Joshe

I find term "life trajectory" more fitting than "life purpose". The idea of a single life purpose can make one blind to alternative, potentially more aligned paths. To double down on a single purpose seems a mistake to me. A big insight for me was realizing purpose doesn't survive as a feeling. If purpose is built on felt meaning, it will eventually collapse, at least for me. I had an interesting discussion with AI about this a while back, and found following interesting. --- Phase 1: Purpose chosen from feeling (the common failure) The insight moment Evan has a strong experience—maybe a book, a conversation, a realization during a quiet night. His internal state: “Holy shit. This explains everything.” “This feels true.” “This is what I’m supposed to do.” Let’s say the insight is: “My purpose is to help people see truth.” At this moment: His mind feels integrated Anxiety drops The future feels coherent Identity snaps into place This is felt bigness. The decision he makes Evan thinks: “Since this feels this clear, it must be my life purpose.” So he declares it: To himself Maybe to others He reorganizes his self-image around it Crucially, the purpose is stored as: A story A self-concept A motivational idea It lives in his feelings and narrative, not his structure. Phase 2: Normalization (where confusion starts) Months pass. Then a year. The insight hasn’t become false. But it has become: Familiar Obvious Emotionally quiet Internally, Evan now notices: “I don’t feel driven by this anymore.” “If this were really my purpose, wouldn’t it still feel powerful?” “Maybe I was just high on insight.” Here’s the key mistake his mind almost always makes: He interprets loss of feeling as loss of validity. So now: He questions the purpose He reopens the option space He starts browsing alternatives again At this stage, he’s vulnerable to: New “big” insights New identities New purposes This is the purpose churn loop. Phase 3: The correction (where maturity enters) Eventually—either through reflection or pain—Evan notices a pattern: “Every purpose I choose feels huge at first… then normal.” “But some paths feel wrong even when I’m uninspired.” This is the turning point. He stops asking: “What feels meaningful?” And starts asking: “What breaks me when I violate it?” Phase 4: Purpose rebuilt as a constraint Evan revisits the same domain—truth, clarity, systems, whatever—but now watches his actual behavior. He notices something specific: When he avoids shallow work, he’s fine When he avoids people-pleasing, he’s fine When he avoids performative bullshit, he’s fine But: When he lies to himself → anxiety spikes When he works on empty status goals → energy collapses When he suppresses his need to understand → resentment builds These reactions happen without motivation. So he reframes his purpose like this: Not: “My purpose is to help people see truth.” But: “I cannot live a life that requires me to lie to myself or operate in bad faith.” This is no longer inspirational. It is exclusionary. Phase 5: How this changes daily decisions (the real-life effect) Now watch what happens. Old mode (feeling-based) A job offer comes in. Evan thinks: “Does this align with my purpose?” “Does it feel meaningful enough?” He debates. He rationalizes. He second-guesses. New mode (constraint-based) Same offer. His thinking is shorter: “This role would require me to pretend to care about things I don’t believe in.” “That’s not survivable.” Decision made. No inspiration required. The crucial difference Feeling-based purpose: Needs to be refreshed Needs to feel alive Needs reinforcement Competes with boredom Constraint-based purpose: Operates automatically Persists through boredom Narrows choices over time Becomes stricter, not weaker Evan doesn’t wake up thinking: “I’m living my purpose today.” He wakes up thinking: “Some options are off the table.” The takeaway: A real purpose doesn’t motivate you — it makes certain paths impossible. --- Analogy: Imagine someone who used to eat junk food freely, then later can’t. Not because of willpower. Not because of beliefs. But because: Their body reacts badly Inflammation Brain fog Mood crashes Now junk food is “impossible.” They can eat it. But they won’t say: “I just don’t feel inspired to.” They’ll say: “It fucks me up.” That’s the same mechanism. Purpose works the same way when real. Why motivation language confuses this Motivation is episodic. Constraints are homeostatic. Motivation: Pushes from behind Comes and goes Requires energy Constraints: Pull from ahead Operate silently Reduce degrees of freedom

If she were ugly, would it bother you the same?

You should not be blindsided by the possibility that women will find someone else they want to sex. It's always a possibility when they aren't getting everything they want from you. I was able to use contemplation to uproot this intense fear/pain by imagining my gfs having sex with someone else. Almost like exposure therapy. Eventually, I was able to let go of negativity about it. If a girl is cheating, that means the relationship isn't going good for her, and it's her prerogative to sleep with whoever she wants. I think this fear or pain naturally subsides to a degree as you get older. My last gf sent me a letter in the mail to tell me she had met someone new (she was in rehab at the time - and yes, she left me for a junky, lol). I'll never forget reading the letter on the porch swing - sun was shining. I just smiled and felt relief, like a new man with the world as my oyster.

I agree. Isolating things like this would develop competency much faster. I'm 1500 ELO rapid and I've never dove into how to properly work the pawns, and I've lost many games because of it, so something as simple as this is really good.

I tested it out. Pretty cool man! Good for practice.

Enormous implications. Quick! Sweep this under the rug before it does damage.

I can do the same thing in a mall food court. I think that's all the dodges you can make on this point. So either idk wtf I'm talking about and am self-deceived, or you're just prematurely rejecting an alternative path to ToM. It's not about expecting a perfect measure bro. It's that the test misses a whole category of high ToM people, such as myself. I've demonstrated an alternative approach that works as well or better than affective attunement. I don't expect you to trust my self-reports but I can assure you, I'm not making this shit up. To say that I have higher ToM than most NTs is an understatement. My theory on why my ToM developed as it did is that it's a trauma response from childhood. My mom was very aloof, volatile, and often violent. I probably felt I needed to read minds to survive. So, if the affective attunement option isn't available, there are other ways to get there.

