Bayes nets are nice because the process for creating them mimics the process by which people think about the world. We think that X and Y cause Z, and Z causes Q, which is also caused, a little bit, by X. You can not only represent that exactly with a Bayes net, but you can do inference on the resultant distribution, which means you can pose questions and answer them: “Given X and A, what’s the probability of Y?” This requires some extraordinarily complicated math, but conceptually it’s pretty simple.

This matters because last week I tried to decompose my life as a Bayes net, which is just the latest in a long history of self-modeling. It is also probably the most useful, since the causal chaining is clear the way it wasn’t in the rule-based model I wrote about late last summer. In layman’s terms, this means it’s easier to tweak something in your life and see how it would play out. For instance, I can say: if I improved my diet fifty percent, what result would that have on my creative output? And so long as I’ve represented the causal relationships properly, I can have confidence that the answer will be consistent with the axioms of probability. It will be ‘right’ as it is possible to be, given the model.

So in the Bayes net of my life there is, for real, a “diet” node, which is connected to, among others, the “pain” node, the “focus” node, and the “mood” node. The “diet” node is super important, mostly because of chronic pain issues, and the issues that result from the chronic pain issues. But “diet” isn’t the most important node in the Bayes net; it’s “social”, which I defined as the summation of all social influences. Which means that the biggest bang for my buck in making substantive change to my circumstances is to spend a lot of effort on the “social” node.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post: I’m looking to ramp up my social activities, but I want to do it in a way consistent with the rest of the stuff I’m doing. So for example: I want to see you, but I don’t want to go out to lunch or dinner with you, because it’s too damn hard to deal with the dietary restrictions when I’m going out to eat with people all the time. And it’s funny what a huge hole that leaves in my social repertoire — food mediates everything.

But I am very much open to suggestions of things to do, either generally (things you suggest that I should do) or with the people who read this blog. What can we do together? What projects can we undertake? Where could we go? What could we make? And though I won’t go out to lunch or dinner with you, I will come over to your house and make dinner with you; or you can come to mine. But maybe we should make movies; or interview Indians; or something. I dunno. But I can’t be the only person underperforming socially, so help me think of some creative and worthwhile things so that I’m not in a room alone staring at fucking pixels for 90% of my life.

Well, of course life now is radically different than life in Seattle. I could point to any of these differences as _the_ difference. But how much truth would there be in that? Is there maybe a simpler answer? Metafilter featured a great discussion yesterday on a question that I seemingly could have written. One response really stands out:

A sense of shame will change your life.

The nub of your problem is actually pretty common amongst those who were brighter than average as kids and weren’t pushed hard enough. You get used to coasting along with minimal effort and being a big fish in a small pond.

What you need is a bigger pond. Find a way to associate with people who are clearly doing better than you. People’s by whose standards you aren’t “functioning just fine”. If your issues are academic you need to be hanging out with fascinating, intelligent people who make you feel dumb by comparison. If your issues are financial seek out people working three jobs at once who will have no sympathy for your lazy ways. If you want to travel, but keep putting it off, start hanging out in backpacker cafes where the conversations will make you feel like a timid, provincial loser. If the issue is housework you need to be find somebody who believes cleanliness is next to godliness and invite them over to your place.

Our idea of ‘normal’ is defined by the people we associate with. You need to surround yourself by people who will make you ashamed of your apathy instead of enabling it. Big Fish Small Pond Syndrome is hard to eradicate, but not impossible. Shame is one of the best tools in a recovering fish-person’s arsenal.

I hesitate to post this because surely you must all be sick to death of posts that follow this pattern:

1: I want to do something.
2: I’m capable of doing that thing.
3: I don’t do that thing.
4: I ruminate endlessly on why I didn’t do that thing.

Still, as someone told me once, sharing means caring.

*

DDB in particular was excited about a Seth Godin idea I linked the other week, the one about taking an hour or two a day, making a plan, and turning into the person you want to be. I remain absolutely convinced that this is a viable thing to do, and that it would absolutely work, with only two simple caveats.

1: YOU ACTUALLY FOLLOWED THROUGH FOR MORE THAN THREE DAYS
2: You picked the right tasks to address in your hour or two.

I’m going to post on this soon. In the meantime, if you’ve been thinking about that topic then let’s hear your thoughts. Does your plan involve making yourself accountable by throwing yourself into some peer group where you’ll look like a tool if you don’t follow through? Will indulging all your usual pathologies now be acutely uncomfortable? What are you hoping to become?