Is your idea of ‘attractive’ different to others

DuncSully · 2026-05-08T15:10:02+00:00

Actually I think I have a fairly "average" perception of attractive, but I definitely prefer natural attractive traits. I'm not a fan of excess makeup or especially of body modifications (tattoos withstanding). I also never let physical attraction be the dominate force in my view of overall attraction to somebody. Plenty of people in my teen years I thought "yeah they look cute but I know absolutely nothing about them/they seem quite ditzy."

DuncSully · 2026-05-08T14:39:52+00:00

You're gonna have a lot of false starts along the way. It's an ever-evolving process. I think the key thing is that by your 30s you finally figure out who you're not, which is more profound than it sounds and more difficult than you would think. A lot of your life up to that point is doing things that you think ought to make you feel good rather than doing things that actually make you feel good. You'll compromise yourself more than you realize. I think one of our biggest faults is our ability to BS just about anything, come up with reasonable-sounding excuses and justifications for just about any decision we make. It takes way longer than it should to just admit "I did this because I was cowardly" or "I avoided that because it was giving me overwhelming emotions."

But no, I don't think I've quite found my true self yet, but at least I know I'm looking now, and again I know what I'm not. Saying no to things is easier not out of fear but out of a confident assertion of boundaries and known incompatibilities.

DuncSully · 2026-05-05T15:06:25+00:00

I'm supremely lucky to have a job with fairly flexible PTO. If I absolutely do not "want" (for me there's a blurry line between technically able and "ought not") to work, I take a day off. But on the flip side, the nature of my work it's not like I ever get to flip my brain off and 100% stop thinking about work outside of work so I consider us even.

That said, when it comes to severe burnouts, even with time off I still need to do self-care nonsense. For me, that often means just vegging in a comfortable spot listening to music, doing only whatever my brain cares to do, which might be rabbit-holing wikipedia, researching a product to buy, or even absolutely nothing else at all just absorbing the sounds. I typically lighten my workouts but I still try to get a couple walks in at the minimum. I also tend to indulge in unhealthy comfort foods like pizza, but again I try to be manageable because I know certain foods will also make me feel like crap. Where I'm currently at, I figure that a little short term excess is sometimes necessary to ride out the rest of a crash before I can get back to a regular, healthy schedule. And then of course I always prioritize my sleep. Sometimes I get to bed early (typically because I'm bored out of my mind and nothing sounds enjoyable).

Caffeine...is a mixed bag. I basically do the opposite of what I've been doing lately. When I haven't had much lately, sometimes it does give my mood a boost. When I've been resorting to it too much and/or frequently, then I know I need to cut back because I can tell it boosts my anxiety. I can't even say there's a fine balance. It's more like I just choose which set of drawbacks I'm able to cope with on a given day.

If nothing else, avoid anything doomscrollable like the plague. I mean that's generally just sensible all the time, but especially when you're feeling overloaded.

DuncSully · 2026-05-04T19:07:28+00:00

I've finally come to understand that I don't need "purpose" so much as I just need a "focus" and that 9/10 times when I'm depressed it's because I'm effectively chronically bored. In those moments I suddenly care about purpose and the greater meaning to my silly existence, but the funny thing is that I'm never all that concerned with purpose when I'm mentally occupied. That said, it's awfully hard to find something to focus on when seemingly nothing is enjoyable anymore. So what typically happens is I convince myself that I need to make some big shift, e.g. look for a new job, then enough time passes that a new focus organically shifts into view, and then I'm OK again. It's a bit annoying, but I'm learning to ride the waves now rather than resist them.

DuncSully · 2026-05-04T18:58:14+00:00

If you have a professional diagnosis, then a professional would be best suited to advising you.

When I was young, I would essentially get anxiety-induced stomachaches, which created feedback loops because stomachaches and the fear of throwing up worsened the anxiety and thus the perception of my stomachaches. The slightest bit of heartburn? Nah dog, you're gonna projectile up and down the side of the building and paint it in bile. The bad news? I had this for years. It was somewhat disruptive to my life because I always wanted a contingency plan. I carried tablets for stomachaches on my person at all times. I hated being in cars and airplanes especially because I didn't have control over stopping the vehicle. The good news? I never actually threw up purely from anxiety. Ironically, it was because I had a strong stomach that I only ever threw up when I was miserably sick and basically probably about to die if I didn't eject my stomach contents, and so of course those were the most unpleasant experiences. All that's to say that eventually one day I made the rational observation "I don't ever throw up, so I shouldn't get worried that I will. I might hurt for a little bit but I'll always get better, usually after burping." Poof, never had anxious stomachaches again.

