El D seems heartless at times, but he is just being direct. Your name came up the other night as I was whipping the El D at credit card roulette, and I have no reason to believe he dislikes you one bit. Somewhat to the contrary, in fact. The advice "work harder" is general, but it's like the advice someone gave me long ago about poker: "play tighter and more aggressively." Taken too far, the poker advice can turn you spewy. So too with the life advice, which I'd phrase a little differently: think a little less and act a little more. You seem like a smart enough guy -- certainly smarter than a 17k-pound low-level office job would indicate -- so it's a question of how to leverage the talent you do have into something more useful/productive/wealth-creating or whatever you decide it is that you want. I think I recall you expressing some desire to be a writer; if so, then write, either in a blog or elsewhere, but practice and seek to improve your craft wherever and however you can. Sweat every sentence; work with words and make them ring. Don't just spew at it, but rather really work to make every sentence as effective as you can make it.

Diablo,

You apparently need to take the training course for how to deal with people like Rasta.



It's for work, but it can be applied for OOT as well.

TL;Dr

Attention seeking troll is seeking attention.

More at 11

Please move to House of blogs

how long till OP gets the girl pregnant?

great post.

smart and humble people don't pick at the nuances of what they're told...

not enough El Oh El tho

rasta,

Please watch this video, it has a lot of solid information in it:

Rasta,

This post of yours just confirms that my initial assessment and advice was correct:

So when you tell me that I'm less (X) intelligent that I think (Y) I am, it apparently doesn't matter what those two numbers are?

This isn't a nuance, its the direct claim made by a propositional statement which can be established as true or false.

The 'You're asking me to qualify what I've said just proves my point of view argument' is obviously fallacious.

So, lets establish the truth of your propositional claim:

Estimate my IQ
Estimate what you think that I think it is.

And I'll do a test, simples

125
140

Very fair points and ones that I genuinely try and take on board.

However, be fair here; look at the kinds of posts that I put up that are on completely abstract subjects. Very often responses are directed at me personally, regardless of my sometimes specifically requesting that we stay on topic and don't screw up someone else's thread. There's a lot of people desperate to win an online argument and naturally, they go straight for the ad-hom.

A lot of the time its other people who change the subject to myself.

Wow. I'm impressed actually as I didn't expect a genuine response.

Well, you'll be pleased to know that where I once did score 142 on an online IQ test, I did quickly disbelieve it. I'm certainly not any sort of genius and actually, I'm pretty bad with maths in particular (average at best).

I also have a far, far smarter group of friends than a lot of people here are estimating, which includes graduates from two of the top universities in the world (Oxford/Cambridge) and you'd certainly struggle to muddle along with those people and feel in any way particularly intelligent.

125 might well be slightly generous in all honesty. I'm articulate and well-written but rest assured, I have enough intellectual curiosity and enough gifted friends that any chance of me realistically sitting in isolation thinking that I'm the smartest guy in the world a la TypicalBro simply isn't possible.

I have more friends IRL than a lot of posters might think I do. That's not a brag or anything, its just point addressing what I think is a common misconception on here.

Now El D, why don't you have the humility to come out and admit that you dislike me as a person, and that despite my laughing at you, you're actually trying to victimise me over the internet

Show humility by example. I mean, you must know by now that I'm enjoying this right? This is your chance to close this part of the debate gracefully. Take it.

Rasta,


No, it doesn't matter what those numbers are. The quality of content and reasoning in your posts do not merit the level of pride and confidence you have in them. You've demonstrated this repeatedly and consistently. That's why I'm confident I'm correct in my assessment. I don't give a **** whether you agree with me or not.


Wtf are you yapping about? Why on earth would I not say I dislike you if that were the case? It's yet more evidence of your overblown ego that you think I or anyone else here actually gives enough of a **** about some random lazy kid on the Internet to dislike them. Why do you think I or anyone else here actually care enough to dislike you?

