I think you're not describing what your actual experience is clearly enough, and you're unnecessarily getting into Meyers Briggs offshoot stuff that is poisoning the well for whatever you're trying to describe.
Can you describe your subjective experience of this with more clarity and detail?
I think the little scrollbar on mobile on the right side of the screen isn't very useful because its' position is dependent on the length of the entire page including all comments, and what I want is an estimation of how much more of the article is left to read. I wonder if anyone else agrees
The issue is that in countries with a binary as the norm, a large part of transgender identity is the desire to exist within the norm. A trans man doesn't get on testosterone because he wants to be regarded as a trans man, or some other third signifier like 'manlygirl', he gets on testosterone because he wants to be regarded as a man, like his father or brother.
The dysphoria, the main source of anguish that leads to the desire to transition in the first place, comes from category mismatch between how the world views the individual and how the individual views themselves.
Some group of people with gender dysphoria may be fine with your 'elegant solution', and find themselves comfortable being genderqueer or 'nonbinary', but a large majority will find it no solution at all.
1Honest, innocent question: did Claude help you write this?
My reasoning is lots of LLMisms: "This isn't just wrong—it's poisonous.", for one.
I kinda liked this and I think similar things but the formatting is very strange, it could be majorly condensed.
I really enjoyed this book, and also this post! I don't think I was able to apply the lessons from the book after reading it, despite the fact that it felt very impactful, so I guess I had the same issues as you. You mentioned that a version with somatic work would be better, and honestly... I sort of think that is sort of attempted by Existential Kink, which I also read, very recently, on your recommendation, even, I think, and really enjoyed, in fact it thrilled me and left me with a sort of electric vibe afterwards, but...
It didn't really stick— I mean, I liked a lot of the lessons and I felt like it was really smart and helpful and make me feel like a cool kink-powered left hand path witch of equanimity and manifestation, but... ultimately left me with maybe 10% more 'menschness'.
I'd be very interested in a book (or post, tool, ai, app whatever) that combines core philosophies of EK, Courage to be Disliked, etc, into a more compact, easier to read, more 'battle tested' and pragmatic set of tools people can use to apply these lessons in a longer term way. And I think that tendency to hit certain triggers- the way EK and Courage both discuss trauma and other bad things happening, and EK's fascination with describing the shadow work involved as literally clit-twitchingly sexually empowering left-hand-path witchery manifestation, despite it basically boiling down to 'situations that you experience and describe as 'bad' may in fact be self inflicted, and that's okay, and you'll be happier and more likely to escape those situations if you accept that' — Claim #3 from your list.
The other biggest self-helpy life lesson that has been the most useful for me, lately, is the simple fact that things that 'feel good' lead to a snapback of bad feelings in the future, and things that are difficult lead to a snapback of a sort of centeredness, equanimity, and joy in the future. We know this through the obvious hangover effect of alcohol and other drugs, but many people ignore or underestimate it in the context of things like scrolling feeds, masturbation, gambling, gaming, oversleep, sugar, catchy music, etc etc. And are entirely unaware of or downplay the 'positive hangover' from exercise, difficult work, cleaning, meditation, etc.
I think we're inching closer, as a society, to having clear and concise sources for people to non-dogmatically explore these concepts, but there's a lot of noise, a lot of potential moments for people to get turned off or triggered before discovering the wisdom. I think some very effective and very smart people see this stuff as common sense, but that doesn't mean there aren't millions out there who could be helped a lot by gaining deeper insights into their brain and personality from stuff like this.
Edit: I was mistaken in thinking that you'd written about Existential Kink, it seems to have been Evan Erickson at Emframes refereencing a post by Sasha Chapin, so my bad on that.
Do we know that the examples of Gemini thinking in kaomoji and Claude speaking in spanish, etc, are real?
I say that because ChatGPT doesn't actually display its chain of thought to the user, so it's possible neither does Gemini or Claude. ChatGPT has the chain of thought obfuscated into something more approachable to the user, as I understand it.
We have reached the juncture in history at which two previously impossible things have become technologically feasible: the destruction of all life on Earth, or Infinite Slack for everyone forever. Hopefully, these are two different things; but it's never too early to start being pessimistic.
The trend of 'fidget toys' and other similar things is interesting, because to me, fidgeting with something has always made me more anxious, more unsettled, more uncomfortable, and eventually I get the urge to throw it across the room or something like that. I've tried a fidget spinner and a fidget cube and just toying around with whatever's lying on my desk, and it just... makes me feel burned out and unfulfilled. Like scrolling on tiktok for hours, or having the same song stuck in my head for days. Apparently it helps other people to toy with these things, so I wonder if I'm just unique in the way my brain processes the fidgeting, or something.
It could also be your 'subscribe to my substack!' at the end, maybe.