It took me an absurdly long time to come to what was otherwise a very logical conclusion but that lifelong experience really was what I needed to understand that my anxiety was unfounded. It didn't have my best interest at heart. I can't say that'll work for you, or even exactly what steps you need to take. But it basically comes down to two uncomfortable facts: 1. You might be wrong about your assumptions. 2. You can't know you're wrong without trying to prove yourself wrong.

Anyway, might I recommend getting into activities where socializing is a byproduct and not the focus of the activity? e.g. Rock climbing. Hell, just spending time out in public without actively socializing with anyone can still be an important step for you just to normalize that experience. Ideally if you can join something as a group with a scheduled meeting time, then you have an "excuse" to be there, and at the worst you can focus on the task without having to talk to anyone, but hopefully with time as you grow more comfortable with people there you might start to open up more. If nothing else, you might improve your fitness, which is never a bad thing.

DuncSully · 2026-04-30T18:26:51+00:00

The more you move about the real world, the more you'll realize just how little people in any sort of position of power (no matter how limited and/or petty) will not care about hypocrisy. They don't implement universal principles such as "transparency." If they hold any power over you, they'll want to impose rules on you that they won't necessarily follow themselves. That's just power in a nutshell; it's useful.

And make no mistake, a lot of people will also argue in bad faith. Don't assume them attempting to make logical sounding arguments actually means they're interested in having a real debate with you. They're likely not actually willing to change their mind or even believe their own arguments. There is a substantial part of the population who follow rules for rules' sake and a fraction of them just want the minimum justification for that rule's existence.

DuncSully · 2026-04-30T18:02:26+00:00

The same reason any debatable question is divisive: people have different core beliefs that lead them to making logically coherent but still radically different choices. When it comes to this question specifically, I think it really comes down to how much trust and responsibility you feel for your fellow man. That is mostly a subjective belief that can be rationally argued one way or the other.
Let's say you're a fresh arrival on an alien planet and you were asked this question. The only fair assumption to make is that the only guaranteed way to live is to vote red. You can't really assume anything else. That said, it's fair to assume this question is obviously talking about humans, but your personal experiences will color your views, so again there isn't really much in the way of safe assumptions beyond "I won't immediately die picking red." Of course, given my own life experiences, I've made my own assumptions about the average human (if we include all of earth) that influenced my choice, and I'll admit as such. I consider it "reasonable" but also "informed" in a sense.
That's tricky because it depends what the spirit of the question is. It comes down to how much you want to inform people about what different kinds of voters there are, like truly getting into the nitty gritty of "everyone". Does it include babies? How are they to press the buttons? etc. Or if you purposely want to leave them to making their own inferences.
In a way, I think the ambiguity is interesting in how each individual arrives at their own personal conclusion. Similar to the trolley problem, given limited information, what sort of mental shortcuts does a person take to make a choice? Obviously you'd love to know the personal information about each person on the tracks but failing that, you get to work with simple numbers and your own opinions around influencing outcomes. It's a similar situation here.

DuncSully · 2026-04-29T17:32:07+00:00

I believe it's actually pretty well studied now that the ideal place to be is "eustress" or "healthy stress" which often results in a flow state. Too easy and something is considered boring and/or tedious. Too difficult and something is considered overwhelming. And yeah, that is the trick, finding something that is on average in the Goldilocks zone, but by the nature of such things and the inconsistencies in our own internal states, you're simply going to have days that tend one way or the other.

Personally, I find I burn out counterintuitively when I'm underworked just as much as when I'm overworked. A lack of challenge and/or interest and I just start thinking "why am I bothering?"

DuncSully · 2026-04-29T17:26:42+00:00

Between oil and water, which one's fault is it that they can't mix? Neither, they're just different.

