I disagree that the original comment was by any stretch of the imagination an accurate diagnosis, and in fact I think the suggestion is absurd. I have studied psychological topics extensively, in fact realising that all other humans were not the same as I am was first accomplished by doing exactly that.
The idea that one could diagnose a psychological disorder simply by reading about a case where somebody finds their misanthropy / detachment growing with humanity at large is so absurd as to be completely unreasonable at face value.
That said, I did actually attempt to figure out more about the person making that accusation in the event that I had something to learn by it and instead of finding that to be the case just found a lot more data to back up my original reaction.
The action that I took was, I believe, actually quite useful, I am mostly glad of the ideas that this thread provoked and happy with my conclusions about the nature of human interaction based upon it.
I think that the point has passed beyond which further action makes any sense however, unless someone can see some obvious problem with the conclusions I've reached from the exchange.
To reiterate, these conclusions are that just because many humans may exist with which it would not make logical sense to pursue any kind of relationship, all humans as a whole are not within this category, If I wish to be less alienated or have my opinion of humanity degraded any further, I ought simply be more careful with whom I choose to engage.
I think you misunderstand the nature of my idea of helping people or choosing to disengage with someone. Illustrative examples;
When dealing with a drug addict, I will not attempt to capitalise on who they are as a person by selling them more drugs, even if this would by definition "propel them further on towards their own goals, and by their subjective definition, their potential".
From my perspective, doing such a thing may potentially result in commercial advantages for me but I would think the action of exploiting this desire in the target human would be exploitative, so I would not do it. I believe that likely the best thing that I could do for such a person would be to avoid them entirely, as they are entangled in a local maximum from which they do not desire an escape.
I have never engaged with anyone with the view to trying to "better" them purely from my own perspective, I believe that such a thing would not be fair to the other party, especially when direct deception is involved indicating in which fashion I intend to benefit from my part in the transaction.
I am comfortable with not telling all of the truth all of the time, but I am utterly uncomfortable with any degree of fabrication. I want to either interact honestly or disengage entirely.
I'm comfortable with assisting people toward goals that I don't feel are utterly counterproductive to their development to a very obvious and damaging degree, even if those are goals that I would find quite neutral.
That is expressly why I made this account, to avoid suggestions that this might be my motivation. I have nothing to gain here from grandstanding, nobody knows who I am and I neither gain nor lose karma from the exchange, it's simply an attempt to objectively engage with a potentially touchy subject which by nature practically begs to be painted as showboating.
The response I made was only as venomous as that made originally. I was annoyed by what was a generally helpful exchange being punctuated by what still appears to me to be little more than an attempt at justifying the poster's own disagreement by directly accusing me of mental illness.
His opinion as expressed alone here is not the basis of my comment, it irritated me as I believed it was oversimplifying and snarky, but any time I think such a thing I very carefully examine the content of what provokes it, so I read his blog for quite some time before posting the conclusions I shot back with.
He is constantly talking about argumentation, very prone to being unable to understand that other people may see things differently to him, and even makes extensive comment on the fact that he has no formal logical path from a prior assumption in the vast majority of cases for the conclusions he reaches, merely that "he knows they're right".
So, yes, that did strike me as an attempt at philosophical hegemony, and this particular interaction was just one more data point on that plot.
In the scales of which this article speaks, I am at the limits.
The conclusion you draw at the end would result in an embrace of nihilism in the instance that you assume that this is an unchanging fact or transhumanism in order to widen the gap and make it significant on a cosmological scale.
I'm wholeheartedly in favour of the second option, certainly. My humanity already feels more a shedding skin than a fitting glove, long ago I had wished I could move beyond it's constraints and push the limits of possibility.
The pattern that I am seeing here and after having meditated on this myself is this: My conclusions about humanity at large are mostly correct, but this ought not discourage me from interaction in general due to one critical point. There are many great people despite the mass being largely useless. Further, if one actually attempts to follow rational principles it would not be all that difficult to find these people and maximise one's interactions within this sphere.
Isn't that in fact exactly what I'm doing here? The first place I have ever actually felt mostly socially comfortable in my life?
All the examples of positive social experiences that I can think of I could logically have concluded would likely have ended up that way based on the guessed at characteristics of the groups in question, the trick to human interaction is not to optimise your communications for the mean, but to optimise your communications for the groups whom with which you wish to interact.
Making the world a better place is promoting a personal advantage, so long as you're not dragged down too much in the process. My point is that by and large this is simply not the case.
I think if you believe it is then I'm wondering if your target population is truly representative of humanity at large or simply those who you interact with most commonly within some social sphere which you have found to be agreeable with you.
It isn't even that I feel superior, I simply feel utterly different, as I said, alien in the extreme. I believe this inhibits me when trying to understand why other people behave as they do because all I have to work off is a bunch of simulations of human behaviour in the past that I have observed / heard of.
This is exactly what I'm referring to, I simply don't connect with what you're trying to illustrate. I understand you're trying to draw a scenario that has some supposedly appealing emotional quality to it, but I'd just be thinking I'd rather be doing something useful than going to a carnival and I don't like hot weather.
This is not simply a case of a single example that would not hold up under a barrage of alternative options, simply put I want to learn, discover, build and create and passive experience holds little to no value to me.
I've already adopted a general philosophy of attempting to benefit from interpersonal interaction as much as possible, I try to figure out how a person works on their own level, including if I could assist them in any way, and if in doing so I may be setting up a mutually beneficial arrangement. In some cases, this works, but these cases are few and far between.
It seems the majority of people, if one were to pursue this philosophy, ought to be left to oblivion. Entanglement with them will only result in encumberance rather than advantage, even if you were to attempt to selflessly better them without regard to the benefits to yourself, typically they would be incapable of making use of your assistance.
What then is the purpose of humanity at large, those who fall outside the sphere of which can be of any advantage to you and are more valuable avoided than utilised?
Heavily debated making this post, will not make it on my account due to courting accusations of showboating, but in all earnestness this article struck a chord with me in a major way.
I ask here only because I respect this community and consider the inhabitants peers, and I genuinely want an answer. What can one do about it? I quite literally feel like an alien trapped on a planet full of people that alternately infuriate and bore me.
Has anyone successfully addressed these issues before? I believe that my growing misanthropy and detachment does not serve my interests in the long run.