On Weakness | Hacker News Reader

On Weakness

victorrotariu.com

90 pointsvictorwho8647 comments

Consider this: you are who you say you are. Eventually if you repeat it to yourself, subconsciously you'll find the patterns to make it work.

I am very careful of making statements like:

I am/was <adjective>.

It's like casting a spell on myself, and in my experience it works pretty well, so I've used it for positive transformation. If I'm bad at something, I can perceive it as a fluke, and continue as if I was whatever I desire to be. It's "fake it till you make it", but again, I don't like using the word "fake". I'm really just defining myself across time... I'm not faking so much as aligning my intentions with real world results.

So basically, I don't think the author was ever "weak" until he thought he was, and then it contributes to the reality of the situation. All those problems mentioned could have been solved while still thinking "I'm strong".

Everyone has limitations. Refusing to accept them can cause all kinds of long term harm. (This would be me.)

Keeping a positive attitude and knowing where you are and where you want to be is important but lying to yourself is a long, slow descent into self-destruction.

It's not a lie, if you believe it. (I'm talking about statements about one's self only).

I'm not talking about saying "I can fly" and jumping out the window. It's within the limits and confounds of what is possible from one's own perspective.

thanks for the interesting perspective

I think my realization was that it's not about 'who I am' but rather about what I do. So the breakthrough was not caring how an action affects my image (e.g. appearing weak) but rather as a learning point (e.g. more tired indicates a problem that should be diagnosed).

Sure, thanks for sharing your experience, it created a good discussion as a result.

You mention an identity crisis, which is what I was responding to, and it was suggesting to me there was some self-reflection going on. You mention human nature as well:

"You cannot win by fighting human nature. You win by embracing human nature"

Do we really know what human nature is? Do we really know the true nature of the human mind? Are we identical to our bodies? If we lose a limb, do we change our minds/identities?

These are largely unanswered questions, but to me it suggests mind over body. So from this perspective, maybe the body is weak at times, and this can be confused with our own identity if we're not careful. Check out David Goggins (he has several interviews on YT), if you're not already familiar with him.

Thanks, this is a really interesting discussion I am familiar with David Goggins. He is quite amazing. I think what he does in some ways is mind of human body, but in other ways is an expression of human nature.

Let me explain. I was probably not very clear in the post about this part on human nature. Homo Sapiens evolved to adapt to a certain environment. The 290,000 years before the Agricultural Revolution were spend in an environment quite different than the world today. We as a species are exquisitely adapted to survive and thrive in that environment. This is why we have conquered the Earth.

When I say human nature, I mean our biases, blindspots, logical fallacies that are adaptations to that environment. In essence a model of the world that still believes (unconsciously) we are in that past Paleolithic context. When I say fight human nature, I mean fight impulses that come from those adaptations. Impulses which are not beneficial now, such as being sedentary, but were in the past (when it was advantageous to conserve energy as much as possible).

My conclusion was that in the past I thought I could fight this past model (human nature). But now I realize it's not a game anybody can win, except for very short periods of time.

Rather I believe the solution is to change your environment and your model of the world, so that those unconscious biases (human nature) pushes you to behaviours which are beneficial.

To come back to the sedentarism example: instead of attempting to move from doing nothing to intense exercise 6 times per week (which is what everyone does), to make it a gradual habit: like at least 10 minutes of running at the same time every morning before your cup of coffee. This habit will naturally grow into a bigger habit. You are using your human nature to reach the outcome. In this case instant gratification (coffee after), habit formation (same trigger every day), overcoming resistance with minimum dose (only 10 minutes).

We'll have to disagree about human nature. I think humans have a powerful mind that has more control of the body than people realize.

"Homo Sapiens evolved to adapt to a certain environment. ... This is why we have conquered the Earth."

This sounds like a contradiction. Did we evolve for a specific environment, or did we conquer the globe with all its different environments? People live literally in every type of environment, from deserts, to mountains, to jungles, to very cold places. In every single case we have adapted.

Why are you saying it's so hard to adapt to new circumstances? It seems you are suggesting human nature is not as highly adaptable as it obviously is. We are creatures of adaptation.

> But now I realize it's not a game anybody can win, except for very short periods of time.

