DMs from @bendini1 under cut with response (they didn’t make it through as comments)
1. Either way, it didn’t average out at 70 because if it did, my comments would have made you realise exactly nothing, or took you past 70. So you’ve because you were already at 70, and moving closer to 90 would make you 71+. So either you weren’t at 70 overall or you have now moved away from the truth. I can’t find the source article, but AFAIK Scott does this to a moderate degree (although he usually says 75 or 80, not 90)
The other reasons why I say 90 is because it is clearer, more succinct and easier to write.
2. It is debatable on how much better or worse your life would be if you did, and if that would be worth the costs of doing so, however, I’m pretty sure your decision not to is made for other reasons. My nudge for you to move does not necessarily imply “move to where I am”, nor does probing at reasons why you are apprehensive about SF or Seattle mean you shouldn’t go there.
3. You think the comments were implying something they weren’t actually implying, and it was made more on the rule out criteria than “this is 50% likely”. It would be bad advice to tell someone who’s 1s.d. or below to abandon everything to learn programming, yet exactly the right advice for those who have a certain set of characteristics. Whether attempting to model this would potentially make someone feel bad is kinda irrelevant, to give advice responsibly I need to know such relevant information. I could have tried to track down people who’ve met you in person to find out how likely they thought it was, I felt it was easier and less disingenuous to ask you outright.
4. The reason I spent my time writing these things is not to produce content for my tumblr (hence why this is a comment not a reblog) but because you have put a potentially tractable problem in front of me. Its personally tractable (i.e. I’ve got a half decent chance of solving it, and the counterfactual next best person is either not going to step up or not be as good) because you have similar enough mental machinery for me to copy paste some working solutions, you have enough desire to drink the water if I lead you to the lake, and few enough people are personally willing to tell you harsh but true things.
If you get 95% of the way to where you want to be, and then a comment I make right by the finish line you feel is so out of line that you don’t want to speak to me again, and then you manage the last 5% on your own, I’ll still consider that a great success, despite considering us friends. My motivation system doesn’t seem to be bothered by this possibility anywhere near as much as you not getting there, or getting there significantly later than you otherwise would because I optimizing my interactions for you coming away from our interactions happy in the short term.
I’d bet on them being negatively correlated, like a gym program where you are never sore the next day. Granted, there are gym programs that carry a higher risk of injury than necessary, and ones that make you sore but don’t make you grow, but overall, an effective one has some soreness as a necessary byproduct of growth.
(Also my comparative advantage is very much in this column, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people to provide reassurance when you need it, so I target the most unmet need, although I do offer validation/sympathy on occasion.)
This niche wouldn’t be worth it if I was looking for positive reactions, anyone is going to have more emotional gratitude towards the people who offered validation. For me it isn’t really about that, nor is it selfless altruism. It’s more akin to the “someone is wrong on the internet” effect, but a specific way that I haven’t trained myself out of engaging with because I’m not yet convinced it’s a waste of my time.
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yes thank you for the logic that logic is correct
1. I've been thinking about a *lot* of this stuff on my own, but talking to you galvanized me into putting a few things together and posting it. shrug.
3. I was really seriously down and that makes me.. very vulnerable. which makes me both defensive for self-protective reasons and aggravated at attempts to nudge me as a self-protection feature. not-down me thinks the likelihood of me being an epic social failure - fuckno! yeah I have weaknesses but I think I have potential to be a damn sight better than average.
4. this is actually my model of you. the moving to manchester thing was 50% joke. I realize that you're looking to solve this regardless of whether I do so. I *IMMENSELY* appreciate the harsh but true part and you're damn right about most people not being very willing to push the negative until after I already figure it out, or to do so effectively; it's the potentially "harsh but false" part I take issue with, and there's a conflict between being fairly sure there are useful elements you have I want and also ways you aren't quite as good as you think you are and taking everything wholesale could be a mistake.
5. getting where you want to be, harsh feedback, etc - I mentioned something very similar to this talking with someone the other day.
re: validation this is *really* dependent on a lot of factors. when I'm down I do not feel like anybody has positive opinions toward me. i'm making a validation log to see if I can prove otherwise to down me.
it occurs to me that I don't have a great model of what you think the changes I need to make are. the obvious one is get to a city where I have in-person connection with the right sort of people and opportunity. likely you think that being more blunt and just going for stuff in general is a good idea. prioritizing moving rather than travel.
definitely talking to one of my bosses about moving and my unhappiness with the state of some things has made things a *hell* of a lot better at work. it was fueled by dissatisfaction with where I am compared to where I want to be driven by my seattle trip. If I can get a better title and a cert soon, that'd be great. that conversation was intended to *move me closer to moving* and it made things much better in the interim than I expected it to.
I'm not *entirely* sure of how much moving will fix, how much it won't, and how much it will hurt. I love a short commute. I absolutely love it when I can get walleyball 2x a week and gym 3x a week. it's BLISS. I'm still going to have my badbrains and I'm *not sure* how much social connection will fix that and how much I need to do myself and, well, there's nowhere I can move where I am guaranteed relationships, physical touch, closeness, etc. moving and ending up finding out that I'm only qualified to get a job as a checkout cashier or something would be absolutely fucking awful as compared to where I am now.
