> One important bit of learning for engineer-types to do
> is to recognize that most people aren't like them. The
> more I treat other humans as emotionally driven markov
> chains (rather than intelligent thinkers) the better my
> life outcomes are.
The people making those decisions may simply value vastly different things than you do. A lot of people would say us engineer types are completely irrational for wanting to spend large portions of our lives staring at computer screens.
I think all humans are emotion optimizers, trying to maximize the good ones while avoiding the bad ones. But:
1. Some do it by hacking the world to make it feel better.
2. Some do it by hacking their perception of the world to make it feel better.
3. Some do it by trusting others to make them feel better.
Number 1 are your garden variety nerdy engineers, 2 are clinically insane and probably somewhere in between is where genius lies.
Or buddhists.
> Number 1 are your garden variety nerdy engineers, 2 are clinically insane and probably somewhere in between is where genius lies.
There is definitely genius in realizing the distinction between number 1 and number 2 is finer than it might initially look.
By "hacking perception" I meant things like hiding thoughts from your consciousness so that other can't learn about them, masking unwanted emotions with others, forcing yourself to feel particular emotions in order to achieve some external goals - pretty un-Buddhist things to do, if my understanding of Buddhism is worth anything.
The distinction between 1 and 2 as I meant them is influencing emotions directly vs. influencing external factors which those emotions have evolved to benchmark, if that makes sense. I'm a (recovering) nerd, not a Buddhist :)
Thinking that others are like us is narcissism. Feeling other people's pain as our own is empathy.
You -> Others ( bad )
Others -> You ( good, in limited quantities )
The rational reaction to such situations would be to recognize that this approach yields bad results and to try something different instead, e.g. the emotional manipulation you seem to be implicitly recommending.
One important bit of learning for engineer-types to do is to recognize that most people aren't like them. The more I treat other humans as emotionally driven markov chains (rather than intelligent thinkers) the better my life outcomes are. Unfortunately the desire to empathize and treat others like oneself makes this a difficult lesson to learn.