Stories of this nature are sobering to hear; thank you for posting this—each post like this gets people in the community mentally closer to seeing the base rate of success in the EA community for what it is.
Your writing is enjoyable to read as well—I would read more of it.
Controlling for overconfidence, I’m sorry that your expectations were failed with the last EA job you applied for. My brain doesn’t usually like to accept such things.
The expected value of letting go and building a mental foundation that is simple, peaceful, want-free, etc… is positive. Generally speaking, most of the time, my life is actually pretty good. The baseline is good. When negative thoughts enter, I usually just repeat in my internal monologue “your mind is producing negative thoughts, all is actually well”, and this usually calms me and actually makes me more content, probably by distracting me from the negative thoughts and images and by increasing my levels of gratitude. It seems to me that your situation would benefit doing something like this. Take it 1 step at a time.
I am humbled by your encouragement, my cowboy/cowgirl friend. That means a lot coming from a microorganism, considering the challenges you overcame in learning to operating a computer and to survive this land of giants.
“your mind is producing negative thoughts, all is actually well”
It’s a battle to convince myself of that sometimes, but it’s a battle worth fighting, and as you say, “1 step at a time.”
Stories of this nature are sobering to hear; thank you for posting this—each post like this gets people in the community mentally closer to seeing the base rate of success in the EA community for what it is.
Your writing is enjoyable to read as well—I would read more of it.
I agree. And now I wonder whether someone already did write more about this? And if not, maybe this could be a great project?
I found the ‘personal EA stories’ in Doing Good Better (Greg Lewis) and Strangers Drowning (well, many of these are not quite about EA, but there are many similarities) very helpful for clarifying what my expectations should or could be.
A book where, say, each chapter follows the EA path of one person with their personal successes, struggles, uncertainties and failures could span the different experiences that people can have with EA. Similarly to how many people found semicycle’s story valuable, I could imagine that such a book could be very helpful for actually internalizing that EA is very much a community project where doing the right thing often means that individuals will fail at many of their efforts.
If this book already exists, I would be very happy to know about it :)
Stories of this nature are sobering to hear; thank you for posting this—each post like this gets people in the community mentally closer to seeing the base rate of success in the EA community for what it is.
Your writing is enjoyable to read as well—I would read more of it.
Controlling for overconfidence, I’m sorry that your expectations were failed with the last EA job you applied for. My brain doesn’t usually like to accept such things.
The expected value of letting go and building a mental foundation that is simple, peaceful, want-free, etc… is positive. Generally speaking, most of the time, my life is actually pretty good. The baseline is good. When negative thoughts enter, I usually just repeat in my internal monologue “your mind is producing negative thoughts, all is actually well”, and this usually calms me and actually makes me more content, probably by distracting me from the negative thoughts and images and by increasing my levels of gratitude. It seems to me that your situation would benefit doing something like this. Take it 1 step at a time.
Have a nice day.
I am humbled by your encouragement, my cowboy/cowgirl friend. That means a lot coming from a microorganism, considering the challenges you overcame in learning to operating a computer and to survive this land of giants.
It’s a battle to convince myself of that sometimes, but it’s a battle worth fighting, and as you say, “1 step at a time.”
I agree. And now I wonder whether someone already did write more about this? And if not, maybe this could be a great project?
I found the ‘personal EA stories’ in Doing Good Better (Greg Lewis) and Strangers Drowning (well, many of these are not quite about EA, but there are many similarities) very helpful for clarifying what my expectations should or could be.
A book where, say, each chapter follows the EA path of one person with their personal successes, struggles, uncertainties and failures could span the different experiences that people can have with EA. Similarly to how many people found semicycle’s story valuable, I could imagine that such a book could be very helpful for actually internalizing that EA is very much a community project where doing the right thing often means that individuals will fail at many of their efforts.
If this book already exists, I would be very happy to know about it :)