Maybe you’re not trying • Hacker News Board

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#131

Post by dpark » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

y-curious wrote: post #77

yousif_123123 wrote: post #58

I've always noticed that when I'm giving advice to someone or trying to help out, it always feels their problem is easier than whatever problem I have. As someone with some anxiety around things like calling some company to get something done or asking a random stranger for some help in a store, I would gladly do it if it was to help someone else (family member or friend). But when it's for me I find it harder. I won…

People in the ADHD community are outspoken about a tangential concept: cleaning. Cleaning your friends place is a fun, novel, non-emotional activity. Cleaning your own space is a mental slog, boring and often painful due to having to rid yourself of mementos. In that case, my theory is that you get to shed your learned helplessness about how things look. I suspect it’s similar with giving advice.

> Cleaning your friends place is a fun, novel, non-emotional activity. Cleaning your own space is a mental slog, boring and often painful

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” - Mark Twain

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#132

Post by dpark » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #91

> But the feeling of effort doesn’t mean that you’re Actually Trying. That's why I go out of my way to dunk on people who treat “try things” and “hard work” as useful advice. What you work hard on matters. If they wanted respect, they ought to have had the honesty to admit they do not have specific advice for you (or lack the time to help).

But “try things” and “hard work” are excellent advice. Someone who’s working really hard to solve a problem one way when it’s not working is not in fact “trying things”. Someone who’s trying many things but putting no effort into it is not “working hard”.

People willing to both try things and work hard are much more likely to discover a good solution.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#133

Post by fluxusars » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

Trying on every single thing you do is exhausting. I certainly don't have the energy any more to try hard at some personal life things when my work is stressful. I think it's good to do some introspection from time to time to find out what things might be draining you and preventing you from trying on something that you should be trying hard at.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#134

Post by abhaynayar » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

I have some qualm with "agency is important" type thinking because when I was in a good situation in life with "moderate" difficulty which I overcame I called it me being agentic. However, when I was in situations in life which were bad and totally out of my control and to the best of my ability I couldn't come out of them, I realized it's pretty much all just luck and circumstance.

Just because you're not emotionally ready to do something doesn't mean you're not trying enough. I feel like we tend to downplay the role of luck in emotions and mind. Like "of course you could be more confident, agentic, assertive, etc. YOU are not doing enough of that". But if you physiologically or materialistically go through a bad patch with respect to health or resources people "get it". If you are not physically gifted to play a certain sport people "get it". But if you're not mentally gifted to be "agentic" it's YOUR responsibility. Don't know why this expectation was set. Same way how mental health has been a stigma and still somewhat is, but if you have a physiological disease it's OK, not your fault.

We all just write advice looking backwards. People who are lucky enough to have the perfect combination of circumstance and mindset to think that agency is all you need write that way.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#135

Post by renewiltord » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

A good post. OP is a famous poker player. I think I’ve seen her on Twitter. I don’t think it’s doxxing to mention that her husband Sasha Chapin is a self help type famous fellow on Twitter. They’re both public figures and publicly married (or at least I recall seeing a post publicly).

Given that context especially, I was surprised she didn’t hand over the problem to her husband earlier. Any time some kind of bureaucratic process is required my wife and I usually involve the other person. But neither of us are public like that and she’s not been stalked like this so who can tell.

But after the brother extortion at least you have to tell your husband imho. It means that there’s a bigger blast radius now.

Unsurprisingly, these things are hard to handle solo. I would struggle too. But I think most married people would lean on their partners to solve it for them.

Perhaps as public figures this kind of stuff happens to them often and so the escalation point is never obvious like it is to private people like me.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#136

Post by vhiremath4 » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

abhaynayar wrote: post #134

I have some qualm with "agency is important" type thinking because when I was in a good situation in life with "moderate" difficulty which I overcame I called it me being agentic. However, when I was in situations in life which were bad and totally out of my control and to the best of my ability I couldn't come out of them, I realized it's pretty much all just luck and circumstance. Just because you're not emotionall…

There are agentic ways to submit to the journey even if it’s going to suck for a while and there’s no apparent end in sight. Gratitude. God. Whatever. Lots of people submit by withering away and letting their emotions take them down a path of steady erosion. That is not high agency.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#137

