I think threads like this might benefit from the rules that reddit.com/r/AskReddit uses (which have changed a bit recently, but the general idea stays the same): If you're asking a question with your post, put your own answer in a comment, instead of the main body. That enables people to vote on your example independently of the question itself.

Worst problem: My own crappy attitude.

Why it was the worst: I have none of the obvious attributes you read about in psych texts and self-help. I'm not a pessimist, I don't dwell on the past, I don't get angry, etc. This issue was very difficult to see clearly.

How I solved it:

First, I realised being too future-oriented was problematic. While I didn't dwell on the past, I was discounting my present situation far too much, perhaps pathologically.

Secondly, I realised my lack of an emotional response was due to a deeper emotional problem: resentment. Resentment is an interesting emotion. Resentment just kind of hangs out in the background, rather than making you do anything dramatic. Resentment seeks to eliminate its object, rather than harm it. This means it's usually expressed in withdrawal. If you're very anti-social and unemotional, you're probably suffering from resentment.

Thirdly, I realised I overlook a lot of my own negativity because I enjoy it so much. It's the source of my humour. I have a tendency to revel in it. Somebody getting in my way as I walk down the street will unleash a burst of perfectly enjoyable mental vitriol. I love a good rant. I didn't think this was a problem because it wasn't marked by strong emotion. It gave me a sense of superiority. I felt it was part of my personality.

I had all of these insights while reading a book on Tibetan 7-point Mind Training (specifically Traleg Kyabgon's The Practice of Lojong) but they are not necessarily contained in that book. It was really my own reaction to the radical altruism of the text that let me dig deep and find these problems. I did apply the book's idea of keeping watch on my own thoughts and letting go of the ones I now recognised as negative before they had a chance to snowball. This is an effective technique. You just have to develop a counter-habit of thinking, "Oh, I'm doing it again."

Outcome: I no longer hate people.

... make it look as though it is obvious that anyone who is someone favours [x]...

That is a tactic of the Dark Arts*; it is manipulative and precludes intellectual honesty.

Also, you use 'obvious' and it's various forms three times in this post, and once in your other post (in a Darkly framed statement). I find the word jarring** in the contexts you've used it; whether others have as well I know not. Regardless, I recommend against continuing to use the word in that way.

*I may be using Dark Arts incorrectly; I use it and manipulation interchangeably.
**id est an annoying signal of hubristic arrogance and disrespect for one's readers' potential diversity of experience - particularly when not at all obvious or wrong.

"We want to get people who would not be doing effective altruist stuff otherwise", which obviously creates obnoxious incentives for making threats of stopping one's altruism unless one is hired.

Altruists wouldn't make such threats. We shouldn't negotiate with terrorists; we definitely shouldn't hire them.

It seems that both problems are related to your arrogance and you ought to address the underlying cause.

EDIT: this was originally in the main post. but gwillen et al made me think this was being counterproducive Here are my solved and unsolved ones. So I'll start to break the ice:

Solved: Being very different from the society around me and being the first many things within my culture, and yet being social and accepted. Here I mean culture in a fine grained sense, as in my peers in school, theatre class, university, friends of friends, dates and acquaintances. I do not mean my country, western society, or the whole of my city. For illustration, I was the first: Transhumanist, Singularitarian, Analytic Philosopher, Philosopher of Mind, Cryonicist, Anthropic-cist, Immortalist, Polyamorist, Multiversist, Open Relashionship defender, and probably some other stuff which I'm forgetting.

How it was solved: To begin with, some things about us we can't change easily. If I truly believed biological immortality is a good thing, the only thing I could have done to save face was being silent about it. If you are under stress (new in a new group for instance) this may happen for a while, and your true beliefs become crunched within you. This obviously is bad. One strategy that again and again I have found extremely helpful in my case is to bluntly state X, which assumes that position Y is widely held and normal, when a new group is being assembled, you meet one at a party, or if two groups are meeting for the first time.

