I couldn't afford lessons. Is there a reason why dissociating is bad? Because it's really enjoyable and makes me feel energetic and relaxed- even more than a full night of sleep does.
Coming from a reductionist "mind is brain" viewpoint, therapy actually does help. This is pretty well documented in the fact that 73% of patients who go through it say it helped in the long run. (statistic from my psych 101 textbook) Talking to a therapist may not increase your serotonin levels, but it does help teach you new mental "patterns" and ways to cope with the results. Saying the brain doesn't follow patterns is, well, wrong. The more you have a thought, the more the thought comes to you. If a chemical imbalance puts you in a m...
America actually has this weird cultural thing where living with your parents past 20 is seen as a badge of shame. You might have heard the "nerd in his parent's basement" stereotype a few times. The conservative families I know do have the "family values" thing, but they also have a huge "independence" thing. Most of them don't want their kids still in the home after they hit adulthood. They do tend to want to be near family, though. Obviously this is anecdotal evidence and should be taken with a grain of salt.
This is exactly what I was doing- constantly looking for the system that would let me be successful while ignoring the root problems. I only accepted the anxiety when it got too bad to ignore. Can I ask what you've been doing that's been so effective?
If anyone is interested in actually being part of a support group of sorts, let me know- if enough people are interested, I'll see if I can find a good way to do it.
Well, I'm not the only person who struggles with anxiety, much less mental illness in general, so while your advice may not apply to me it probably applies to someone else. Focusing all of the discussion of mental illness on the one mentally ill person who started the discussion is... well, not exactly what I started the discussion FOR. So, any advice you have is totally welcome and appreciated.
I meditate regularly- not quite daily, because when I get into a meditative state, I tend to not want to come out. When I do meditate, I'm still and quiet for at LEAST an hour. If I try to meditate for, say, 30 minutes, I end up setting another timer because I didn't get deep enough into quiet state. Meditation doesn't bring up suppressed emotions for me, though.
I do journal, but not gratitude journaling. I haven't tried that one because it seems more suited to a sad, apathetic person than a person who cares too much about everything and tends to minimize the good and maximize the bad. I like tracking the anxiety, though, and writing down thoughts lets me temporarily remove them from my mental state.
I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.
Sometimes I'll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there's a Braum's about half a mile away, but if you're actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything's pretty far away.
Something I've noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to man...
Interesting, I haven't heard of most of these. When I get the chance I'll have to do some research.
Anxiety CAN be a good response. The fear-response that anxiety basically is can be a good "oh crap, I'm in a bad situation here." Getting nervous when asking someone out is uncomfortable and kinda useless. Getting nervous walking down a street at night when someone seems to be following you is normal, and helps you respond properly. The pervasiveness is a major part. If the anxiety is infringing on your life in a lot of useless ways, you probably ha...
Your english is better than the english of a lot of native speakers.
Well... yeah, online discussion is inefficient. But when you're cut off from the efficient options, you probably shouldn't throw up your hands and give up. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, though.
I think you may be disregarding the viewpoints of others, here. You can't do any efficient self-improvement if you refuse to call your problems what they are. It might feel nice to say "You know what? I'm not mentally ill. I just need to improve myself." I WANT to improve myself. M...
Agreed. But mental illness is such a weird and complex thing that it's even hard for trained professionals to help with. A lot of the posts here about Akrasia helped some, didn't touch others. I suspect we'd see the same results with this.
For some reason, your first sentence gave me the urge to hug you. I suspect it was a reaction to the fact that someone understood that. I've never been able to explain to anyone why "but it isn't your fault" doesn't let my brain believe it's not my fault.
Interesting. I suspect it did, except in particularly strong attacks (if her schizophrenia was periodic rather than constant).
Ooh, cool. I did not know that. Thank you for posting these!
