I hear how much this diagnosis weighs on you. You’re carrying around this knowledge that you have NPD, feeling caught between wanting genuine connections and worrying that being open about this could push people away. It’s a really difficult position to be in - wanting to be authentic with someone you love while facing all this stigma and misconceptions about personality disorders.

You’re not just asking about a diagnosis - you’re asking about how to navigate relationships, how to be genuine with people you care about, and how to handle vulnerability. These are deeply human concerns that go way beyond any diagnostic label.

I’ve know many people who initially saw their diagnoses as permanent labels that defined who they were. I get why - that’s how mental health has been presented to us for decades. We’re told these are distinct categories, clear boxes that people fit into. But here’s something fascinating that recent research has shown: When researchers studied over 3,700 people who shared the same diagnosis of major depression, they found over 1,000 different symptom patterns. More than half of the people had patterns so unique they appeared in less than 0.1% of the group.

This isn’t just true for depression - it applies to most mental health diagnoses. The whole idea of these being clear, distinct categories is breaking down as we look more closely at the science. In fact, despite decades of searching, researchers haven’t found reliable biomarkers for these diagnoses. The DSM workgroup themselves concluded this (page 8 of the pdf here as well as page 18 of the pdf here).

What does this mean for you? Well, it suggests that thinking of NPD as a fixed thing that defines you might not be the most helpful way to look at it. Instead of asking “Will people reject me because I have NPD?”, we might ask different questions: What patterns do you notice in your relationships? What kind of connections do you want to build? What helps you move toward those connections, and what gets in the way?

You mentioned being worried about your current relationship - about whether your boyfriend would still want to be with you if he knew about the diagnosis. That’s a really understandable fear, especially given how personality disorders are often portrayed. But I wonder if we could look at this differently. Instead of thinking about “revealing NPD” as a single big disclosure, what if we thought about building authentic connections in a way that aligns with what matters to you?

The real strength I see in your post isn’t related to any diagnosis - it’s that you care deeply about being genuine in your relationships. You’re wrestling with these questions because connection matters to you. That’s not a symptom; that’s a value. And it’s something you can move toward, step by step, in ways that feel right to you.

I know I often reference ACT and process-based approaches, and some might see that as my go-to solution for everything. But this situation perfectly illustrates why these approaches can be so helpful. Rather than letting a diagnostic label define your path, you can focus on understanding your own patterns, knowing what matters to you, and building psychological flexibility to move toward the life you want.

When you ask “How will NPD affect your social life?”, you’re asking a question that assumes the diagnosis drives everything. But what if we turned it around? What if instead we asked: What kind of social life do you want to build? What patterns help you move toward that? What patterns get in the way? These questions put you in the driver’s seat, not the diagnosis.

This isn’t about denying challenges or pretending patterns don’t exist. It’s about seeing them as processes you can work with rather than permanent labels that define you. The science is increasingly showing us that this is not only more accurate, but more useful for creating change.

You’re not your diagnosis. You’re a person trying to build meaningful connections while dealing with certain patterns of thinking and behaving. Those patterns can change. They might be stubborn sometimes, but they’re not set in stone. What matters is moving toward what’s important to you, one step at a time.

Sure! I’m assuming you’re talking about coffee. I aim to get the best coffee possible as cheap as possible, so these factors are by far not optimized but they’re good enough for me:

• Coffee beans: Getting coffee that you like is maybe the most important factor. The first time I tried floral coffee, I thought my cup was not properly washed and still had detergent in it. Now I know I don’t like floral coffee!
• Water: I hate myself for doing this because of the plastic waste I generate, but buying a massive container of water that has been purified by reverse osmosis consistently results in way better coffee than using my tap water.
• James Hoffman’s V60 recipe v.s. Osmotic flow: James Hoffman’s V60 recipe is a thousand times better. I think the main factor here is agitation; in this case, more is better. I have not experimented much beyond Hoffman’s recipe because I like it. It’s possible I could optimize a bit more with little cost.
• The cheapest grinder my partner used in their previous place v.s. the grinder we recently bought: I am so sorry if I sound like a snob, but getting a grinder that is capable of creating uniform grinds has been game changing. It’s not even close.

The way that I think about these factors is that I’m affecting the extraction of the coffee. I’m trying to take the things that taste good in coffee and leave the things that don’t taste so good. I’m playing a balancing game: not too extracted and bitter, not too underextracted and insipid.

Of course, there are other variables that I could try to optimize for, such as body, acidity, sweetness, etc… Maybe I will someday pay attention to it, and if it’s not expensive or hard to optimize for them, then I’ll be happy to change my way of making coffee. In the meantime, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

In the off chance you meant Scrum and ACT-Advisor stuff:

• In Scrum, I’d say a lot of the experiments end up affecting factors that have, in the literature, already been identified as important: happy workers are more productive, stable interfaces between teams leads to faster development and higher quality work, cross-functional teams are better than having handoffs, etc…
• As to the ACT-Advisor stuff, this may seem obvious, but doing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy improves my scores. I like to see that it’s not only therapy sessions that improve the scores, but also weeks of intensively doing ACT exercises on my own.

• Whenever I change something in my coffee setup, I do blind tastings for myself and sometimes others.
• Scrum retrospectives and Kaizens in a way are experiments to see how to improve 🤷‍♂️
• I regularly answer ACT-Advisor questions to see how I’m doing over time https://stevenchayes.com/tools/

Sorry if this seems strange, but do you do data analysis? If not, I’d be happy to explore and visualize the data! It’s always interesting to me to do it.