I think you're speaking for yourself here only, because there are plenty of examples of how this "nature" has been shattered into pieces. What were humans doing on the moon? Why are humans capable of meditating and fasting for days/weeks? Why are humans capable of extreme feats of athleticism that our ancestors would have never dreamed of. The list is very long.

Tying this in with the my first comment, if you think you don't have control, then for sure you will not, because you will block that possibility.

When I say a certain environment, I mean wild nature. The jungle and the mountains are more similar than the modern city. I suggest our biological adaptation cannot keep up with the rate of man-made change. The Internet dominates our lives now for example. But it did not exist 50 years ago. It took less than one generation. Biological adaptation needs many generations. The unconscious is made up of deep layers. It took millions of years to adapt to the wild environment.

When I say you cannot win, I mean daily habits. We achieve great things (like space travel) with our conscious knowledge: science accumulated over generations. But then at a daily level we do a lot of things which are self-harmful. These come from unconscious choices for survival that have the opposite effect today. Like exercise. Some people do extreme feats. Most struggle to do any exercise. What's the difference? The ones doing it a lot have a deep habit of exercise and adjusted their model of the world. Most who don't want to do it, are driven by the unconscious model that any energy conservation is advantageous.

You have lots of control. My argument is that willpower is not a brute force. You cannot force yourself to change. It only works for a short time. Rather that the key is to adjust your unconscious model and the environment so you change.

Where can we read about your food choices?

I sometimes write about food choices on the blog: https://victorrotariu.com/ and on medium: https://victorrotariu.medium.com/

But I can sum them up: No sugar (e.g. sucrose), ever. This includes honey, fruits, sugar hidden in non-sweet foods. The problem I consider is the fructose in sugar, not the glucose No hydrogenated oils, e.g. transfats No seed oils, e.g. PUFA, e.g. rapeseed, sunflower, corn. No cereals, e.g. wheat. For cereals I am not 100% sure they are detrimental to me, rather that there is good chance No alcohol No nitrites

Lots of meat Lots of saturated fat 16h+ fasting daily (e.g. no breakfast) 95%+ of meals are cooked

Nice blog post. I kind of wished the author dug more into why he worried so much about weakness, though.

I'm also reminded of something my mother told me once, "I think people have a hard time approaching me because it seems like I never have any problems." This is also one of my weaknesses: being so good at concealing one's weakness that it makes it harder to connect with people. The kicker is there isn't much feedback given to you about this other than a low-level, pervasive loneliness.

It's definitely a weakness to not expose a vulnerable side of yourself to others. Part of showing someone you trust them is trusting that they will accept you, vulnerabilities and all.

It’s foolish to expose weakness in all but the safest environment.

Being temperamental or busy a lot at work is one thing. If they know your health is failing you get a brief period of sympathy, then they start shoving you out the door, for your “health”.

Safety to hide the weakness and be “difficult”

It's a risk, that doesn't mean taking it is foolish.

And I don't think many people would advocate _always_ being maximally vulnerable in all contexts come on.

Use your judgement but mine is that most people around me are too risk-averse in this.

Thank you Good point about the source of my worries about weakness. At the core it's about living up to who I aspire to be. Moments of 'weakness' are like sliding back from that towards the lazy instant gratification monkey.

I have the same problem of connecting with people because of not showing weakness or complaining.

> Moments of 'weakness' are like sliding back from that towards the lazy instant gratification monkey.

That's not weakness. That's compromising with your nature that you cannot override.

I tried to be a productive robot with a predictable throughput. Many times. Never worked and will never work.

At one point you should accept some of your undeniable limitations.

Challenging all others is what it means to try and self-develop further.

> I have the same problem of connecting with people because of not showing weakness or complaining.

We the people are deep down very competitive and envious creatures. If you complain too much, you are weak. If you never complain, you are too strong and are disliked because you don't conform to the society's averages.

People in a social setting can only be pleased by you pretending to blend in with them. Harsh (and likely easy to dislike for the HN crowd) but it was demonstrated by the anecdotal evidence of many separate people whom I've known, myself included.

<That's not weakness. That's compromising with your nature that you cannot override.> That's kinda the point of the article. But I do believe you can change the environment and your model of the world, so that this human nature makes choices which are good for you. So you don't become a robot. But rather you adapt better to this modern world.

