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The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

thewalrus.ca

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Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#181

Post by 73kl4453dz »

wpietri wrote: post #165
s1artibartfast wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair question. I think 'depends' has different connotations if you are talking about a binary outcome or function. If I were to say something like "life depends on water", the connotation is that water is a necessary condition. You wouldn't use depends if the dependency is situational e.g. "life depends on shoes". Shoes might be the difference between life and death in some situations, but irrelevant in others. That…

Got it. I am talking about a function, and particularly the expected reward function for a behavior. If some factor has no influence on the score, the function does not depend on that factor. If it does, it does. Even in your sense of the term, I think I was correct to say that HN "depends so heavily on the upvote". It's a fundamental constituent of how this place works. But I'd also argue that even in the person I'm…

Upvotes have more to do with placement than visibility.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#182

Post by [deleted] »

sutra_on wrote: post #158
ajb wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's an interesting theory. However, on reading it, my leading hypotheses are that people who express such disbelief in the possibility of their being selfish, either lack self-insight, or are lying. Your theory I would give a subjective probability rather lower than these. Of course, this might be my lack of insight into the aspie mind. But self-interest is highly evolutionarily favourable, and is built into…

Selfless people do not exist for biological and evolutionary reasons (self-preservation and such). But then... you are responding to someone who calls other people "normies".

[deleted]

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#183

Post by mettamage »

leonhard wrote: post #163
mettamage wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, very opinionated but here we go: dating, it’s about matching personality. Do the hexaco.org test, figure out how to identify the extreme dimensions on your profile that you identify with (openness in my case). Learn to find those women. Now be prepared to talk to 10000 women by cold approaching or through online dating. It usually takes more like 200 for a GF but you will be doing socially uncomfortable things,…

Thank you, very interesting. Can you talk more about cold approaching respectfully? How did you overcome that feeling of being a creep in the beginning when you’re not calibrated yet on what works for you?

My email is in my profile

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#184

Post by namaria »

chuckadams wrote: post #127
passion__desire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong in this. But wasn't his writings only for himself and was published only later. How many people really referred to his writings? When was printing press invented? How popular was it compared to Bible? Was it possible for people to consume his writings in multimedia formats like video, audio? Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that t…

> Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that the importance of his general ideas were imprinted on their minds? I honestly cannot tell whether this is satire or if I just don’t want to be on this planet anymore.

I hope it's satire. It would be quite limiting to believe that people can only learn things from short format video

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#185

Post by ajb »

ttpphd wrote: post #130
ajb wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's an interesting theory. However, on reading it, my leading hypotheses are that people who express such disbelief in the possibility of their being selfish, either lack self-insight, or are lying. Your theory I would give a subjective probability rather lower than these. Of course, this might be my lack of insight into the aspie mind. But self-interest is highly evolutionarily favourable, and is built into…

Yeah it's your lack of insight and your projection of your own psychology onto others

The problem with that is: while it's true that one can't treat neurodivergent people fairly without taking heed of their testimony of how their mind works, selfishness is a behavior that has to be evaluated from an external perspective - for everyone, not just the neurodivergent. Because everyone who is ever selfish denies it, and has a story about why they're not being selfish. So it's always evaluated by POSIWID.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#186

Post by passion__desire »

chuckadams wrote: post #127
passion__desire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong in this. But wasn't his writings only for himself and was published only later. How many people really referred to his writings? When was printing press invented? How popular was it compared to Bible? Was it possible for people to consume his writings in multimedia formats like video, audio? Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that t…

> Were there meme-pages on tiktoks which contextualized his writings in different day-to-day scenarios so that the importance of his general ideas were imprinted on their minds? I honestly cannot tell whether this is satire or if I just don’t want to be on this planet anymore.

Meme-pages are today's "brevity is the soul of wit". They really distill experience and wisdom in nice consumable package.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#187

Post by AbstractH24 »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #32
skissane wrote: post #4

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless…

I feel the same. One thing that I have struggled with in relationships is that others need to feel validated, that their decisions are rational and that other people believe that they are rational. Stimulus from the outside to satisfy the inside. What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve. I think this…

> What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve.

I think you are conflating a lack of need for validation and the ability to self-validate.

It’s not that you don’t need any validation, it’s that you have the ability to provide yourself with the validation you need.

Don’t take that for granted. It’s both something to be proud of and a reminder that you aren’t so different from others.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#188

Post by AbstractH24 »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #156
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same. One thing that I have struggled with in relationships is that others need to feel validated, that their decisions are rational and that other people believe that they are rational. Stimulus from the outside to satisfy the inside. What makes this difficult for me is that I don’t need to feel validated, I am comfortable with my own decisions in life and do not need someone else to approve. I think this…

Is the total lack of care about what others think of me a sign or symptom of autism? I had it from childhood to a much larger extent than any of my peers, even though it diminished as I grew older.

I didn’t care in my teens and 20s and then suddenly in the last few years (in 35), i realized I cared tremendously.

Part of it I think is blows to my self-confidence, part is that when you have casual light social connections (school, the in-person workplace, I now wfh) you get this sense of people pseudo-caring about you.

But once that wanes (age and wfh) and you have you put effort into getting even the smallest amount of care from others. Which, in turn requires vulnerability.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#189

Post by nemo44x »

jacamera wrote: post #31
nemo44x wrote: post #9

What I love about these types of articles is it reminds me how fortunate I am to live in the wealthiest and most comfortable time Earth has ever seen and it’s very likely to get better. These types of existential panics aren’t possible when you’re sustenance farming as nearly every human that has existed was forced by nature to endure until a painful, horrifying death from disease or illness perished them. In order t…

I agree generally, but I feel like we're slowly coming to realize that maximal leisure and safety might not necessarily be the recipe for a happy and fulfilling life.

This is more or less the point of Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto. Technology is essentially evil as it replaces the things that truly connect man to his nature. That technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, has made life unfulfilling, and has caused widespread psychological suffering. Most everything we do now is a “surrogate” activity” to try and get control/power over ourselves and find meaning, which has been vaporized by technological progress.

In particular the Industrial Revolution but he himself sees an ideal world basically void of technology. That the revolution should strive to destabilize industrial society enough to force its collapse.

I think he has many interesting observations that are really worth exploring. He also predicted a lot of things more or less. But end of the day life is what you make of it. You don’t really have to participate in modern society. And people have always had existential problems and a desire to find meaning, even if they had less time to ponder it (and possibly be antagonized by it) because they were tending a field, etc. They probably had a long time to think about it as an infection slowly ate its way through their body causing immeasurable pain over days or weeks.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#190

Post by nemo44x »

plaidfuji wrote: post #173
InkCanon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by good. In Maslow's pyramid, the lowest levels are being optimised for while the highest are suffering greatly. By what are approximate proxies for high level metrics like self fulfilment and satisfaction, things are getting worse (especially in young people). Rates of suicide, depression, mental illness, self harm, addictions (drugs and alcohol), obesity, levels of social interaction, stres…

I wonder what would be the optimal balance of material comfort vs self fulfillment. I picture a typical Pareto frontier. Did we push too far to one end? Did we actually pass optimality a few decades ago? Is there a bulge in the middle of the curve where we can still regain some additional self fulfillment while maintaining our standard of living? If we just regulate away all social media for example, do we still get…

People due by the thousands every year to try and reach a Western country they can resettle in mainly because of the wealth of material comforts available.

People want to first get fat and happy and for many that’s good enough. All the self actualization stuff comes far later.

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