The more I reread your post, the more I feel our differences might be more nuances, but I think your contrarian / playing to an audience of cynics tone (which did amuse me) makes them seem starker?
I think that I disagree with you with regards to how people value other people, and how people should expect other people to value them, and less about where one should derive one’s own self-worth from [1]. As such, I do think that we have a disagreement.
I am not sure whether you’re saying “treating people better / worse depending on their success is good”; particularly in the paragraphs about success and worth. Or that you think that’s just an immutable fact of life (which I disagree with). What’s your take?
I think it is good in the case of, for instance, your professional life. For instance, funders are likely to fund projects differentially for people who have previous successes under their belt. People might fire other people if they haven’t been going well at their jobs.
In the case of personal life, it’s more ambiguous. As we both agree on, it causes sorrow. However, I think it’s hard to change, because there are traits that make someone a good friend, romantic partner, colleague, and I think that it’s a bit futile to go against that. I don’t think it’s literally impossible, but I think that there are time tradeoffs, and developing existential chill is one of many things one could do with one’s time.
I’ve also had bad experiences with situations which gave the outer impression of being high trust/high acceptance, but weren’t in the end when that acceptance was pushed a bit.
I think that sometimes you can get away with a “judge once” regime, where once you are in someone’s circle of care they care about you unconditionally, but I also think that people have limited spots.
How do you see “having given my honest best shot”as distinct from my point of the value in trying your hardest? I’m suspicious we’d find them most the same thing if we looked into it...
I’m not sure what your point of trying your hardest is, maybe:
I can donate effectively as much as I can, and work as hard as I can on what I think matters, but ultimately the odds are stacked against me, like they are for everyone
I think a difference might be that I derive some self-worth from staying true to my ideals, or “staying true to inner self”, but I read you as saying that you derive self-worth from some intrinsic value. I read that paragraph as saying that “you can work as hard as you can”, but not making a statement related to that as self-worth.
It’s possible I’m missing what the point was.
I think that we have different things:
How you value yourself
How other people value you
How you value other people
your other points/questions are more about how you value yourself (“self-worth”?), but I am mostly talking about how other people value you (“external worth”?), and neither agree nor disagree on the points about self-worth.
Muddying the above do think that how other people perceive one is usually a pretty important part of people’s self-worth, and while I think this might be changeable with effort, I’m not sure to what extent that is a good use of one’s time.
Maybe I should have written
I’ve found more value in deriving worth (part of my internal self-worth) from “having given my honest best shot” and taking actions that will make me more formidable, like mastery over skills (which increases both self-worth and external worth).
I don’t think that mastery over skills is incompatible with notions of internal self-worth.
I’m confident that feeling like their worth doesn’t depend on sucessful mastery of skills is itself a pretty good foundation for mastery of skills.
I would disagree over external self-worth. I think that people with more mastery over more skills are more valuable to those around them.
I don’t mind if people think I’m better / worse at something and ‘measure me’ in that way; I don’t mind if it presents fewer opportunities. But I take issue when anyone...:
uses that measurement to update on someone’s value as a person, and treat them differently because of it, or;
over-updates on someone’s ability; the worst of which looks like deference or writing someone off.
The “I don’t mind if it presents fewer opportunities” vs “[I do mind if they] treat them differently because of it” seem incompatible.
Here is a scenario: We have a few conversations. These conversations aren’t enough for me to be very sure, but I come away with the impression that you are a boring conversationalist. In the future, I tend to seek other conversations. Is this something you’d object to?
What if you change (“conversations, “boring conversationalist”) to (“dancing sessions”, “clumsy dancer”), (“trial tasks”, “unproductive contractor”), (“date”, probably not a potential relationship”), (“chess matches”, “vastly superior/inferior chess player”). I’m unsure what you would say here, or why.
writing someone off.
I actually really do to this, I think that writing off people quickly is necessary in contexts like dates, job opportunities with many potential applicants, bloggers to read, etc. It’s possible you have some more nuanced meaning here, though.
I reserve my right to take issue with that at some future point. Also, I liked the ” I grace you with more sappy reasons why you’re wrong, and sign you up to my life-coaching platform” sentence.
It’s worded in terms of starting projects and receiving funding because that’s been on mind, but you could translate it to other domains. There should also be a third dimension which is “well, but how good are you, really”.
