trenton

I just finished another tournament. I had three wins and two draws. One of my wins was against a national master. I therefore gained 82 rating points from this tournament. I had a few problems this tournament. My stress and anxiety were so bad that it made it hard to stay focused. I had stomach problems, a nervous bladder, and a loose stool. I had a hard time controlling my anxiety and it made it difficult to properly calculate everything. This became especially problematic in the last two rounds of the tournament. Fatigue started setting in partially because I couldn't sleep until midnight and ended up waking up a 5. I was technically winning the last two games, but I didn't play as well due to fatigue. I had excellent results with the Sicilian najdorf variation. I won both games with black and defended against an unexpected rook sacrifice. Here is the study with all five games. https://lichess.org/study/viLkAozp/pHfkuTzL

I saw the total eclipse. It was fucking awesome and I was awe for every second of it. I couldn't look away as the whole sky turned dark and I saw some distant planets. The eclipse looked magical with the sunlight glowing from around the moon from behind. I'm glad I got to see it. It far exceeded my expectations and was absolutely incredible.

@MuadDib that looks like a great idea. I haven't tried the upgraded versions of these ai. I should definitely try that for life purpose questions.

I have been disinterested in relationships for various reasons 1. I am goal and career oriented, causing me to see this as a distraction. 2. I struggle to feel any emotional connection to anyone and feel dissociated from the rest of the world. 3. I have very little faith in relationships as see them as causing way too many problems to be worth it. 4. I can't afford my own house and there isn't enough space in my grandma's house for a girlfriend. 5. I see relationships as meaningless as all of them will eventually fell apart in some fashion or another. If I could feel love, then maybe there would be a point to this drama and suffering.

I have been using chat gpt 3.5. If there is a huge difference between this and gpt 4, then I need to check it out. GPt 3.5 is terrible at chess and I don't find it helpful at all.

More about emotional mastery in schools. Apparently, social workers have developed these kinds of programs and they have started Integrating them. It is called SEL or social emotional learning. It helps children to develop emotional resilience while learning how to manage relationships. This is important for children who suffer from abusive and dysfunctional families because they don't know who else to turn to and are often unaware of the resources available. There are a few problems though. Schools are poorly funded, making it difficult to integrate these programs as much as they need to be integrated. This makes it difficult to fully staff these programs because resources are stretched thin across many different schools. In order for these programs to be successful, schools need to have a bigger budget than they currently have.

@Bobby_2021 I plan on joining college soon. I took a course in computer science and I don't plan on making it my career.

I have been working with a career coach, a life coach, and an employment agency on this issue. Here is what I came up with. I know what my top picks are in terms of career choices, but for the most part they are unavailable. for example, I could be a full time chess teacher, but these jobs are rare. I would have to move to New York, and it would make it difficult to pay for housing. Secondly, I would be interested in joining a think tank, but this requires both a bachelors degree and that I move to Washington D.C. It doesn't make sense for me to get away from my family before finishing my education. The area of social work I am most interested in is research at a macro level. I would like to use my research to inform policy decisions. This is similar to what I would be doing at think tanks. I would like a job that requires me to constantly learn because I seem to crave intellectual stimulation. The employment agency said that they would help pay for my tuition. I would require at least a master's degree and possibly a doctorate. If I go down this path, then I would like to finish my book about mental illness and society. My dream is to reform the educational system to include emotional mastery and thus prevent suicide, but I don't know how to go about this goal. The best I could find was volunteering for NAMI so I could go into schools and discuss my history with mental health challenges. There are all kinds of things I enjoy studying, but I don't like the career prospects. I like philosophy, sociology, and psychology, but social work seems to have the better career prospects.

What does "getting points to resolve it" mean?

If I were being as rational as possible in terms of my career problems, this is what I would think. According to Cal Newport, following your passion is a bad idea. It can cause you to end up on food stamps. If I pursue chess by moving to New York to get the job, I will struggle to afford housing. Even then, I will put myself through a lot of suffering to try to become a grandmaster. I wasn't given a chess coach at a young age, so realistically this career path will not work. It is not a problem of my abilities, but rather a problem of circumstances. These circumstances happen because chess is a game and does not provide enough value to the world. The reason I didn't give up is because I believe I am supposed to overcome these circumstances and achieve my dream anyway. This is idealistic and will force me to tie myself in knots. As it stands my career options are limited because I only have an associate degree. I will have to go back to college to expand my options. Other career paths could include joining a think tank to inform public policy or becoming a mental health educator. One reason I have been sticking with this path I'm on is because I don't like the solution. If I want what is best for me, then I might have to do something I don't like. I don't know how I'm supposed to be happy in that case, hence I become lost and confused. But rationally I should stop trying to organize my life in such a way as to become a professional chess player.

