This. If only people realized that unpleasant facts do not cancel each other out, and pointing out one unpleasant fact in addition to another should never ever make us feel better, because it only leaves us in a worse world than we started out in. Compute the actual utilities. It’s such a common and avoidable error.
I think people just accidentally conflate keeping problems in perspective with the idea that the existence of bigger problems makes the small problems negligible and therefore equivalent to non-problems.
I’ve seen this happen with positive things too; sometimes you won’t mind repeatedly doing small favors for someone and they start acting like you not minding means the favor is equivalent to doing nothing from your perspective, which is frustrating when your small but non-zero effort goes unacknowledged.
It’s sort of like approximating sinθ as 0 for small angles. ^_^
Yep. Most people seem to behave as though the choice between spending $5 and spending $10 is a much bigger deal than the choice between spending $120 and spending $125, but if anything it’s the other way round, because in the latter case you’ll be left with less money. (That heuristic does have a point for acausal reasons analogous to these insofar as you’ll have to make the first kind of choice much more often than the second, but people will still behave the same way in one-off situations.)
Another possible motivation for that heuristic: something that’s a good buy for $5 might well be a bad buy for $10, but something that’s a good buy for $120 is probably still a good buy for $125. If I find that a cheap item’s twice the cost I thought it was, that’s more likely to force me to re-do a utilitarian calculation than if I find an expensive item is 4% pricier than I thought it was.
Yes, but OTOH if I’m about to buy something for $125 it isn’t that unlikely that if I looked more carefully I could found someone else selling the same thing for $120, whereas if I’m about to buy something for $10 it’s somewhat unlikely that anyone else would sell the same thing for $5 (so looking around would most likely be a waste of time), and I’d guess these two effects would more-or-less cancel out.
I can often get a $10 good/service for $5 or less if I’m willing to delay consumption or find another seller (e.g. buying used books, not seeing films as soon as they come out, getting food at a canteen or fast food place instead of a pub or restaurant, using buses instead of trains). I might be atypical.
My guess: The purpose of crying is to make people around you more likely to help you.
So if you don’t have shoes, there is a chance that crying in public will make someone give you money to buy the shoes. But if there is a person without feet nearby, your chances become smaller, because people will redirect their limited altruist budgets to that other person. Your crying becomes less profitable.
… Alright, but… that’s a separate point to make altogether. It’s not a quote about making yourself as likely as possible to get others to help you, and, I would say, it doesn’t have to be; it’s a quote about how other people’s negative experiences influence the way you feel about yours.
But if you look at it other way, then pointing out unpleasant facts about other people’s condition (that don’t apply to us) is equivalent to pointing out good facts about our condition, which should make us feel better, as it leaves us in a better world than we started out in.
That’s exactly the kind of thinking the world needs less of, and the kind that I was trying to warn readers against in the parent comment. Why? Just why would a worse world for someone else make for a better world for you, if that someone is not your mortal enemy? It just makes for a worse world, period.
The point isn’t that you’re taking pleasure in their misfortune, it’s that you’re taking pleasure in your own fortune. “I’m so lucky for having X.” If you don’t do that, then any improvements in your standard of living or situation in general will end up having no impact on your happiness, since you just get used to them and take them for granted and don’t even realize that you would have a million reasons to be happy. And then (in the most extreme case) you’ll end up feeling miserable because of something completely trivial, because you’re ignoring everything that could make you happy and the only things that can have any impact on your state of mind are negative ones.
And then (in the most extreme case) you’ll end up feeling miserable because of something completely trivial, because you’re ignoring everything that could make you happy and the only things that can have any impact on your state of mind are negative ones.
Someone commented above about the instrumental value of crying and feeling bad, and you’re actually pointing out the case where crying and feeling bad fail at being instrumental. Basically, I’m for whatever attitude that gets you to stop crying and start fixing some problem, and if resetting your baseline helps, it’s fair game! It definitely works for me in some cases.
I think this quote is trying to argue against the attitude that problems that are minor compared to other problems don’t deserve any attention at all. That everyone without shoes should just wrench themselves into happiness and go around being grateful, rather than acknowledging that they keep stepping on snails and pointy things, which sucks, and making productive steps toward acquiring shoes.
I remember reading something about plastic surgeons getting kind of looked down upon because they’re not proper heroic doctors that handle real medical problems.
… I think I see where you’re coming from—by realizing we’re not at the far end of the unhappiness scale (since we have a counterexample to that), we should calibrate our feelings about our situation accordingly, yes?