I claim that knowing where you are on that grid is important, because it will lead you to better actions (in the case of “correctly depressed”, it might be “attain mastery of a skill” so that you move one level up, or “being ok with being humble” [1]).
I don’t know what you are claiming with regards to that grid.
E.g., supppose that “project” in this grid is “starting your own organization”. In many respects you’ll want to be “correctly depressed” w/r to that. Maybe not the best name.
I appreciate this chart! I think one thing that surprises me about a lot of these conversations is that people come from the presumption that intuitions/beliefs carry zero information and will always carry zero information, whereas I prefer to approach it from the angle of intuitions having nonzero information and it’s valuable for us to align them to be more accurate.
I think that I disagree with you with regards to how people value other people, and how people should expect other people to value them, and less about where one should derive one’s own self-worth from [1]. As such, I do think that we have a disagreement.
I think it is good in the case of, for instance, your professional life. For instance, funders are likely to fund projects differentially for people who have previous successes under their belt. People might fire other people if they haven’t been going well at their jobs.
In the case of personal life, it’s more ambiguous. As we both agree on, it causes sorrow. However, I think it’s hard to change, because there are traits that make someone a good friend, romantic partner, colleague, and I think that it’s a bit futile to go against that. I don’t think it’s literally impossible, but I think that there are time tradeoffs, and developing existential chill is one of many things one could do with one’s time.
I’ve also had bad experiences with situations which gave the outer impression of being high trust/high acceptance, but weren’t in the end when that acceptance was pushed a bit.
I think that sometimes you can get away with a “judge once” regime, where once you are in someone’s circle of care they care about you unconditionally, but I also think that people have limited spots.
I’m not sure what your point of trying your hardest is, maybe:
I think a difference might be that I derive some self-worth from staying true to my ideals, or “staying true to inner self”, but I read you as saying that you derive self-worth from some intrinsic value. I read that paragraph as saying that “you can work as hard as you can”, but not making a statement related to that as self-worth.
It’s possible I’m missing what the point was.
I think that we have different things:
How you value yourself
How other people value you
How you value other people
your other points/questions are more about how you value yourself (“self-worth”?), but I am mostly talking about how other people value you (“external worth”?), and neither agree nor disagree on the points about self-worth.
Muddying the above do think that how other people perceive one is usually a pretty important part of people’s self-worth, and while I think this might be changeable with effort, I’m not sure to what extent that is a good use of one’s time.
Maybe I should have written
I don’t think that mastery over skills is incompatible with notions of internal self-worth.
I would disagree over external self-worth. I think that people with more mastery over more skills are more valuable to those around them.
The “I don’t mind if it presents fewer opportunities” vs “[I do mind if they] treat them differently because of it” seem incompatible.
Here is a scenario: We have a few conversations. These conversations aren’t enough for me to be very sure, but I come away with the impression that you are a boring conversationalist. In the future, I tend to seek other conversations. Is this something you’d object to?
What if you change (“conversations, “boring conversationalist”) to (“dancing sessions”, “clumsy dancer”), (“trial tasks”, “unproductive contractor”), (“date”, probably not a potential relationship”), (“chess matches”, “vastly superior/inferior chess player”). I’m unsure what you would say here, or why.
I actually really do to this, I think that writing off people quickly is necessary in contexts like dates, job opportunities with many potential applicants, bloggers to read, etc. It’s possible you have some more nuanced meaning here, though.
I reserve my right to take issue with that at some future point. Also, I liked the ” I grace you with more sappy reasons why you’re wrong, and sign you up to my life-coaching platform” sentence.
Here is a model that I want to share with you:
It’s worded in terms of starting projects and receiving funding because that’s been on mind, but you could translate it to other domains. There should also be a third dimension which is “well, but how good are you, really”.
I claim that knowing where you are on that grid is important, because it will lead you to better actions (in the case of “correctly depressed”, it might be “attain mastery of a skill” so that you move one level up, or “being ok with being humble” [1]).
I don’t know what you are claiming with regards to that grid.
E.g., supppose that “project” in this grid is “starting your own organization”. In many respects you’ll want to be “correctly depressed” w/r to that. Maybe not the best name.
I appreciate this chart! I think one thing that surprises me about a lot of these conversations is that people come from the presumption that intuitions/beliefs carry zero information and will always carry zero information, whereas I prefer to approach it from the angle of intuitions having nonzero information and it’s valuable for us to align them to be more accurate.