Just someone wandering the internet. Someone smart, but not smart like all of you people. Someone silly and creative. Someone who wanders the internet to find cool, isolated areas like LessWrong.
The universe is so awesome and crazy and interesting and I can't wait for when humanity is advanced enough to understand all of it. While you people figure out solutions to the various messes our species is in, (I would prefer for homo sapiens to still exist in 20 years) I'll be standing by for emotional support because I'm nowhere near smart enough to be doing any of that actually important stuff. Remember to have good mental health while you're saving the world.
Pronouns: he/him
The video game The Witness.
Academia existed in the form of "trying to become a priest so people trust the stuff that you say" and various adjacent concepts." Bureaucracies and geopolitics existed, in a state actually worse (although simpler) than they do now, before we could even smelt iron.
Aah, okay. Oops. Thank you. :/
(I will try the gratitude journal for like 4 more weeks, and see if the increase in my well-being is measurable. While I now agree with the problem you identified with my local example, I think the broader fallacy my post was talking about still exists; While I cannot think of any other examples that apply to myself, I do sometimes notice myself sort of "yearning for Amazing Things No One Does". I'm sure if I had more time I could think of more concrete stuff.)
What are the higher utility per unit effort things you could be doing instead during that time? Did you stop doing a gratitude journal? If so, did you do those other things instead?
Oh, just studying, working on my stories, working on my songs, working on my conlang, getting better at coding, getting better at art, generally just enjoying being a human, in this beautiful, beautiful universe before it gets disassembled into nothing...
The reduced intensity and importance of each opportunity is balanced out by the increased number of the opportunities, leading to the same total life-importance.
The Modern Eldritch Deities have also always existed, alongside the traditional ones; we just never talked about them because the traditional ones were worse.
Even in situations where my beliefs affect my action those beliefs are not choices. If I notice that if I had a certain belief I would act in a way that would give me more utility, well then that observation becomes instead my motivation to act as if i have that belief.
So "frusturated" is what we call "annoyed" when it comes from the source of "repeatedly failing to do something"?
your silly alignment game is silly. i like it. have you promoted it somewhere?