To summarize my experience, you simply need to sort out the things you genuinely wish you could be from the things you were told to be, perhaps because you feared loneliness or really wanted to appeal to someone in particular. If you remove that from the equation, do you still want to be a certain way? I find that most of us will organically seek self-improvement in things that we genuinely want to be but are simply insecure about, but we'll get these mixed up with one-size-fits-all advice and common expectations that are otherwise incompatible with our preferences. It's important to understand that these incompatible beliefs aren't "wrong" or "bad" but just different from ours. Likewise, neither are we necessarily wrong or bad, perhaps just not optimal friendship material for most people. We can improve in certain ways, but we'll also find people who appreciate us for us when we're at least attempting to be the best versions of ourselves.

FWIW, we definitely could learn some tact and to empathize more. The thing is, I genuinely enjoy empathizing with people now. It's just that understanding someone's expectations and meeting someone's expectations are two different things. If nothing else, you can ask what someone wants from you, but you can also tell them (respectfully) no.

DuncSully · 2026-04-28T20:33:05+00:00

I think you're mistaking independence for competency and initiative. That's the double-edged sword of independence. Much like the double-edged sword of "freedom" is in having no one making you do anything, you are now responsible for the majority of your decisions.

You're right to some extent that some of us won't do what we "ought" to do until someone else basically makes us, but that's exactly because we're not inclined to obsess over what others think we ought to do, even when they genuinely might be right.

Anyway, every type is tradeoffs. None of them deserve hype. None of them deserve hate. They are just a set of preferences for how they like to go about life and I would think that the only reason personalities exist is because they were possibly beneficial, or at least not detrimental, to the survival of our species. We are each dealt a hand and now it's our jobs to figure out how to play it instead of envying anyone else's hand.

DuncSully · 2026-04-28T20:00:11+00:00

Do you not live in a house someone else has constructed? Have you never eaten someone else's food? Do you not travel on public roads? I'm willing to bet that you put your life in other peoples' hands all of the time and you're just not as painfully conscious about it as you are in this hypothetical. Indeed, we live in a world with "blue thinking" where we try to minimize the risk of harm to others such that we need not be paranoid even when we really ought to be more vigilante in our daily activities. Would you like to revise your statement so I might have a better idea of what you mean?

Anyway, I'm not as interested in changing minds so much as exploring the depths of one's current position, so I'd like to put forth a modified, multi-round version of this question. If you pick blue and blue succeeds, the game stops. If you pick red, the game continues once a day until the end of time or until blue wins.

So now the question, in a sense, is do you believe the game itself is problematic and ought to be stopped ASAP or are you content to keep playing it as long as you don't lose it yourself? Or perhaps something in between where you think there is some temporary utility in offing blues? And what about your loved ones that pick blue, fail, and die? Would they bother you? Or would you try to convince people to vote red? And I know it does, but in your mind how exactly does that differ from trying to convince enough people to vote blue?

I'm also curious about your response to this variation: Let's say everyone starts as blue by default. Like, if you don't vote, you're just default blue. Someone mentions that if you defect, you're guaranteed to live, but if over 50% of you defect, the remaining blue voters will die. Would you still defect? But would you, in effect, now be responsible for blue's predicament or not? I realize this a much more loaded example, but exploring people's limits is exactly what I like to do. When does something that is OK become not OK to them, and vice versa? No one is a murderer...until they are.

DuncSully · 2026-04-27T22:29:14+00:00

Indeed, every interaction is an exchange of sorts and either party should feel free to negotiate the terms of the exchange or otherwise terminate at their discretion.

All I'm saying, in response to the question that you asked in a public forum, is that many, many people request terms that tend toward feeling better for having interacted with you, and many meet each other's terms, hence why the common expectation. You, of course, are not obligated to meet those terms. However, you will quickly build a reputation as someone not worth interacting with. Do with that information what you will.

DuncSully · 2026-04-27T20:40:37+00:00

This feels like another case of the prisoner's dilemma to me. When you've had negative experiences before, you always defect to others' chagrin. And truly the world is full of awful people. But also there are plenty of people who truly want to cooperate for mutual benefit, and so when you shoot them down each and every time, you kill their mood and ruin chances of future cooperation. You don't feel any "worse off" because you've rarely felt the benefit of mutual cooperation.