Simple examples: You enter a group in formation unaware of their religious, or not, beliefs, very few minutes into interaction, or even as an ice-breaker, make a joke such as "Only a christian would think something so dumb". Alternatively, do the same for related beliefs, make it look as though it is obvious that anyone who is someone favours abortion choice over obliged maternity, or that homophobia was a common characteristic of the primitive pre-industrial age, which escaped becoming passible of death penalty just for pity of those educated in such brutish times.

When it Works: This works for any group that has not yet settled on implicit rules of behavior, whose normative status is still very flexible because no one felt like testing it. A newly forming group always has that, two merging groups as well, sometimes even an old one can. Definitely do it in your Less Wrong meeting with the new people who arrive.

Why it works: Our minds are well programmed to reorganize themselves to different sets of customs and behaviors, and extremely biased towards group acceptance. Thus, everyone wants to abide by the group's settled behaviors and beliefs. Newly forming groups are more frequent now than in our Evolutionary Environment of Adaptation, making us not so prone to boast around about tacit beliefs that ought to be held. But once you do it, it settles a lot. Everyone heard you saying it, and everyone didn't hear all others silently disagreeing even though they displayed agreement. Suddenly it becomes the standard of "how we rule in this shire", and you have a magnificently increased odds of getting 1)People to actually consider becoming what you said they already are 2) Acceptance and 3)Sometimes even a tacit assumption that you know this groups better than anyone else.

Now to the second part of our exercise:

Not Solved Yet) Finding a resources source that both satisfies my intellectual requirements and abilities, and my financial and leisure requirements. So this situation can be thus described: For the time being attached to Brazil for several reasons, I'd expect that having unusual knowledge and motivation here would be in my favour. Being a LessWronger, a Singinster, a Leverage Reseacher, having won a prize from Metuselah Foundation, written a book on Dennett, graduating from the best uni here, being one of the very very few people who study positive psychology here (as opposed to psychoanalysis or behaviorism) and having, in general, a frame of mind shaped by the brilliant minds that shaped the LessWrong community, speaking 4 languages, should be reason to either be welcome by a market overpopulated with under-educated people in some task that relates to my studies, or else to get invited to interesting jobs abroad.

Yet, the academy here shall forever fight those who are philosophers and want to study something besides history of philosophy up to the 1960's. And their weapon, not giving research grants, is a very sharp and accurate one.

The US academy on philosophy is unimaginably competitive for philosophy students from abroad, demanding an impossible combination of native language level GRE's, perfect 4's in average score in universities that don't have the 1-4 system and a much lower correlation between good work and good grades. Oh, not to mention letters of recommendation from famous teachers in the field, who live 10 thousand miles away from me.

Being scientific is not a requirement for those who seek psychologists, or a lecturer on self-help/personal psychology. People'd rather pay a charlatan that appears on TV making astrology-like claims, than someone who knows facts about happiness, distress and depression based on large N studies.

Jaan and Peter to the contrary, most philosophers don't bear the entrepreneurial spirit, the very idea of buying and selling material objects disgusts my philosophical taste (I also don't know why), also I don't have the programmer gear. I like the theory behind programming, but the doing of it feels like eating sauce less lettuce in an Italian ristorante.

There are the blooming Effective Altruism institutions out there, I even direct one! www.ierfh.org, but some constraints apply: Sheer lack of resources, not willing to relocate someone from Brazil all the way to country X, not willing to give up life and put 90 hours/week for 2 thousand dollars a month, and the funniest one, "We want to get people who would not be doing effective altruist stuff otherwise", which obviously creates obnoxious incentives for giving up one's altruism unless one is hired. Almost a Russell Paradox. It is not unreasonable, it is just funny.

There is writing, which is really cool, and I feel a strong urge of writing a different book every few weeks, the current one is "The Four-Hour Sex, Science, and Substances" which those who read Tim Ferriss books will probably grasp. The market in Brazil really sucks though, so I'd need to write in English and have an agent in the US to do all the bureocracy of optimizing for sales. (anyone interested, drop a message)