The brain is an organ. Like any other organ, things can go wrong. It's becoming the consensus that mental illness is caused by imbalances of hormones and similar things. Dopamine and serotonin in particular. It's an invisible illness, though, and so sometimes it's hard for people to take it seriously. Parents who don't think of "clumsy kid" as a potential problem might just assume they'll grow into their limbs. That's what people thought clumsiness in childhood was for a while- uneven growth that would eventually normalize.
People normally find ...
Vague, yes, but I disagree that it's useless. It at least is an extremely basic overview that someone can build on.
Hmm. I wouldn't call stupidity mental illness- low IQ doesn't necessarily mean they're an illogical person. it can mean they're slow, or challenged, etc. A person can be "stupid" and not, say, think the moon is made of cheese. Limitations on your complexity of thought doesn't necessarily mean the thoughts you have are wrong.
No, 100 years ago, a woman getting mad at her husband was a sign of mental illness. Mental illness was consid...
It's possible we could. I certainly hope so. But it's such a complex question that, at the least, we probably can't have a simple universal answer.
My opinion is that saying that all mental illness falls into one camp is oversimplifying. Someone who's schizophrenic is definitely in the brain category, according to the current consensus I've seen. Depression is moving into that camp. Anxiety is on the fence- it can be chemical or mental.
If I were to answer "is mental illness a mind thing or a brain thing?" my answer would be "neither, both, one, or the other" because the brain is a complex thing and breaks in a lot of different ways.
Anxiety, for instance, is typically treated with t...
Oh, sorry. I misunderstood.
I should hope not, that would make me seriously question a good deal about history and biblicism. That's very true, but narrowing the problem too much causes the same kinds of problems as opening it to everyone. If you give everyone with upcoming life changes a Xanax, you're not letting them learn how to cope. If you refuse to help someone unless their illness is ruining their life, you're letting a lot of people live seriously suboptimal lives. We don't have a good entry barrier for determining if someone is mentally ill or not. We simply don't know enough to make one.
Anxiety transcends a normal thing and enters mental illness when it becomes pervasive and unreasonable. My anxiety about having used a wrong word in a conversation I had last year is unreasonable. My constant feeling of dread is unreasonable because I'm not constantly in a situation that should inspire dread. Mental illness is really hard to define properly- there always seems to be something left out, or something that's implied to be illness when it isn't.
Honestly, I feel like the discussion has been derailed a bit- we're focusing on defining a very vag...
I'm aware. I do study psychology, although my personal passion is microbiology. The question Lumifer raised was if mental illness is really that common. It's pretty hard to find any evidence saying it's uncommon, and a LOT of evidence saying it's common. I'm curious- from your comments here, you seem to have a differing point of view than I do. Could you explain what you think mental illness is, and your related opinions? I think that would lead to a more productive discussion.
It's awesome that you're able to help people so well. At the same time, though, I get the feeling that you're falling into the trap of other-optimizing. In-person support is probably a lot more helpful than internet-based support, I suspect. But when the right people aren't around you, and you can't go to them, having instant communication over the internet is a good second-best. Certainly over the internet there's things you can't do, like determine a physical state. But if people refused to use any method but the absolute best, we'd spend more time trying to find optimal strategies than anything else, and humanity would die out because we'd be too busy designing soylent to eat.
Semantics matter to the extent that everyone is on the same page. Mental illness is pretty clearly defined.
Because not everyone has the practical ability to live where they want? If it were practical to do so, I'd be living in one of the Chicago suburbs by now. But finances, family, my current academic path, the people I care about, etc. are all here. I don't even have enough gas money to get TO Chicago. Much less enough to start a life there.
A meetup sort of requires more than one person. There aren't even any other HPMoR readers in my area, except the person I introduced to it. I'm sure this is a problem for others, too. Being the sole LWer in your area that you can find is frustrating. I'm in central Oklahoma, and according to surveys and the like, I'm pretty much the only Oklahoman here. And I'm pretty sure this is a common plight- Berlin is a big city full of interesting people with interesting viewpoints. What if you're from, say, Ukiah, Oregon, or Mobile, Alabama, or a place even smaller or further out of the way? Physical meetups are most effective, but kind of a luxury.