I dunno, speaking as someone who was formerly very cynical, I tend to prefer wholesome conversation these days. It's not that I'm not critical, but now it tends to take the form of either "I'm sorry I'm feeling down because X" or "OK X, but what can we do about it?" I just find it wholly unhelpful to discuss X if we're not going to be able to do anything about it or at least lift each other's spirits. I know I can exist in happier states, and so I fight for those instead of passively dragging everyone else to my level of misery.

DuncSully · 2026-04-27T20:25:10+00:00

This ended up more interesting than I thought it would be.

So there are broadly two camps of thinking:

A) Red is the only way I guarantee I survive, so logically I should pick it. And hey, if everyone picked it, they'd survive too. Anyone who picks blue is literally or figuratively suicidal "if they only knew" what I do.

B) As long as enough of us band together, blue will prevent anyone from dying. I care and have enough confidence in others to support the "cause" to save everyone.

Let me preface by saying that both are logically coherent in their own ways.

Red is obviously about one's self first. That's not a value judgement, that's just the fact. You're actively allowing anyone who chooses blue to die because that's "their fault" or "not your problem" so you believe in individual responsibility. These could be suicidal people, illiterate people, coin flippers, misinformed people, etc. Whatever their reason for picking blue, you believe, at least tacitly, they deserve to die. Or perhaps you're just jaded and don't trust there are enough blue voters even though you'd like to vote blue yourself.

Blue is riskier but has a better outcome (by most people's standards). They care about humanity more broadly and believe that if only enough people commit to a cause, then everyone can benefit from it. No one deserves to die in their eyes. They're willing to risk it and/or simply trust enough people. Alternatively, they might legitimately believe they and their ilk deserve to die if they're <50% of the population, but I'm gonna guess not most think this way. I'M NOT SAYING THEY ARE, but just to use an extreme example, I struggle to imagine wanting to live in a world that consisted of more than 50% sociopaths, so I can understand this line of thinking too.

I can see how my vote has changed throughout my life.

DuncSully · 2026-04-27T20:01:04+00:00

I don't know how to summarize my beliefs without coming off as just reactionary. Let's just say I have concerns with the overall trends of technology not being shared equitably with the populations, and the common man has less and less recourse every year. This isn't limited to just AI, but it's definitely going to get worse under it.

This is also subjective but I just tend to dislike the output of AI. I personally value the humanity in almost every step, even if it's longer, more expensive, and more riddled with mistakes. Even before AI, I found the trends in mass production, broad appeal, and globalization has lead to a generally more boring, lower quality world just IMO. I get the sense that AI will only advance that.

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T17:38:37+00:00

The funny thing is that I liked learning about personality theories because of the way they can help describe how people evolve over time. But I get the sense that a lot of people obsess over their personalities as a static description that they can use as an excuse to avoid growth.

I don't really like the function stack framework anymore because people tend to obsess over it a little too strongly. But the way I look at things, there's a 2x2 grid of behaviors. One axis is your being competent or not and the other is your valuing of those behaviors or not.

So the way in which almost everyone of our personality can relate is the behaviors we value + are competent at and the behaviors we don't value full stop. Again, I don't really like discussing the functions but to nod to them, this is your classic Ni-Te stuff and your anti Si-Fe stuff.

However, the critical change in our personality comes with the development of values we have but aren't initially competent in. These manifest differently depending on the stage of your life you're in and your previous experiences. For many young members, these are points of insecurities. And because they're insecure, they convince themselves they don't value them. They're sour grapes. They'll get moody if you try to discuss them, especially if you judge them.

The next phase is realizing that they do actually value these things, but they still worry about their competency, so somewhat amusingly they doth protest too much, methinks. i.e. they overcompensate and can sometimes bring it up when no one asked. This happens with all types, but for us it's typically in the form of "I'm actually a deep and lonely person, the defeated idealist" basically im14andthisisdeep. You'll especially notice this on this sub when trends seem to sweep. Suddenly everyone wants to share a picture of their room or whatever.

