Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous • Hacker News Board

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#241

Post by kashunstva » Wed, Nov 29, 2023, 12:25 PM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #96

My mother passed away from cancer when I was 11. Originally when she learned she was terminal, she thought it might be a good idea for me to attend support sessions with the school counselor. Unfortunately in this case, the counselor wasn’t that great at their job, and I came home from school talking about how I was “anxious” and “depressed”—words I had never used before. My mother pulled me out of counseling and tol…

> other options (medication for example)

I would just add (your 11 y/o experience notwithstanding) that psychotherapy is a viable, and often preferable option for many. The fitness between therapist and client if definitely a key variable; but my experience with therapy vs meds has dramatically favoured the former.

Agree that there are situations with no positive spin in the moment and maybe there will never be a positive spin; but maybe there’s a _growth-oriented_ spin. Eventually.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#242

Post by sethammons » Wed, Nov 29, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #232

sethammons wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up poor. Something I realized early on is I had a lot of victim-mentality people around me. The world happened to them. I decided at an early age (like, under 10) that everyone is 100% responsible for everything that happens to them, including by chance. You get hit by a car? You were standing there. In this world view, you can have more than 100% responsibility because the driver that hit you is also 100% res…

> " I decided at an early age (like, under 10) that everyone is 100% responsible for everything that happens to them " Do you think you were responsible for thinking like that when you were 9 years old?

Somewhere I likely came across the idea that I was responsible for myself. I'm not sure if that was something my dad said in passing, or in a book I read, or a show on TV. I probably did not have the genesis of that idea in a vacuum. Given the environment I was in and the people that surrounded me, I could see that they blamed the world for their problems and it didn't appear to be working out for them. I grew up with no role models on how I should live - instead, I saw many examples of things I did not want to emulate. One of those things was a victim-mentality.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#243

Post by homefree » Wed, Nov 29, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #15

homefree wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 these looked great, I would have much rather lived in this than the triple with zero privacy I lived in during school.

I lived in my own room with a shared living room in a dorm room decades ago. And it had a window and opened to the outside. The point is that better designs exist, but people will defend Munger just because his design could be worse . I think my opinion and reaction is based upon his reaction. He rejected all criticism outright and refused to listen to anyone. It was his design, or he would take his money away.

I saw more of the opposite - people dismissing him because of identity politics and just because he's a billionaire.

My impression was he had strict requirements because part of the design is about tradeoffs and cost and the reason this kind of thing takes forever and gets expensive is because of all of the arguing that happens during it. You end up with a design by committee and worse outcome.

I'm skeptical of the 'better designs' not having these tradeoffs.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#244

Post by KittenInABox » Wed, Nov 29, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #169

KittenInABox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavily disagree. It is very clear when you are a victim of child abuse that no part of your abuse was in your control, because you were a child. It's also super fucked up to say the notion of, say, a rape victim is a pointless distraction. I think a "what was in your control about you being raped" is just about the least productive way to go about the scenario of being victimized.

Even if the child abuse was not in your control, how you react to it might be. For example, there is a nasty cycle of violence where people who have been abused in the past are at severe risk of abusing others in turn. That's the kind of thing that one would very much have control over, even as a victim of such grievous acts.

Yes, it generally always starts with acknowledging one being a victim of abuse first and foremost.

Re: Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

#245

Post by makeitdouble » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #238

KittenInABox wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote is... "If you just take the attitude that, however bad it is in anyway, it’s always your fault and you just fix it as best you can – the so-called ‘iron prescription’ – I think that really works." ...does not work for e.g. victims of child abuse. Child abuse is never the fault of the child.

hackernews really will look for a counter example to any advice, metaphor, or simile in the pursuit of being technically correct.

To me the crux of it is it's not an advice or metaphor.

Telling people to stop feeling the way they feel is good for motivational posters, but not something to tell people expecting them to think long and deep about it.