Agreed. I am just not sure how compatible changing your environment with belonging to the modern world are. F.ex. I want to live in a beach house in a relative solitude (with nearest city at 30-50km). Would I belong to the modern world then?

I wish more people, whether or not they believe they're healthy/strong or not, got annual bloodwork and general health checks done. You can't run a complex machine like a human body and never, ever do any analysis to ensure it's running within acceptable levels.

Imagine how much less psychological pain this guy could've been through if he had regular bloodwork enough to let him know that his vitD is getting low and to supplement before he even realized he was "failing".

> You can't run a complex machine like a human body and never, ever do any analysis to ensure it's running within acceptable levels.

Well, it's been how humans have lived for the vast majority of the time we've existed. You don't even have to go back 100 years and medicine was closer to superstition than science.

I think the difference is that now we live in an artificial environment with new problems. few people would have had vitamin D insufficiency before industrialization

And a lot of practiced medicine, unfortunately, still is.

We are all still humans after all :D

Every identity you create for yourself will eventually break down. Your body and mind will inevitably fail you and whatever identity you created will cease to exist. Maybe the Buddhists got it right.

It's very hard to overstate the profundity of Buddhism. The author embarked in self-reflection journey with this article, and I think had he kept going he would have bumped into Buddhist teachings.

Suffering is the foundation of experience. The author could not have arrived at his conclusions without suffering through what he did first. It's a contradiction like many Buddhist teachings. By embracing suffering, you somehow avoid it.

Apologies for a comment all over the place but you triggered the philosopher in me. :)

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Buddhism can very easily be made an analogy with programming and book writing:

"You have the perfect program not when you cannot add anything more to it but when you cannot take anything more away from it."

Their core philosophy basically is: let go, don't hold on to things, don't pile things up (no matter what type). It very often boils down to "find your true self, unburdened with many things you attached to yourself as you grew up". So at the core is the concept that you should minimize your persona until you cannot minimize it further.

I dig that a lot and I am seeing it as an universal principle in all areas of life. And it doesn't mean to "remove" your core traits. It means remove everything that isn't actually you. How do we find these things? Well, it's a lifetime journey but there are good ways to do it.

(This also reminded me of property-based testing where the testing framework is always shrinking a case that failed your tests until it finds the minimum value that can reproduce the failing test.)

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> It's a contradiction like many Buddhist teachings. By embracing suffering, you somehow avoid it.

Nothing contradictory about it. It seems that Buddhism (and other systems of belief) postulate that one of the traits of our Universe is: if you are not afraid of X, then X will be hitting you less. Kind of like school bullies, I guess?

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Sure, all of that is pretty abstract and philosophical. But as we go through life, we do start spotting patterns. The fact that they don't have a nice tidy name in Wikipedia doesn't devalue them.

I think it's incredible how Buddism and Stoicism arrived at such similar perspectives. And they are both incredibly relevant hundreds of years later.

I like the analogy with school bullies :)

Replying here to "F.ex. I want to live in a beach house in a relative solitude (with nearest city at 30-50km). Would I belong to the modern world then?" because I cannot reply directly to it: I think there is a compromise between how much of the physical environment we can change vs is imposed by the rest of society. But I don't think you need to physically isolate to make impactful change. You can create a completely different experience, that nudges you in different directions while living even in an apartment in the city. With our wealth, information access and technology, each of us can push himself in a different direction through our information diet for example, objects in the home and their arrangement, intentional habits.

Absolutely, every self-reinvention breaks down. As a Christian, I posit that if these failures are accepted with humility, their rubble may help us recognize who we were meant to be.

Completely agree with the growth vs fixed mindset. It's like a breath of fresh air after spending most of your life being fixated on odd metrics, identities, or goals. As noted in the article, humility and the ability to change are super important. However, I have some mixed feelings about the author's need to classify things as "weak" and "strong", not only because it is quite subjective, but because many people's behaviours don't neatly fall into those categories. But any mental framework, even if a bit vague or subjective, is an extremely important tool towards self-change and introspection. If the author is reading this, congratulations on your journey, and I support your continued growth.

thank you, very kind and useful

part of the self-therapy of this post was for me to exorcize this framework of 'weak' and 'strong'

Everybody has limits. Nobody has 100% self-discipline. Except maybe a few unique individuals like David Goggins.