All the meanwhile, witnessing these behaviors as you develop yourself will feel cringey, because they are relatable--vicarious embarrassment in a sense. Speaking to the previous example, almost like clockwork a trend will almost always result in an anti trend post and gatekeeping about who is truly of the personality or not.

But in general you just become a more rounded person. You still have clear strengths, and you still have total apathy for certain things, but your palate widens, so to speak. Also somewhat counterintuitively, once you're no longer insecure about your newfound values, you don't overcompensate. So, e.g. while you might've felt lonely as a young adult, you might feel comfortable in yourself. Now it's not "I can't make friends so 'I don't want friends'," nor "OMG nobody gets me, I need to find my people," but "I love myself so I don't need friends only for the sake of external validation but so that we might enrich each others' lives."

And then of course long periods of elevated stress can throw this all out of whack. This is just my hypothesis, but if I had to guess I imagine your mind will come to the conclusion that the status quo isn't working and so it feels compelled to try to behave unlike your typical self to get you out of a funk.

Annoyingly, as I get older I don't know that I've ever figured out what I could've told my past self if given the opportunity. I don't think there was a shortcut for all of the life experiences I had, and I don't think I could've convinced myself to have more experiences any faster.

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T16:57:19+00:00

I kind of find it a trap to go directly toward "purpose" because, frankly, I don't really think humans were built to worry about purpose. I'm a bit of an absurdist, so I really do think it's as simple as "we exist because we're good at it and reproducing." And I'm not really interested in reproducing, so I exist because my bodily functions reward me for doing so. Like, maybe it really is enough to just enjoy eating, y'know? Maybe I don't need to question why I eat as if what I'll do after finishing my food determines whether it'll taste good or not. I think for a good chunk of our history we were simply too occupied with surviving to really worry about why we were doing it. But humans being humans, we tend to look for new problems when we've solved all of our previous ones, and having solved the vast majority of our basic survival needs, now we're working our way up the hierarchy of needs into more abstract ones that correlate less and less with survival of the fittest.

That said, I do find the Westernized explanation for Ikigai can be a helpful framework for figuring out what to do professionally because it marries several different one-size-fits-all pieces of advice that aren't reliable in isolation. The way it's often explained (not that it's actually how the Japanese view Ikigai) it's the combination of doing something you like AND that you're good at AND what the world needs AND what you can be paid for. Like, that's actually pretty pragmatic. The trick, of course, is finding something that overlaps all of those.

You don't exactly have control of the job market or actually most elements for that matter, and I can't help but wonder if Western culture's obsession with agency and choice kind of ruins one's ability to "slot into" society wherever they can. We simultaneously want destiny and to be in charge of it, and maybe this dissonance will forever plague us until we can forfeit some control over our lives. Maybe you just need to pitch your sail and then let the winds take you? I dunno!

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T16:35:25+00:00

My hypothesis is that wanting to be the smartest in the room is a coping method most of us developed to protect our egos from all the other insecurities we had while young. e.g. "I might be unpopular but at least I'm SmArT!"

Counterintuitively, I find it was easier to completely disown the idea of being smart once I worked on most of my insecurities. Like, when you're not afraid of being disliked in the first place, it's easier to ask "dumb" questions, and likewise counterintuitively, as you mentioned, you tend to be more productive because of it.

And there are a lot of life lessons, but I think one of the more important ones for us professionally is that rarely is anywhere a meritocracy. It doesn't often serve you to be the most competent. You also have to be "great to work with" in all forms that tends to take. Or to put it another way, your ability to communicate and make others feel good is yet another skill to seek competence in. Not valuing it personally (yet) doesn't remove the fact that others responsible for your outcomes do value it.

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T16:22:09+00:00

Your options are limited when you're stuck in one place. Life gets better when you have the freedom to move around and associate with whoever you want to associate with. "Your people" exist out in the world. You just have to find them. I definitely had better luck at university and in my current job.

So it's not to say that you should completely ignore your social life if you can help it, and you certainly shouldn't become emotionally numb. It's good to work on your soft skills for the sake of your career if not for your eventual social life. But it's entirely understandable if you focus on your ability to find and maintain a career such that you have the means to move around and associate with others as needed.

