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All of Optimal's Comments + Replies

[Requesting advice] Problems with optimizing my life as a high school student
Optimal20

Hey, thanks for your comment; it's provided me with some very helpful insights. I'll now be responding to each of your points in turn.

  • I appreciate the optimism. Often I feel proud of myself when looking back over the past year, but I can never stop stressing over current issues. I still predict that, even if I never further optimize my habits, I will indeed be in a good position in a few years.

  • As I said in the discussion, I've tried a lot of things; the things that worked are my current habits. I've had a sort of exercise regime from the beginning (ear

... (read more)
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2John_Maxwell
Cool; glad to hear you're trying things. That's a good option, but as a CS major if you're serious about doing AI research for MIRI I think I would be leaning towards math. It's much easier and more effective to self-credential in CS than math by having a GitHub full of cool projects. With math you actually benefit from a classroom environment to a much greater degree in my opinion. Also, my impression was that MIRI was more in need of math talent than CS talent. I think math + self-taught CS is good from a career perspective as well (math signals intelligence to CS employers; math + CS is good for quant/data scientist type jobs). Yep, that's something tricky about being an autodidact. Seems reasonable.
[Requesting advice] Problems with optimizing my life as a high school student
Optimal20

I often had to force myself to do/learn game programming, but it still could be very enjoyable and motivating.

it became something that was both productive (relatively, because it taught me general programming skills) and fun (enough that I could do it all day for several days straight, driven by excitement rather than willpower)

This is a near-perfect description of it. Around 5-7 months in I was skilled enough to start working on more difficult projects. I often became completely obsessed with what I was working on, trying desperately to maximize my t... (read more)

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[Requesting advice] Problems with optimizing my life as a high school student
Optimal00

I take Taekwondo class and will have a black belt before I enter college, does that count? There are other methods of meeting/working with people that I have looked into, but I can't seem to find one that I can get engaged in. There aren't are local LW meetups, but there are a few that would be practically accessible; I will be considering them as well.

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0buybuydandavis
Taekwondo sounds like a very good thing. Partnered social dancing is a good segue into human interaction for those with social anxiety. The crowds tend to be very positive and friendly, but you take them in bite sized chunks, a dance at a time. And the crowd gets more positive as you get better at it. IMO, it beats the hell out of video game playing as a past time.
0moridinamael
What you have described here and in the OP doesn't lead me to believe you have any issues that would prevent you from developing into whatever you wanted, socially. I would estimate that most humans have "mild social anxiety" in the sense that the social situations cause them some level of anxiousness, especially during the uncertain adolescent years, where your status is objectively low because you are young and have no independence or financial means. This gives you essentially no information about what you are capable of growing into. If it helps, imagine some extremely debonair person or fictional character who you like, and trust me that if you start at age sixteen, you can probably become as socially powerful and confident as that person/character by age twenty. I have seen such transformations happen many times, and flatter myself to think that I was such an example. Human social circuitry is hella powerful stuff when you lean on it. However, this can only happen if you surround yourself with actual humans. Your post is well thought out but you seem to be trying to bend over backwards to avoid engaging with physical human beings. I actually understand why all too well, it is uncomfortable and unaccommodating, but neglecting it would be like neglecting algebra and still expecting to be able to help with FAI. Possibly even more importantly than all of the above, the effort required to bootstrap yourself toward being better at performance across a wide domain of tasks will be far more difficult without actual people in your environment to give you critical feedback, support, and anchors to sanity. In more colloquial terms, you gotta have good friends around to tell you when you're being an idiot, because you will always be the last person to see it. I would emphasize that one shouldn't just view socializing time as a box to be checked off. Socializing and friendship is an utterly critical cornerstone of human existence and friendships are the things that retro
0ChristianKl
Yes, that's good. Martial arts are a good physical activity.
[Requesting advice] Problems with optimizing my life as a high school student
Optimal70

Funny story: I actually did try tracking daily 'social interaction time' for a while. It's much harder to track than anything else, because it is such a fluid and unpredictable activity, and I don't have access to my spreadsheets while socializing.

I've had moderate social anxiety for many years, starting because of issues (mostly inside my head) in early public school. It was severely exacerbated when I switched to online school because I spent so much time, locked in my room, on pleasurable activities.

I have a small group of friends who I met in public ... (read more)

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0mare-of-night
If insightful conversation is something you want out of social interaction, and there's a LessWrong meetup group you can get to, it'd probably be worth trying it out. I've found the conversation there is usually very good.
0Viliam_Bur
I take a pen and paper everywhere I go. It is a small pen; and I put it and a small piece of paper in the casing of my mobile phone. It helps me note any ideas, and it's faster and more convenient that using a smartphone. (There is an inconvenience with processing the pieces of paper later. But it's not a trivial inconvenience against making notes.)
6Kaj_Sotala
Although it doesn't provide real-life interaction, it still sounds like you might find the LW study hall useful.
0John_Maxwell
You might look for homeschooling groups in your area, sports leagues, etc. Athletes make more money. Or work at a coffee shop. Consider brainstorming ways to meet people and then trying them out systematically. Is there a local LW meetup?
8daenerys
A great way to track time spent on activities (especially fluid and unpredicatable ones) is an app called TagTime. It works best on Android, but you can also get it on your computer if you're hacky. It pings you at random intervals that average out to be worth 45 minutes each, and asks what you're doing at that exact moment. You create tags for different activities, so you just click on the relevant tag(s), and don't have to type in anything. It also integrates with Beeminder, if you'd like to track things that way.
Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
Optimal70

Nice to meet you, person with above-average intelligence. My name is Optimal, because I am always seeking optimal outcomes. I'm 16 years old and currently enrolled in an online high school that provides me with an exceptional degree of educational freedom. I've been lurking around here for a few weeks, but I just now decided to join in because I could use some serious life advice.

Based on the contents of the article above, and on other discussions I have observed, I think it would be better to explain and discuss my situation in a discussion. Actually, I'... (read more)

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