Post by medstrom » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

throw-qqqqq wrote: post #16

Etheryte wrote: post #6

This is an idea that philosophers have played with in countless varieties, perhaps the one closest to the author's wording is Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of bad faith. Faced with anxiety, guilt or overwhelming weight of responsibility, it's often easier to subconsciously sidestep the problem and pretend you don't have a choice, even if you do. This is not even a conscious decision, it's hard to be aware of our own qui…

This resonates with my experiences. I once broke an ankle badly and were on crutches + stabilizer boot for three months. I could mostly only use one hand if standing (other was holding crutches). It took me weeks to notice all the things I didn’t do any longer because it was painful and/or difficult. Like just making a cup of coffee in the morning (and I LOVE coffee!). Activities were aborted before making any consci…

That's almost concerning. I wonder if it'd be realistic to

1. put up a whiteboard somewhere

2. observe with some regularity what your routines are right now (non-judgmentally)

3. write them down (descriptively, not prescriptively)

4. update over time

Then you'd get the chance to notice your routines changing.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#138

Post by yetihehe » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

txrx0000 wrote: post #108

yetihehe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not my position at all. I would like to understand your position more. Most people believe that they have choice. They could for example do more work or lie on a couch. You mean they have no choice and whichever decision they took is not from their will, but only from their circumstances? I agree that a lot of the weights in such decision is a result of previous happenstances, but "no agency" model suggests…

I believe OP's original implied position was "the universe is deterministic, so why even try", but I was able to convince them that trying is worth it regardless. In fact, the universe being deterministic would mean that it's always worth it to believe that you can accomplish something (if you want to increase the probability of accomplishing that thing). > You mean they have no choice and whichever decision they too…

From what we know, universe is not deterministic. For example even trying to calculate motion of two massive objects with gravity with good precision runs up against heisenberg limit. For massively complicated systems like out bodies, there is just too much uncertainty. Also from neurobiology we see that our brains operate at the limit of noise in neurons. We are as close to total noise on our neuronal links as possible, while still operating properly. And thanks to better neurons than animals, we can operate with lower signal-to-noise ratio. It's not like we use some special quantum effects as a base of our consciousness, we just use quantum noise as a base and amplify it so that we actually respond properly to stimuli.

As for being only shaped by circumstances - IIRC there were experiments with cloned fish, where all of them were kept in conditions as similar as possible and those fish still had behavioral differences. Having deterministic universe is meaningless for agency.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#139

Post by yetihehe » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

Dilettante_ wrote: post #74

yetihehe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No agency" for me means pretty much that. What does "no agency" mean for you?

Difficult to accurately give expression to "the absence of this particular illusion". In the asteroid metaphor: It means that if you can very clearly see the asteroid coming towards you, instead of going "no, the asteroid is going to do the right thing", you make preparations knowing that there is no do-er inside the asteroid. And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it…

> And after getting hit by it, you do not go "if only the asteroid had had more willpower it would not have hit us.

I don't understand this. You tell me that not having agency is not applicable to asteroids?

> (But reality is only ever one way, disregarding quantum mechanical magic for a minute)

I think we can't really disregard quantum mechanics when talking about very complicated systems operating on the edge of being too noisy for any recognisable transmission in our neurons.

Re: Maybe you’re not trying

#140

Post by Kerrick » Sun, Nov 16, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

abhaynayar wrote: post #134

I have some qualm with "agency is important" type thinking because when I was in a good situation in life with "moderate" difficulty which I overcame I called it me being agentic. However, when I was in situations in life which were bad and totally out of my control and to the best of my ability I couldn't come out of them, I realized it's pretty much all just luck and circumstance. Just because you're not emotionall…

> Just because you're not emotionally ready to do something doesn't mean you're not trying enough

The author specifically addressed this.

> My approach [...] was the only one that seemed available given my spiritual and psychological resources at the time. But my orientation to the problem became fixed in time at that point of low agency, and it never occurred to me to revisit it as my capacity for action increased.

They acknowledged that one's capacity to Actually Try is sometimes limited. The article is about getting stuck in that mindset and assuming you're still limited, even when you do later have the emotional resources to bear against the problem.