Ask HN: How to turn off my desire to be seen?

I find myself not wanting to do things if there isn't an audience for it.

I don't feel like blogging since no one visits my blog. When I consider traveling, my first thought is that I'll take pics and share it with friends to show them that I'm having a good time. If I go running, I feel like converting my interest in running into a meetup group consisting of fellow runners.

How do I do things for my personal pleasure, not for an audience?

Did a fallen tree make any sound?

Actually I've been off FB, whatsapp, instagram, twitter, g+ for a while now. Even when I was using those platforms, I was a very sporadic user so I'm pretty sure I was never "addicted" to the notification icon.

Yet, there is this sense that things not seen by others is not worth doing.

I too have this problem, I wonder, however, whether HN is a great place for such discussion. Not that it is off topic, but HN is a place that increases this feeling by creating an all or nothing atmosphere. There is no way to be seen just a little.

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Did the tree hear itself fall?

One of the first successful AI experiments was a computer in a booth at a fair. The computer had a genetic algorithm which would draw two pictures. The viewer was to decide which picture was better and select their answer using a set of buttons. The mutation of the algorithm which drew the "better" picture then "survived" till the next round. Despite the fact that the algorithm started by drawing random noise, it ended up creating symmetrical, abstract shapes with some aesthetic quality. The AI could not paint, but was it intelligent? It was able to create things, but it was reliant on the judgment of others to tell if they were good.

A person with no taste of their own, who is unable to judge whether they like something or not, and who is at the mercy of the input of others to decide their direction is quite similar to this genetic algorithm.

We need to learn to be able to experience things, and decide for ourselves whether we enjoy them or not in order to be able to create anything at all.

Do you have a sense for this?

I do.

Do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself? Do you SEE the product of your labors and enjoy them, or at least have an opinion on them? Or do you need others to see and hear for you?

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Impetus: Do you actually want to do the things you do? Or have you not found anything that you're truly passionate about yet?

I can see and hear, but I still lack impetus without the input of others. Indeed, I find that I can become so empty when I imagine that I am truly alone, that I can just lie on the floor and not move.

However, there are many people who successfully live alone in nature. True hermits. I believe that the difference is that you can "hear the music" you can "see the artwork" but if you don't enjoy it, then what's the point? In this post-industrial world, our cities and the buildings in which we live are so devoid of beauty that the passion is sucked from us.

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To whom does the voice in your head speak?

I often suffer from the problem that the voice in my head is always planning a conversation, or a speech, I struggle to think to myself. To talk to myself. I have been practicing this though, by using a program which records my voice and plays it back to me. I intentionally say embarrassing things that I would not want to publish. I ensure that I'm alone so that I can practice speaking to myself. I find that it does help, though it has not cured me.

Thank you so much for taking the time to give a thought out, personal answer.

At the risk of sounding really shallow, I think your AI example and this snippet describes me to a T.

>A person with no taste of their own, who is unable to judge whether they like something or not, and who is at the mercy of the input of others to decide their direction is quite similar to this genetic algorithm.

>Do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself? Do you SEE the product of your labors and enjoy them, or at least have an opinion on them? Or do you need others to see and hear for you?

I don't remember the last time I made something because I enjoyed making it...and I've made a lot of stuff recently - from frameworks to sites to home automation sensors. I did not getting pleasure from making them - once they were made, I asked myself "what next?" or "how to monetize?" The entire making process lost its charm the minute that thought came up.

>Impetus: Do you actually want to do the things you do? Or have you not found anything that you're truly passionate about yet?

I know I enjoy coding for its own sake. I sometimes enjoying running when I'm in the zone. I'm not "passionate" about them but I feel if someone were to question their usefulness in front of me, I'd fight them on the subject. Does that make me passionate for coding and running?

The voice in my head speaks to an audience and sometimes to the present me exhorting me to "show 'em!"

I'm going to come back to your answer in future to see if I can read more into it than what I gleaned at first glance.

> At the risk of sounding really shallow, I think your AI example and this snippet describes me to a T.

So you don't want to SOUND really shallow. Do you dislike having no likes or dislikes or do you simply think that "the public at large" judges people with no likes or dislikes?

Is it actually logically possible for you yourself to dislike having no dislikes? Surely if you dislike being shallow then you aren't shallow if being shallow is when you have no dislikes.