You're right that LW is definitely not going to be a cure-all, and obviously I'm not asking for everyone on LW to band together to fight this one problem. A lot of the people here have their own projects. But I think that LW could be a great help to people who are trying to get help and can't- either because they can't afford mental health care, or because their health care isn't helping. LW is a brilliant educational place that bases a lot on science and cognitive studies. I think this could easily extend to helping with mental illness.
Mental illness is...
Thank you! I'll see if I can start compiling resources like this. If you think of any more, I'd appreciate it if you could message me.
Mayoclinic defines mental illness as such: "Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors." This seems to be the standard definition.
The statistic of 1 in 5 that I used seems to pretty much only refer to diagnosed people with specific, named disorders. I don't think it was including "I feel sad sometimes" as a mental illness. And considerin...
So you think the idea of a rational support group could work? I'd certainly be interested in one. Any idea how one could be set up? Meetups are a little too far and few to be really effective, I think.
To my frustration, the majority of the results I found were not scholarly. Then again, the only database I have access to is Google Scholar, which is utter crap for finding specific results.
If anyone has access to a decent scholarly database, I'd much appreciate a quick search. It seems possible that this idea "mental illness is highly correlated with intelligence" is just another Lucy-esque pop psych idea with little truth.
I think my point still stands- mental illness is still really common. And I know a lot of intelligent people have a mental ...
Exactly. LessWrongians focus so hard on akrasia that I think they often fall into the trap of ignoring some of the causes of akrasia. If akrasia is your only serious problem, it's really easy to find ways to help. If you have akrasia because the idea of doing your work is terrifying, LessWrong isn't much help. So people like us get left shafted- too on the fringe for the majority of help to help, too in the middle for the rest to help.
That's true, obviously, but I was looking more for "people seeking out solutions together." There was a thread a while back where people ated akrasia fighting methods. Anxiety fighting methods could be rated the same way.
Of course. I love yoga. It's relaxing and fun. But it's no cure for anxiety. Yoga gives a very short "mental high" and doing it for months had no effect on the anxiety. This approach may work for a lot lf people, but as always, there's a fringe that needs some new approaches.
That's sometimes a very frustrating thing to read- the "get rid of environmental triggers" thing. Speaking solely for myself here, my triggers are either really, really difficult to do anything about (financial difficulties) or a bad idea to try and get rid of (my academics). Sometimes you're just stuck at a point in your life where you can't fix your triggers.
I think there must be more we can do than get rid of triggers, or add more meaningful things. Maybe not as effective, but mental illness is a complex thing. Complex things have weak points. Sometimes I wonder of we're ignoring the trees and just seeing the forest here. Mental self-help advice is so... formulaic.
Ahh. Thank you, that actually solved my confusion. I was thinking about solving the problem, not how to solve the problem. I shall have to look through my responses to other thought experiments now.
Maybe I'm missing something (I'm new to Bayes), but I honestly don't see how any of this is actually a problem. I may just be repeating Yudkowsky's point, but... Omega is a superintelligence, who is right in every known prediction. This means, essentially, that he looks at you and decides what you'll do, and he's right 100 out of 100 times. So far, a perfect rate. He's probably not going to mess up on you. If you're not trying to look at this with CDT, the answer is obvious: take box B. Omega knows you'll do that and you'll get the million. It's not about the result changing after the boxes are put down, it's about predictions about a person.
I will do that. I think I may actually have a copy of Chaos lying around. I've actually read (most of) Luminosity- I lost my place in the story at one point due to computer issues and never got back to it.
I tried CodeAcademy once, didn't find it that interesting. I don't think it used python, though. I'll check it out. Programming is in general very useful.
If I can find someone to tutor, I'll try that. It certainly can't hurt. Thank you!