This is why it's important to learn about ND - so you can more easily accept things like this about yourself. Imagine if you totally accepted that you're just always going to be an awkward hugger and that didn't bother you. Does that feel like it would be a relief to not have to worry about such stuff? Accept who you are. Just be a weird mother fucker who gets awkward when it's time to hug. Embrace that as who you are. If anyone asks "what's up with that guy?" You say "I'm autistic bitch, what's your excuse?" Or, you could just invest a bunch of time and energy into fighting your nature to get good at something you probably don't even really care about.

I think there are a few outliers here that aren't ND. My guess is it's something like 92-98% ND.

Actualized.org’s hardcore fan base all share things in common besides just their interests. The claim is that there is something psychologically fundamental that clusters them together. Goth people are all different, but they usually arrive at being goth from the same structure. They share psychological attributes and similar experiences.

Some grandma cohorts like to swim at the Y with other grandmas, some like to sew quilts in solitude. We can extrapolate one group is more extroverted. But “extroverted grandma” is not high resolution - we can’t tell very much from that. So let’s look at a higher resolution profile. If a goth person with tats, piercings, wears all black, and hangs out with other goth people at goth clubs banging to heavy metal, this is a much higher resolution profile. If you immerse yourself into that profile and become goth yourself, you can build high resolution understanding of them without knowing every single thing about them.

Bingo!

He has a lot of good takes and is definitely a net positive. I think he's pretty awesome. The only take I saw that I didn't like was in that 'AI bad' video you shared.

I mean, it might be, but something just doesn't seem right about it. My issue with it is it was developed to measure ToM - and it is a very creative idea - but my own experience with ToM shows how absurd that is. The gestalt works in real-time too. When I sit down at a poker table full of strangers (some of them don't talk much), I can size them up faster than anyone else I know, and it all arrives via recognition, not inference. Like, I could know if someone is conflict-avoidant, externally validated, risk-averse, and projects confidence to mask insecurity all within 1-5 mins, and all without words, labels, or memories, and I can have an unconscious confidence score on that read which goes up or down as data comes in. I think this is much closer to ToM than affective attunement is. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if affective attunement is a strong marker for autism, but the test is using ToM as a proxy, which isn't right.

Just so we're on the same page, ToM is about modeling minds, not automatic emotional resonance. The more accurate your models, the higher the ToM. It's not uncommon for me to annoy people by addressing their thoughts and emotions before they express them. Those closest to me know they can't hide anything, which makes them uneasy, but they also feel like I'm the one who knows them best, which makes me everyone's closest confidant. This is high ToM. It works like this: right now, subconsciously, I'm storing this interaction into a map of "Carl" which will be available in the gestalt later. It grows from every interaction. For example, before I posted my AI screenshot, I knew you wouldn't like it. My mind seems to make a point of collecting data on people and that data is somehow used to form very accurate predictions about their state and behavior. To some reading this (I know who you are): don't project ego inflation or defensiveness onto me. I'm just explaining how ToM works and letting Carl know I'm not self-deceived regarding my own ToM, and that an autistic person can have very high ToM, which contradicts the idea that the eye test is a good proxy for ToM. I'm sure autistics lack affective empathy (I know I do), but this doesn't necessarily hamper ToM.

I can't demonstrate anything or isolate variables - it's the whole gestalt. Eyes, body, words, tone, what they're not saying, history, how the specific situation fits their patterns, what the situation typically motivates, whether the pieces are congruent or incongruent. Also, the gestalt is just "known". I don't use linear thought to see it - I just see it. This is what makes me very good at poker. I (an autistic) can read people like books, which contradicts the premise of the test. The eyes are just one input. The test strips away everything except one narrow input and calls it "reading minds". But real mind-reading is integrating all of it. Someone can score high on that test and still oblivious to what's actually going on with people because they never learned to read the whole picture. The test implies that reading eyes = TOM = something autistics lack. I can say from my own experience this is bs. I'm not saying there isn't anything valuable about the test, just that it is wrong on its TOM premise. I'm not an academic so I can't argue much but beyond that.

I’m not arguing against this, and it’s probably true that NTs can more accurately discern emotional reality from very minimal signal. But I thought the test page was talking about TOM and saying it’s low in autistics, which may be true for the majority of autistics but I think there’s a significant minority of level 1 autistics this does not apply to. Give me more than just the eyes and I can read emotions better than NTs. This doesn’t negate the test or the data but it does seem to have implications for their TOM conclusions.

lol, damn bro, you crack me up. Hojo gives no fucks.

It's a specific type of spirituality. There seems to be more than one type/approach, which is threatening to many types because their type is supposed to be the only one, kind of like Christianity, lol.

The autistic person who spent decades modeling human behavior will be miles ahead NTs in Theory of Mind. The whole premise of the test seems to be that ND people have low TOM and can't read people as well and NT people can, which is simply not true.

Yeah, I was jk. That test can't tell if someone is ND.

I agree. I don't think it's a good test.

I scored below average: 22 It seems the premise is autistic people have low Theory of Mind, but this isn't true in my experience. I have very high TOM. The test seems to measure shallow, fluent social processing, which I think is very different from TOM. Interesting idea though. Another critique is that NT people probably designed the whole test. It's basically asking "do you label this the same way NT people would label it".

You autistic af bro. 😂

I just went to Claude AI and said: "I've been told I'm neurodivergent. I don't feel any negativity about the topic and it doesn't bother me if I am, but I'd like to know if I am or not, so can you help me figure it out? What are some questions you can ask me to help figure it out? " After 3 rounds of questions and follow up questions, it said: It's kind of like a personality test in that some questions will be difficult to answer, because it's asking why or what makes you behave the way that you do, and the truthful answer isn't always our first instinct. Not a foolproof way to find out but it could be useful.