I would like to rethink my entire approach to problem solving because there are probably better ways to solve my problems. I am curious about the approaches other people use to solve problems and I hope that we can come up with better methods.I have been dealing with a lot of problems in various forms (to which you can probably relate.) The problems I am most successful with are chess problems. I approach these problems through a combination of intuition and rational analysis. I find weaknesses in my opponent's moves, exploit them, and win the game. I combine this with constant study and computer analysis with the goal of improvement. This may play to my strengths as someone with autism given how My brain is wired. This is how I defeated a grandmaster for example. My meta problem is that I approach my problems in life as if they were chess problems because I am good at solving in that way. There is a problem with this approach to problem solving. First of all, chess is a game with perfect information. Given perfect information, one can reliably predict the result of a move, but even then one's reasoning can be flawed leading to mistakes. Many of life's problems come with imperfect information. Rational analysis is therefore even more unreliable and is prone to even more mistakes. Furthermore, I often try to think my problems through and come up with a solution. This leads to rumination, causing me to feel trapped and lost. It becomes torture. I analyze my past and present situations again and again only making me even more frustrated. I can't find solutions to my problems by thinking about them, but I still cling to the hope that a solution exists. This causes me to not give up, repeating the cycle. One approach to moral problems seems to be a good for me. I can take a set of relevant principles, weigh their application to a moral dilemma, and then come to a conclusion through analysis. It becomes possible to build up interesting moral positions through this approach. It is kind of like applying the principles of a chess game to guide you to a good move. This could be a principle such as countering a flank attack with a central expansion. I seemed to be very good at moral and academic philosophy when I took a course back in college. I seem to be terrible at managing relationship problems. First of all, my theories fall apart quickly when trying to manage a situation with other people. My conclusion is now that there are no consistent principles to be applied because people react to and interpret your behaviors and intentions in different ways. Each person is unique and requires a unique approach to build any kind of relationship with them. In most cases I have a hard time understanding situations and other people, leading me to be taken advantage of and making mistakes. I often see it as hopeless to communicate my feelings because they can either be rejected or invalidated or completely ignored with no hope of change. Most people are disinterested in deep intellectual work, so I am easily bored with shallow people. These situations are a common weakness for people with autism and obviously rational analysis doesn't help unless I'm trying to predict how someone else will respond and adjust my behavior accordingly to make a calculated move which will probably be bad anyway. It makes it look like my values don't matter a damn and there is nothing I can do about it. In general I hold self education as the key to solving most of life problems. Self education is the key to constant self improvement similar to teaching myself chess to get better. My hope is that I will discover a new idea that will solve my problems. Unfortunately, even this doesn't seem to be enough sometimes. Another kind of problem I dealt with is past trauma. Forgiveness seems to be helpful for this. I tried therapy with limited success. I tried reading several books on emotional mastery with partial success. At the end of all of it I was still depressed and still had thoughts that I would be better off dead. At least I don't need to invent stories about why incest is fine anymore, so that's a plus. Apparently, good relationships are key to solving trauma because they reinforce the belief that you deserve to be loved. ever since the incident from when I was six, I have been struggling with self worth. I have been trying to love myself, but I can't do it. I have been trying to re establish my self worth through accomplishments in career and chess success. (Chess can improve a person's self esteem if they are good at it.) However, I feel trapped at my job at Kroger and I struggle to build a career that uses my strengths. I have tried career coaching and life coaching. I have been given conflicting advice with one saying don't give up on chess and the other saying chess is not a viable career. The opportunities are too rare, and I would be better off joining a think tank. I might need to go back to college. The problem with trying to solve a problem of self worth through accomplishments is that the proof may never be enough. I have earned a hero bonus for working during the COVID pandemic, I helped an abandoned three year old girl, I helped a victim of predatory loaning, I became a chess teacher, I won several chess tournaments, and I helped my suicidal brother. I still don't love myself. Maybe in reality my actions are not proof of my self worth. According to chat GPT my worth and value as a human being is intrinsic. Unfortunately, I think that value is extrinsic and leads me to feelings of nihilism. How do you prove intrinsic value? What are your approaches to problem solving?

@Karmadhi good question. I don't know how to evaluate when a war is hopeless. Russia can apparently sustain the war for at least two or three more years whereas Ukraine cannot. Ukraine can't stay in the war unless they keep receiving aid. How can you tell if the war is hopeless for Ukraine?

I liked Leo's video on forgiveness. I used the exercise on a traumatic experience and it has changed me. I no longer need to invent stories about why incest is okay. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DGlFjhO0lgLA&ved=2ahUKEwiN3Z6q1vSEAxWRtokEHRUbA-oQo7QBegQIBhAG&usg=AOvVaw0rKj-cRVihxwu95e-eTcmK

So much about this is unfair. The republican party is successfully blaming Biden for the border issue even though they are intentionally blocking any effort to secure the border on the grounds that it would give Biden a win. They are also blocking aid to Ukraine. The republican party does not deserve to be trusted because they are causing the problems for which Biden is blamed. These factors along with many others make the election much closer than it should be, and unfortunately many people seem to believe the lies of the republican party. I wish we had a healthy right wing, but after briefly trying to distancing themselves from Trump, the republican party has found itself as it was in 2016.

I had a recent breakthrough. Hopefully this is the end of it again. According to my research, ptsd can lead to social isolation. Isolation is commonly used to avoid triggers such as people getting angry with me which Do was common in my dysfunctional household. This social isolation contributes to depression and suicidal thoughts. As I am trapped in my own thoughts I become tormented by the same patterns again and again. I will try discussing this with my family, but I am afraid to because it requires expressing boundaries.