This looks impressive for Linux, and I’m glad FLOSS has such an impact! However, I wonder if the numbers are still this good if you consider more supercomputers. Maybe not. Or maybe yes! We’d have to see the evidence.

I should clarify - rather than ‘backfire,’ exaggeration in Majority Judgment either does nothing or carries a social cost. Here’s why:

• If a minority exaggerates votes, the median stays unchanged.
• If everyone exaggerates equally, the same winner emerges, but an artificial high tide of exaggerated grades obscures the real depth of public opinion. This defeats one of MJ’s key strengths: the ability to show when all candidates are viewed poorly and therefore create pressure for better options.

Regarding partisan concerns: Yes, MJ is vulnerable if partisan blocks coordinate to exaggerate grades. However, MJ offers two meaningful advantages in a two-party system:

1. Voters can grade third-party candidates highly without ‘wasting’ their vote, as they can still support their party’s candidate.
2. Once again, poor candidates from both parties could receive revealing low grades, encouraging better alternatives.

Of course, you were hinting at the fact that MJ’s success in a two-party system depends on fostering a political culture where candid evaluation flows more freely than partisan loyalty. But this is the current that all voting systems must swim against; partisan pressure can steer dolphins’ fins at the polling station regardless of the method used.

Either ranked-choice voting or majority judgement.

Thanks for sharing your method.

As to your take on Anki, I think it’s fair and accurate. I agree with you in that the learning curve is not in the features or the interface, but as you said: in the pacing. I really hope I can try to space the cards as much as possible, so that a regular practice doesn’t become burdensome.

I’m generally skeptical of comments on the internet, so almost every time I have read comments like this one that you’re reading right now, I’ve been like “yeah right”. Kinda like how “lol” means “laughing out loud” but when you read it online you don’t really expect whoever wrote “lol” to have laughed out loud? Anyway, I was drinking coffee, I read your comment, I snorted in laughter, and now my white shirt is full of coffee.

I guess I’m also kinda mad at myself for laughing so hard at such a silly joke. Regardless, have an updoot 👍

and Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis and Pascal’s wager, all subject to the validity threat “What alternative explanations are there?” and “How can I be wrong?”. All of these thought experiments are unfalsifiable. They can all be explained with different theories. They all rely on circular reasoning. They all anthropomorphize entities that maybe don’t resemble humans at all. They all fall for the mind projection fallacy. They all are prey to selection bias, because they cherry-pick scenarios among countless alternatives.

It sounds like you really care about fairness, in the sense of giving credit to the hard work behind learning. Do you know the phrase “dead metaphor”?

Came here to say this. I would like to know the definition (and its theory behind) to have a conversation about it, but I won’t watch three hours of a video to get the answer (or not!).

Totally. The history of intelligence has sadly also been the story of eugenics. Fortunately, there have been process-based theories and contextual theories that have defined intelligence in more humane and useful ways. In this view, IQ tests do not measure an underlying characteristic, but a set of mental skills. Seen this way, intelligence becomes something people can gain with nurturance. If you’re interested, check out Relational Frame Theory.

My brother has a Framework 13 and mainly uses a combination of NixOS and Windows. Most of the time he uses NixOS, but sometimes the software he needs is broken on Nix. When that happens, he reverts to a previous version of Nix or he boots onto Windows. He has Windows installed in one of the external-drive socket thingies that he keeps plugged in at all times in case he needs Windows.

Apart from the occasional broken Nix package, he has had issues with the hyper-sensitive two-finger scrolling in Gnome (which I would say is not directly a Framework or Nix problem). Also, a while back, when I bought the computer with him, we bought Oloy RAM because it was fast and cheap, but that lead to weird crashes. Framework support helped us test the sticks and eventually we sold those sticks and got the Framework-tested Crucial sticks, which solved the problem. Finally, I remember he had to be careful about not just closing the laptop but actually clicking “sleep” and then closing it, because otherwise it would get super hot and lose a lot of battery.

Despite these struggles, he recently told my Mac-loving girlfriend that he will not get a “disposable” computer. I take this to mean he will keep using his Framework laptop.

These have been around for quite a while, but I recently learned about clipboard managers. I haven’t met someone who uses one, perhaps because it is an inconspicuous tool. Regardless, I love being able to quickly paste text that I use frequently!

I’m still testing them, so I can’t really say “this one’s the best”, but here’s one: https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/

The best habit perhaps is meditating daily and I developed it following Tiny Habits.

GTD is up there too!

I agree with you: the FSF can seem unwavering in their stance, even in the face of practicality. I’m really sorry for this incredibly nit-picky detail, but I think practicality is ideological too. For better or for worse, we can’t escape ideas or be free from them, so we have to choose which we value. For example, while I tend to choose software freedom over practicality, I also have, at times, chosen practicality over freedom.

Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.

Reading How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barret and A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes will answer your question. More broadly, emotion construction theory and relational frame theory will answer your question.

Self awareness is just a set of relational frames. It is a building, a palace if you will, made out of blocks of thoughts and relational frames. Feelings are that too. You can use self-awareness to examine feelings (e.g. “I am sad that I failed”). However, you can also create emotions based on your sense of self (“I failed, and therefore I am sad”).

On Christmas 2023 I was given an Anker charger. By March 2024 it stopped working…