Do you even sarcasm bro?

And what makes you qualified to express that level of confidence whereas I apparently am not? What standard do you use to judge words like 'quality of content' or 'pride'?

I wonder...

...Oh! Ha! You just said.

Do you not think that your posts would be perceived as gratuitously rude by any impartial observer?

Do you seriously expect me to believe that if I were friend, family member or someone who's well-being you were motivated to contribute to that you'd be sitting down with myself and/or my parents telling me that the best course of action would be for them to accept that I'd likely be a dependent for the rest of my life and that any aspirations to seek any sort of independence were ideas above my station?

Rasta,

Because I've achieved the things you're asking for help to achieve, and have also helped many young people similar to you achieve far beyond what you've described as your aspirations.



I would understand if you read that and claimed I thought you were pathetic or a loser. Still don't understand why you would think I dislike you.



No.




No, I'd prob put in much more effort to help you achieve your goals. But since you don't seem inclined to take advantage of the help you're being provided with because you're not being coddled and spoon-fed every little step of the way, I suspect you're never going to end up getting far unless you change your attitude. If you do, good for you!

Oh I don't think that he's consumed by rage for me whatsoever, but he obviously dislikes my internet persona, finds my proud, arrogant, cocky and suchlike and wants to 'bring me down a peg' so to speak.

I guess I'm simply saying that I don't believe he wants to do so because he sincerely believes that its the best for me or that it'll improve my life. I think that if he were told say, that I were upset by his posts, that he wouldn't be able to help himself feel a slight jolt of happiness. This is a guy with 50,000+ posts and a great deal of time invested into his online persona after all.

This runs directly contrary to what he's been saying. Even if he's your friend, you should have the honesty to admit that you disagree with him.

This is all great advice and something I want to try and work on as much as I can.

The biggest problem I find, is that I'm coming across as proud, arrogant, cocky, overly confident and suchlike, but its incredibly difficult for people to pinpoint examples of how this is so. You guys are obviously intelligent enough to know that 'you're not as smart as you think you are' is an unfalsifiable claim that no-one can defend themselves from beyond expressing things differently in the tone of their work, and as such, it isn't easy for me to suddenly begin writing in a style that's conducive to running against that tone.

El D might be insulting me, but that doesn't mean his contributions aren't a useful case study as a member of my audience.

I mean, I do wonder what is really being asked of me here?

It seems like in order to show humility I'm supposed to bow my head and abase myself amid any insults and personal attacks that come my way, and yet somehow have the ambition and aspiration to somehow better myself.

If, for example, I told any of my real life friends that I wasn't intelligent enough to do better than my current job, they'd doubtless tell me to stop whining and complaining, that of course I'm more intelligent than huge swathes of the population who earn more than me, and that me saying that I'm not intelligent enough to achieve anything was just a bull**** excuse for laziness.

Do you not see the conflict in the advice I'm getting here?

That's very impressive, could you give some examples please?

A very, very vague word. Perhaps you could be a bit more specific about how I might do that, and how I might express that I'm making an effort to do so on here?

Rasta,


"but its incredibly difficult for people to pinpoint examples of how this is so."

Just because people don't bother to do certain things doesn't mean it's difficult.

Answer my questions please.

Rasta,

In your other thread you continually argued with people claiming you knew better than them what was possible and their advice to you wouldn't work because blah blah blah. Finally you started following the advice and whoa, look at that, all your assertions that people said were misguided bs were in fact misguided bs.

Same thing here.

Right. Don't disagree.

However, you're not giving me advice. You've told me that I'm stupid and that the height of my ambition should be to live at home, dependent off my parents. You've also told me that I should 'work harder' (which rather contradicts the idea that I'm doomed for a life of dependency).

Those needles of good advice came buried in haystack of insults and attempted nastiness which I was right to brush off and ignore.

People told me that I was a horrible scumbag that no-one would ever love. My success was in part, contingent on my ignoring them.

