advice | In Search of Secrets

Tag Archives: advice

September 15, 2025 · 8:10 am

“Wrong Idea” Idea

If you’ve been reading regularly (love you, mom) you might have noticed I was dealing with some relationship problems last month. Very, very abridged version: I told someone I loved them, they didn’t love me back (oh well), later on they decided I was a manipulative creep (for understandable but mistaken reasons), and among other things said “You don’t love me, you love the idea of me.”

(Side note: I get what people mean when they say this–that you’re in love with an imaginary person that you think or wish they were, instead of loving the real person the way they actually are–but I kind of hate that phrasing? Like, love happens up here–*points to head*–and there’s nothing in there except ideas. What am I supposed to base my feelings on instead? You gonna open up a hatch and climb inside? I wish there were some nice, snappy ways to say specifically “I’m not the person you think you’re in love with, they don’t exist” or “you think I’m going to change into someone else, but you don’t love the person I truly am” or “the fantasy you have of us being together is completely unrealistic, actually it would be a disaster” so we could just say those things instead. Which of them is it?? My un-shutuppable inner pedant demands precision!)

It…well, it hurt. It hurt a lot. I feel like a whiny, privileged baby saying that because it was the first time I’ve ever had my heart broken and there are people who’ve had to deal with that feeling, like, dozens of times, and also there are way worse problems that other people (including the one I love) have had to overcome and I worry that if I had to face one of those truly awful problems I would just fold in half like a piece of damp paperboard and–

*deep breath*

Um, anyway, I recently figured out a trick that helps a lot. Maybe it can help you, too! Whenever I start feeling down about how “they hate me” or “they think I’m a creep,” I just say to myself instead: “they don’t hate me, they hate the idea of me” or “they don’t think I’m a creep, they think the idea of me is a creep.” Because it’s the same logic, isn’t it? If someone has feelings toward you, but their idea of who you are is mistaken, then whether the feeling is positive or negative the result is the same: they think their feelings are directed at you, but they’re actually pointed somewhere else. If they had the right idea about who you are, they probably wouldn’t hate you–so it isn’t really you they hate!

Of course, you’ve got to be careful using logic like this, since you can also be mistaken about somebody else being mistaken. Maybe you’re the one who has the wrong idea about who you are, or maybe their feelings wouldn’t change even if they did get to know you better, or maybe they’re wrong about some things but right about others that are still important–and if you dismiss those possibilities you might lose a valuable opportunity for growth. (For example, I’ve since noticed myself doing a few things that, while not on the same scale as the misunderstanding, actually might be a bit creepy, and I’ve been grateful for the chance to catch and address them.) But if you have good reason to believe someone has completely the wrong idea about you, explicitly making it less personal goes a long way toward being able to let those hurt feelings go.

Okay, that’s everything. I love you all, and thanks for reading!

Remembering the Basics

A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty down. Now, there were definitely other reasons for my low mood, but after a little while I realized that part of the problem was I’d been neglecting things like eating food, drinking water, and sleeping.

Remembering to do those things didn’t make my problems disappear. But it definitely made it easier to handle them!

Here’s the thing: food, water, and sleep are the fundamentals of self-care. They’re the very first things you should try when there’s a problem, like making sure an appliance that’s not working is plugged in, or checking to see if caps lock is on when your password isn’t working. So why did I neglect them for so long when I needed them so badly?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a coincidence.

There’s a common type of advice in nearly every field that boils down to something like “don’t neglect the basics.” In sports, it’s “keep your eye on the ball;” in business, there’s “make something people want;” in art, “practice makes perfect;” science has “test your hypotheses;” and in the rationality community we have “read the sequences.”¹

Why is it so common to hear advice that basically boils down to “Hey, remember the very first things you learned? Y’know, all the easiest stuff that you’ve practiced a million times? Be sure not to forget it!” It seems like telling a Math Olympian not to forget that 2+2=4.

There are two reasons for this. The first is straightforward: the simplest and earliest lessons are also the most important. This is easiest to see in sports: if both you and your opponent have mastered the basics, the victor is determined by your mastery of the more advanced techniques.² But if you flub the basics, your opponent can generally crush you without breaking a sweat.

“What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” -Jerry Cleaver (as quoted here)

The second reason is more subtle. When are you most likely to forget the basics? Probably not when you’re relaxed, well-rested, and focused–but if you’re under stress, pressed for time, tired, hungry, distracted? That’s when you’re most likely to make simple mistakes (like forgetting to drink water when you’re in a funk).

Of course, those are also the times when you’ll get the most benefit out of low-effort, high-impact fixes. Hence, the common advice.

So here’s my self-care tip of the day: don’t forget the basics. Stay hydrated, eat healthy, get rest, exercise as much as you’re able. Most importantly, when you know that forgetting the basics isn’t the main problem, take extra care to remember them anyway. It won’t make your problem go away, but it will make it easier to handle.

Joy and health to you all.

You may be wondering why our “basics” is literally an entire alphabet of volumes. The answer should probably be its own essay, but the footnote version is that (a) rationality is such a young field that pretty much the whole thing is basics (there are no fancy high-level techniques, or at least very few), (b) the majority of those basics consist of un-learning habits and intuitions that are either inborn or cultural, and (c) the majority of what remains is stuff so basic that in other fields it’s learned in childhood–less “keep your eye on the ball” and more “a ‘ball’ is a spherical object, held in the hand and used for sport or play (though there are exceptions, notably…” ↩︎
Actually, the dirty secret of televised sports is that the more exciting and high-level the game, the more likely it is that the outcome will be determined by sheer luck. Sufficiently advanced technique is indistinguishable from superstition. ↩︎