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I'm addicted to being useful

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Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#291

Post by hackable_sand »

phito wrote: post #104
Ronsenshi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that this is a case for you. I actually enjoy process of writing code, understanding deeply the system I work on, finding elegant solutions to business problems - not just a list of checkboxes with features for a given sprint that agent churns in background. Sure, practically I understand that business doesn't care how well something is written as long as it works somewhat reliably. I might eventually adap…

You can still understand a system deeply and find elegant solutions, and use LLMs to translate your idea into code, then review the code. It's still much faster than writing everything by hand in a lot of cases, if done properly.

Writing slowly is a boon.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#292

Post by n4r9 »

perfmode wrote: post #259
Aurornis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate. Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid. The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather in…

You’re collapsing two distinct claims. The first, that real-world communication is messier than clinical frameworks, is obviously true but doesn’t do the work you need it to. The second, that acknowledging someone’s emotional experience is “infantile” because “nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced,” is empirically false. People frequently do need that. That’s…

Thanks, you've put this in clearer and more concrete terms than I've been able to.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#293

Post by n4r9 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #282
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should make explicit my general assumption that we are not talking about psychopaths given the overwhelming odds that a given individual is not a psychopath. That said... > If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems. I disagree. That is surely a natural and valid emotional response for whatever reason this hypo…

You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid. You are just wrong on this. You want to seem sophisticated and understanding, and it's just lazy stupid thinking.

I think their definition of valid is consistently aligning with the meaning of "acknowledging and accepting someone's internal experience".

As soon as you start trying to apply normative judgements to someone's feelings, as opposed to their behaviour, you inevitably end up drawing an arbitrary and cutlurally informed line between what you or socirty think is okay and what's not. It's only a problem if I feel excited by someone else's pain if my consequent behaviour actually leads to the other person suffering. I have no direct control over my emotions, but I can control my reaction to them. You just telling me it's wrong to feel excited is futile and potentially counter-productive.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#294

Post by n4r9 »

Aurornis wrote: post #234
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion This is not emotional validation; nobody wants to be told something they can decide for themselves. Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion. When venting to someone, one doesn't want to hear "I understand that you feel that way", they want to hear "I understand why you feel that way". The former is a dismissal (taking the guise of a vali…

> Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion. That's not the definition the others are using, but this seems to be a game of whack-a-mole with everyone's different ideas about what it means. That said, I think your definition highlights the problem: By telling someone it's okay to feel the emotion, you've implicitly endorsed the response. The situations I'm speaking about involve people developin…

> That's not the definition the others are using

For what it's worth, imo this is included in the definition of "accepting" someone's feelings. You are saying "it is acceptable" to have the feelings.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#295

Post by n4r9 »

Aurornis wrote: post #236
embedding-shape wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has constant emotional but irrational reactions to everything What are "emotions" if not "irrational chemical reactions in our brains"? Seems really strange to decide what it or isn't "irrational emotions" for someone else to have. I, just like you I presume, see myself as a rational and logical person (maybe you're also a programmer), but I also realize that humans are humans, and having irrational emotion…

Everything in your body is a "chemical reaction". Pulling the trigger of a gun is a lot of chemical reactions. That doesn't mean the person isn't guilty. In fact, it's problematic when people start thinking of their emotions as a chemical process that happens to them, outside of their control. A large part of getting people back on track in therapy is getting them to accept that they do have some control over how the…

You use the word "react" in an ambiguous way; I'm never sure if you mean the emotional response, the subsequent thoughts, or the subsequent behaviour. The latter two we have much more control over, whilst the first must be trained indirectly over a long period of time.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#296

Post by n4r9 »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #187
Aurornis wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition. In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a val…

> They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation. Which is what the whole "empathy movement" of recent years seems to emphasize. The problem is that when empathy is unmoored from the objective good, this can become scandalous (not in the sense that it causes outrage, but in the older sense that it encourages evil). Not every response…

This is a bit of a difficult stance to take if, like me, you don't think that there is an objective good or an objective moral status.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#297

Post by n4r9 »

Aurornis wrote: post #148
n4r9 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like the definition on Wikipedia: > Emotional validation is a process which involves acknowledging and accepting another individual's inner emotional experience, without necessarily agreeing with or justifying it, and possibly also communicating that acceptance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the e…

I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition. In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a val…

What do you mean by "going along with" ? Just that it sounds suspiciously like agreeing with an opinion, rather than accepting a feeling.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#298

Post by n4r9 »

dapperdrake wrote: post #166
vacuity wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your descriptions of the terms, but I think there's often a divergence between empathy (which I find great) and reflecting people's feelings (which I find good with caution). I want people to understand and help each other. But in some situations, reflecting people's feelings encourages them to make poor decisions. I should always provide a space for people to speak without scorn and with understanding,…

Reflecting peoples feelings is sometimes called "showing sympathy."

Sympathy means expressing pity or sorrow at someone's plight. Reflecting feelings is more like a form of empathy. It's clarifying and/or paraphrasing the feelings so that the other person feels like they're heard and taken seriously. They're orthogonal behaviours - you can do one or the other or both.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#299

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #282
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should make explicit my general assumption that we are not talking about psychopaths given the overwhelming odds that a given individual is not a psychopath. That said... > If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems. I disagree. That is surely a natural and valid emotional response for whatever reason this hypo…

You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid. You are just wrong on this. You want to seem sophisticated and understanding, and it's just lazy stupid thinking.

> You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.

We could decide on a similar word to use if you prefer. Perhaps "acceptable" from a sibling comment. Replace "valid" with "acceptable" and "validation" with "acceptance" in all of my comments and the meaning is still true; that seems to suggest I've been consistent with my use of "valid".

> You are just wrong on this.

What you mean is that we are of different minds. You try to make yours the objective one in spite of the glaringly obvious fact that opinions are not necessarily shared between differing minds.

> You want to seem sophisticated and understanding

Genuinely, what a compliment! I was just writing about my perspective. My goal with the writing was primarily to espouse my understanding of this subject while secondarily avoiding "you" statements in my comments. If you think the result sounds sophisticated and understanding, I am more than willing to believe you. If you don't think that, well, you might want to consider where those words came from because I sure noticed. (It might also help to consider that you have no means of discovering my motivation; you must have made an assumption and expressed said assumption using your own words.)

The fact of the matter is that I spent the first three decades or so of my life being extremely emotionally unstable until I (at least somewhat) learned to manage that. I suspect this "sophisticated and understanding" sense you get from my writing on this topic comes from the care with which I write about a subject so dear to me.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#300

Post by [deleted] »

hackable_sand wrote: post #290
WalterBright wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout the vast arc of human existence, you worked or you died. Nature does not hand you food, shelter, clothing, and flush toilets for free. Most of us, if dropped naked into the wilderness, will die within 24 hours. Bone evidence from colonial America is the colonists worked like dogs and died young. Bone evidence from the Indians showed repeated famines.

Yeah it's really not that serious

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