Following on from the analogy of the other thread, which category do you think you appear to be choosing to put yourself in?

Anyway; for the sake of argument lets just put aside whether or not you dislike me or not.

Suppose I were a younger brother of yours or that you had a vested interest in my doing (your idea of) well, what advice would you give me to improve my life?

Rasta,

I'd tell you to re-read all the good advice many people have given you across the many threads where you've whined about the same **** repeatedly, then get off your ass and start following it instead of writing the same **** on here over and over again.

Or instead go holiday in brazil then come back and wonder why you don't have enough money to move out and whine about why success hasn't fallen into your lap.

Here are two simple questions for you:

1) what do you want to achieve in life?

2) what steps are you taking to make that happen?

Ok, fair.

Just bear with me just for one moment as I think that its worth giving some background to why I've historically found these questions difficult to answer.

Suppose I were to tell you that I wanted to become the world's strongest man, or play for Real Madrid, and were actually able to convince you that these were sincere ambitions that I wanted to devote my life to.

If you, or anyone, had my best interests at heart, you'd immediately sit me down to tell me that those ambitions were severely delusional, that chasing them would actively harm my well-being, and that I'd completely need to readjust my outlook and expectations for life, doing all I could to fight against any twinge of pining for those previous hopes and dreams that I'd have to put to one side.

My problem is that this is something I've always been very guarded against being the case for more-or-less anything else I apply for or attempt.

When I've attended job interviews in the past, I immediately suffer a crippling anxiety and feeling of inadequacy that hamstrings my ability to communicate articulately whilst also devastating my desire and motivation to attempt to 'better myself' in the common sense of that phrase.

You might tell me that I'm too confident or whatever, but this really is a just an illusion created by the fact that I can write well. I have pitifully low self-esteem and spent 8 months working partly at a call-centre and partly as a labourer, much to the utter bemusement of my fellow University graduates. I essentially attempted to live a 'Buddhist' life, where I shunned all desires and attempted to be happy with simple pleasures and freedom. To some extent I actually managed it, but the trouble was that it was of course, unsustainable and certainly not any sort of a long-term career.

Nevertheless, people who've spoken to me about politics, current affairs or had any sort of 'deep' conversation with me have historically asked me why 'I'm not doing something better'.

This is the trouble, I still feel like I don't actually know the answer to your questions beyond 'happy', but I'm beginning to develop a rough idea.

I want to go into something in the world of journalism/writing/charity/think-tank/third sector/politics; but I immediately find myself wondering if those are as inaccessible as playing for Real Madrid.

My goals in life are as follows:

1) Learn to drive. A fairly mundane but vital life skill that will also increase my job opportunities. I don't need to buy a car just yet, but certainly, the inability to drive at my age is something that rings alarm bells and will attract disrespect.

2) Immediately begin searching for internships and low-paid, entry level work in the third sector, particularly within political think tanks where frankly, all laziness and reluctance to work would fly out of the window completely and I'd happily put in 50-60 hours a week unpaid if it gave me a shot at making a career in political journalism.

3) Write as many essays and articles as possible, submitting them to anywhere looking for content, even fairly fringe websites if necessary whilst maintaining a far more rigorous schedule of updating my own political blog and getting my message out there.

4) Work on making sure that my writing is more personable. El Diablo might be mistaken about my 'confidence and pride' in my work (whatever that means and however its supposed to vanish simultaneous to the emergence of some new-found drive and determination), but he is nevertheless a member of the audience, and he's certainly not expressing a reaction that I've never heard before.

5) Either secure a pay rise at the company in which I'm working or find a job that pays enough for me to move out of my parents' house. Again, like the driving, this is something that society just sees as unimpressive and worthy of disrespect whether I like it or not.

6) Learn a language, (probably Portuguese). A huge life skill that commands deserved praise and respect. A solid brag for the career and the CV.

I shall do all of these as soon as I return from Brazil on the 25th March.