[labrador]

I tried to translate it. I'm sure I didn't get it right because it is hard to parse:

As psychiatrists we see a lot of people coming in saying "Man, I feel like an imposter. I just don't measure up." Most of the time we'll convince them everyone feels that way and they should chillax. It ain't no big thing. A lot of famous people talk about it, almost like they're bragging or something.

If that doesn't work we tell them it's just a meaningless label people throw around for something else that is going on. It's modern "disease" of the times. You hear others throw the words around and pretty soon you're wearing that jacket.

Now the old white dudes had some thoughts on this but they're outdated. They can't help us because they weren't hip to the needs of women and people of color.

You might think most people would go away at this point with less anxiety, but here we get to the real subject we want to speak on, which is privileged people who grew up being told they were special and then finding out everyone in their circle was told the same thing. We can't all be special, lets face it. It's quite a let down for some. It's doubly hard if they haven't separated from their parents yet but no longer get their parents daily affirmations of their specialness because they don't live with them anymore.

Those privileged people usually want to go away feeling good about identifying the problem and vowing to learn a little humility, but this is where we get them. We tell them that they are special, but the capitalist system wants to keep them down and consistently on the treadmill for the capitalist masters. We tell them they've been turned into a robot. Then we close the deal and tell them that we are their only hope and it might involve a lot of work with our specialists at considerable cost.

[asxd]

Appreciate you writing up a more terse version. Tangentially, I fed the article into GPT-3, then led with the prompt:

> Q: Was the above article written by a bot? Explain your reasoning.

It's response was:

> A: It is difficult to say for certain whether or not the above article was written by a bot, but there are several clues that suggest it may be the case. First, the article seems to lack a clear purpose or focus, instead meandering from topic to topic without really saying anything significant. Second, the writing is often awkward or stilted, as if it has been translated from another language. Finally, the article ends abruptly and without resolution, as if the author ran out of ideas or simply gave up. Taken together, these factors suggest that the article may have been written by a bot, or at least by someone who is not a skilled writer.

I thought this was a pretty humorous take.

[labrador]

I don't think it was written by a bot, just in a post-modern style. I think the article has a point, which I take to mean some at the higher levels of achievement are especially susceptible to imposter syndrome can become dependent on the analyst, and since those at higher levels of achievement usually have money, they can spend a lot chasing answers (It reminds me a little of plastic surgery addiction)

[asxd]

I don't think it was written by a bot either. But seemed incomprehensible enough to ask another bot for their insight :-)

In seriousness, I appreciate your analogy above. That brings the article into a more interesting light.

[Animats]

Yup.

A pair of clinical psychologists practicing in Manhattan and Brooklyn NY could probably say something useful about this. But they didn't.

Thought for today: Is impostor syndrome driving the use of excessively complex tech stacks on problems that don't really need them? If it's not complicated, do they really need to pay you $250K a year?

[bryanrasmussen]

>A lot of famous people talk about it, almost like they're bragging or something.

yeah if you're famous and super successful in your field and you talk about having imposter syndrome it does feel a bit of a humblebrag.

[Jensson]

Impostor syndrome is when you don't feel you deserve the praise people give you, so the more praise you get the easier it is to feel impostor syndrome. So it isn't strange at all that successful people who gets a lot of praise feel a lot of impostor syndrome.

What is strange however are all the people who thinks they have impostor syndrome even though nobody thinks they have done anything great at all. They don't see themselves as impostors, they just see themselves as nobodies and feel bad about that.