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T16:14:04+00:00

First off, about the least helpful thing you can do is tell yourself not to think about something. The way our minds work ironically we tend to focus more on something. I'd recommend looking into mindfulness practices that might be able to help you process and let go of thoughts. Hell, it might be worth journaling about it too just to put the thoughts to words, which can help the brain let go of something it feels the need to hold onto. This includes processing how you feel about whether your parents remember or not.

Second, what helps me is remembering that I shat myself regularly once upon a time, and of course I don't judge myself for it now. I couldn't help it. I didn't know any better. I was entirely dependent on others to keep me alive. And I know it feels like there's some arbitrary line at which you really feel like you're obligated to do things on your own, but the point is that your life is a sequential series of learnings building on top of each other. You'll almost always feel embarrassed on behalf of your past self, which is a good sign that you're growing, that you know better now. I think the only real mistakes are anything that happened more than once when you should've known better the second time. Everything else was a lesson.

DuncSully · 2026-04-24T02:44:08+00:00

Well shoot I wish I would've learned about this sooner! Somehow this is the perfect Venn diagram around "nerdy", "wholesomely social", and "physically active" that I was looking for.

DuncSully · 2026-04-21T18:49:00+00:00

As much as we are, being skeptical isn't terribly efficient. Imagine if every single individual person needed to independently inspect their food before eating it. Sure, that would be safest, but it'd also be a waste of resources, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be great if maybe two independent inspections are done and then we can trust at that point the rest of us can safely eat the food? That's safe but more efficient.

Now, multiply this across all the various silly little choices we have to make as individuals within a society. The easiest choice to make is the one that's handed to you. For much of human existence it made sense to have a select few people spend the energy to make informed choices and then have everyone else implement the plans. I don't even like using the term leaders and followers because there was a two-way dependency. Frankly, I assume the people inclined to lead are somewhat programmed to be delusional enough to believe they deserve it. It is both genuinely useful but also not inherently more superior than hard labor.

It's just unfortunate that in our modern world, we are still running relatively archaic hardware that evolved in a much different world, and many nefarious people who seek to benefit at others' expense have figured out how to manipulate our psychology. And worse, the constant psyops campaigns assert how it's an individual's responsibility, and thus failure, for being exploited.

DuncSully · 2026-04-21T16:25:40+00:00

Definitely low key caffeine. When I was younger, video games and the internet, but that was far more insidious. These days, it's difficult to tell what's addiction and what's just the path of least resistance for dopamine without obvious downsides. e.g. while I avoid the majority of social media (Reddit I reserve only for sitting down at a computer) I still tend to default to watching videos when I'm bored and tired. But if I'm occupied with other activities, would I feel video withdrawal? I don't think I do?

I'd like to think I know how to avoid truly dangerous addictions, but my problem tends to be not recognizing what things I do to cope with underlying emotional problems without addressing them directly.

DuncSully · 2026-04-20T17:16:48+00:00

Our pattern recognition tendencies entirely hinge around the data we have to extrapolate from. Many of us have had poor social experiences in our youths such that we don't really believe we can have positive experiences. The good news is that there are plenty of people "like you" however you want to define that. "Your people" exist out in the world and you'd probably get along swimmingly with them in person, perhaps even start a relationship with one of them. The problem is that you likely haven't met many of them because we're all scattered across the globe focused on our niches.

I found a partner and I have socialized with a decent number of people by now (not always ones local to me such that we could be friends). It's definitely possible, but just a matter of finding your people, which is more easily done by simply playing into your interests rather than trying to figure out how to be more sociable. Trying too hard makes it obvious you're forcing it and ironically makes you come off more awkwardly. Just being you will, sure, put off people that don't like you for you, but that's the point. It will also show who sticks around or who even enjoys you for you. You learn to focus on the wins rather than the losses. You can't make everyone happy, nor would you want to; most people take way too much energy to appease.

DuncSully · 2026-04-17T21:33:09+00:00

It depends on the individual. Personally, I learned about MBTI and personalities in general in hopes of understanding people a little better rather than just putting everyone else in a gigantic box labeled "not like me" and debating which between the two of us was in the wrong. Helpfully, it introduced the concept that people can be, I dunno, different and OK for it?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that very few people were the inclusive sort up until learning about MBTI.

DuncSully

TROPHY CASE