Mark Manson and Rationality

post by casebash · 2015-11-25T03:34:44.116Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 18 comments

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As those of you on the Less Wrong chat may know, Mark Manson is my favourite personal development author. I thought I'd share those articles that are most related to rationality, as I figured that they would have the greatest chance of being appreciated.

 

Immediately after writing this article, I realised that I left one thing unclear, so I'll explain it now. Why have I included articles discussing the terms "life purpose" and "finding yourself"? The reason is that I think that it is very important to provide linguistic bridges between some of the vague everyday language that people often use and the more precise language expected by rationalists.

 

Why I’m wrong about everything (and so are you):

“When looked at from this perspective, personal development can actually be quite scientific. The hypotheses are our beliefs. Our actions and behaviors are the experiments. The resulting internal emotions and thought patterns are our data. We can then take those and compare them to our original beliefs and then integrate them into our overall understanding of our needs and emotional make-up for the future.”

…

“You test those beliefs out in the real world and get real-world feedback and emotional data from them. You may find that you, in fact, don’t enjoy writing every day as much as you thought you would. You may discover that you actually have a lot of trouble expressing some of your more exquisite thoughts than you first assumed. You realize that there’s a lot of failure and rejection involved in writing and that kind of takes the fun out of it. You also find that you spend more time on your site’s design and presentation than you do on the writing itself, that that is what you actually seem to be enjoying. And so you integrate that new information and adjust your goals and behaviors accordingly.”

 

7 strange questions that can help you find your life purpose:

 

Mark Manson deconstructs the notion of “life purpose”, replacing it with a question that is much more tractable:

 

“Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself. The idea that we were each born for some higher purpose and it’s now our cosmic mission to find it. This is the same kind of shitty logic used to justify things like spirit crystals or that your lucky number is 34 (but only on Tuesdays or during full moons).

Here’s the truth. We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.

So when people say, “What should I do with my life?” or “What is my life purpose?” what they’re actually asking is: “What can I do with my time that is important?””

5 lessons from 5 years travelling the world:

While this isn’t the only way that the cliche of “finding yourself” can be broken down into something more understandable, it is quite a good attempt:

“Many people embark on journeys around the world in order to “find themselves.” In fact, it’s sort of cliché, the type of thing that sounds deep and important but doesn’t actually mean anything.

Whenever somebody claims they want to travel to “find themselves,” this is what I think they mean: They want to remove all of the major external influences from their lives, put themselves into a random and neutral environment, and then see what person they turn out to be.

By removing their external influences — the overbearing boss at work, the nagging mother, the pressure of a few unsavory friends — they’re then able to see how they actually feel about their life back home.

So perhaps a better way to put it is that you don’t travel to “find yourself,” you travel in order to get a more accurate perception of who you were back home, and whether you actually like that person or not.””

Love is not enough:

Mark Manson attacks one of the biggest myths in our society:

“In our culture, many of us idealize love. We see it as some lofty cure-all for all of life’s problems. Our movies and our stories and our history all celebrate it as life’s ultimate goal, the final solution for all of our pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it. As a result, our relationships pay a price.

When we believe that “all we need is love,” then like Lennon, we’re more likely to ignore fundamental values such as respect, humility and commitment towards the people we care about. After all, if love solves everything, then why bother with all the other stuff — all of the hard stuff?

But if, like Reznor, we believe that “love is not enough,” then we understand that healthy relationships require more than pure emotion or lofty passions. We understand that there are things more important in our lives and our relationships than simply being in love. And the success of our relationships hinges on these deeper and more important values.”

 

6 Healthy Relationship Habits Most People Think Are Toxic:

 

Edit: Read the warning in the comments

 

I included this article because of the discussion of the first habit.

 

"There’s this guy. His name is John Gottman. And he is like the Michael Jordan of relationship research. Not only has he been studying intimate relationships for more than 40 years, but he practically invented the field.

His “thin-slicing” process boasts a staggering 91% success rate in predicting whether newly-wed couples will divorce within 10 years — a staggeringly high result for any psychological research.

...

Gottman devised the process of “thin-slicing” relationships, a technique where he hooks couples up to all sorts of biometric devices and then records them having short conversations about their problems. Gottman then goes back and analyzes the conversation frame by frame looking at biometric data, body language, tonality and specific words chosen. He then combines all of this data together to predict whether your marriage sucks or not.

And the first thing Gottman says in almost all of his books is this: The idea that couples must communicate and resolve all of their problems is a myth."

Others

I highly recommend these articles. They are based on research to an extent, but also upon his experiences, so they are not completely research based. If that's what you want, then you should try looking for a review article.

Attachment theory

The guide to happiness

The guide to self-discipline

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