If you think you can do anything, you just haven't tried something hard enough. Or, you're super fit, probably running ultra-marathons or squatting 300lbs+. No junk food, no video games or TV, no breaks (even during commutes). And you routinely spray yourself with pepper spray, expose yourself to negative temperatures, withstand electric shocks, just to prove to everyone how strong you are. Because that kind of stuff makes you proud, makes you famous, and helps you make money (if selfish) or raise money for charity (if selfless).

Understanding your limits is essential to even reach them. Because if you push yourself too hard, you'll burnout - you'll cave into binge eating or injure yourself with bad form or develop weird symptoms from stress. You have to pace yourself. Even top-tier PhD students, athletes, billionaires understand.

In fact, if you come in with the mindset "I will try as hard as I can", your brain will make "as hard as I can" less. If you're afraid of failing yourself, you'll never really try. If you have any cravings for junk food or rest or anything, it's a part of you that wants those things. And the more you delay them, the louder that part of you will get.

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I speak from experience: I had the same "I have no limits" mentality. It led to burnout and crippled my athletic performance. It still does now, because I still kind of have that mentality - I'm super stubborn, and I hate wasting effort or committing to something and failing.

I always did my morning workout, but spent hours waking up. I always ran as much or more than planned, but I ran slower and slower. I ate vegetables and lean protein, but I ate more and more until my appetite was massive. Most notably, I lost my strong temperament, and got very emotional and anxious.

Once I started setting more reasonable distances and sticking to them, waking up became easier. Once I started eating higher calorie foods, my appetite went down. My emotional regulation is back. Even now, every time I have a fixed time I have to run (because e.g. I have an appointment after), I always run faster.

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In order to truly reach your limits, you need a plan to handle your weaknesses. You need to set goals - e.g. "I will run 5 miles today". And then don't run 6, even if you feel like it, or at least don't run 6 too often. Otherwise your brain will start pacing you for 6 instead of 5. If you're running is too easy, increase the distance slowly, like 10% per week. Otherwise you might injure yourself.

Same exact with eating. If you suddenly eat 500 calories one day, you might find that you're not really hungry. But if you keep eating 500 calories after a few days you'll get hungrier and hungrier, and that hunger takes a few days to go away. Calculate your TDEE and set a reasonable deficit, and if you're not losing weight after a couple weeks, then eat less. If you look at people who've successfully lost weight vs. fad dieters, the former practically always emphasize sustainable changes and self-love, and the latter are always beating themselves up and doing extreme stuff.

And most helpful to me, follow the 5-minute rule. If you really don't want to do something you planned, do it for 5 minutes. You have to work out every day, study every day, etc. no matter how bad you feel. But only for 5 minutes, and if you still feel awful that's enough. If it doesn't actually help you accomplish anything (because you only did it for 5 minutes), it will at least make you feel better, because you at least tried. And I can guarantee that most of the time, you'll keep going after 5 minutes.

Why use David Goggins as the exception. Didn't he gain a bunch of weight at one point?

It seems David Goggins is representative of solid human will & discipline in the OP’s comment. I do not believe the OP places Goggins on a pedestal which your question seemingly attempts to pull him down from.

When he was young. And then IIRC at one point he decided "I have no limits" and since then he's been super fit, and spends his life running ultra-marathons and giving motivational speeches.

Well clearly he limited his weight gain.

Take your vitamin D pills, people.

for me "just a feeling of ‘meh’" -> bad water

Not bad enough to make me really sick, just meh. Not feeling like doing anything, very rare headaches.

bad water in the sense that it is contaminated or...?

Yes, bacterial.

I had that problem when I moved in the mountains last year. Bought a LARQ bottle (UV disinfection) and fixed it with little effort. Kaladyn also makes good UV disinfection I believe.

>This is who I say I am. This is who I strive to be. This is who I work to be. And it’s great.

Great? Sounds like anal-retentive buying into all kinds of cargo-cult (from self-help gurus, quantified self, nutrition "experts" etc.), micro-measuring your life, and playing macho.

Guess what, in the end you'll die too, and having enjoyed little in the process.

And all this weakness worrying points rather to some not treated personal issues from the author's past.

You don't read a post that GOOD on HN often.

Very well done!

wow, thank you

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