It’s still not the way I view things; I’d like to say I prefer judging these things according to an absolute standard, but it’s likely that that would be less true for me than I want it to be. To the extent that it doesn’t hold true for me, I think it’s better to take into consideration better states as well as worse ones. Saying, “at least I don’t have it as bad as X” just doesn’t feel enough; everybody who doesn’t have it as bad as X could say it, and people in this category can vary widely in their levels of satisfaction, the more so the worse X has it. It’s more complete to say “Yes, but I don’t have it as good as Y either” or, better yet, “I have it better/worse than my need requires”.
by realizing we’re not at the far end of the unhappiness scale (since we have a counterexample to that), we should calibrate our feelings about our situation accordingly, yes?
Yes, yes, but now you are going into far more depth than the original quote. The idea behind the quote seems to have been (at least as I read it): “Be happy that you have feet, having feet is not something you should take for granted.” The quote says nothing more than that. (Well, not quite. The point it makes is not only meant to be reserved for feet specifically, but rather seems to be meant as a comment on anything people take for granted.)
In the example above: the fact that you have no shoes equates to negative utility for you. If you’re a normal human being who is generally well-intended and wants people to have both feet and shoes for those feet, you would feel upset if you saw someone without feet, hence more negative utility. Your negative utility from you having no shoes + negative utility from seeing someone have no feet can only amount to a more negative total score than just the one obtained by considering your own lack of shoes. Even in the case where you’re a complete egoist for whom others’ misfortunes have absolutely no impact on your own personal happiness, if you sum them up again you still end up with the same negative utility from having no shoes. Only if you’re the kind of monster that rejoices in other people’s suffering is it possible for your utility score to raise after seeing someone with no feet. Yet it seems that even people who aren’t complete monsters seem to take comfort in the fact that someone else has it worse than them, and this seems intuitive for most people, and counter-intuitive for others, i.e. me, and the person who made the quote.
(Disclaimer: I haven’t studied utilitarianism formally; probably I’m using more of an everyday definition of the word “utility”, akin to “feel-good-ness” in a broad sense. The way I’ve thought about this problem stems purely from my intuitions.)
This. If only people realized that unpleasant facts do not cancel each other out, and pointing out one unpleasant fact in addition to another should never ever make us feel better, because it only leaves us in a worse world than we started out in. Compute the actual utilities. It’s such a common and avoidable error.
I think people just accidentally conflate keeping problems in perspective with the idea that the existence of bigger problems makes the small problems negligible and therefore equivalent to non-problems.
I’ve seen this happen with positive things too; sometimes you won’t mind repeatedly doing small favors for someone and they start acting like you not minding means the favor is equivalent to doing nothing from your perspective, which is frustrating when your small but non-zero effort goes unacknowledged.
It’s sort of like approximating sinθ as 0 for small angles. ^_^
Yep. Most people seem to behave as though the choice between spending $5 and spending $10 is a much bigger deal than the choice between spending $120 and spending $125, but if anything it’s the other way round, because in the latter case you’ll be left with less money. (That heuristic does have a point for acausal reasons analogous to these insofar as you’ll have to make the first kind of choice much more often than the second, but people will still behave the same way in one-off situations.)
Another possible motivation for that heuristic: something that’s a good buy for $5 might well be a bad buy for $10, but something that’s a good buy for $120 is probably still a good buy for $125. If I find that a cheap item’s twice the cost I thought it was, that’s more likely to force me to re-do a utilitarian calculation than if I find an expensive item is 4% pricier than I thought it was.
Yes, but OTOH if I’m about to buy something for $125 it isn’t that unlikely that if I looked more carefully I could found someone else selling the same thing for $120, whereas if I’m about to buy something for $10 it’s somewhat unlikely that anyone else would sell the same thing for $5 (so looking around would most likely be a waste of time), and I’d guess these two effects would more-or-less cancel out.
I can often get a $10 good/service for $5 or less if I’m willing to delay consumption or find another seller (e.g. buying used books, not seeing films as soon as they come out, getting food at a canteen or fast food place instead of a pub or restaurant, using buses instead of trains). I might be atypical.
I think both your comment and the quote are forgetting the instrumental purpose of crying and/or feeling bad.
I can’t say I see your point. Mind explaining?
My guess: The purpose of crying is to make people around you more likely to help you.
So if you don’t have shoes, there is a chance that crying in public will make someone give you money to buy the shoes. But if there is a person without feet nearby, your chances become smaller, because people will redirect their limited altruist budgets to that other person. Your crying becomes less profitable.
… Alright, but… that’s a separate point to make altogether. It’s not a quote about making yourself as likely as possible to get others to help you, and, I would say, it doesn’t have to be; it’s a quote about how other people’s negative experiences influence the way you feel about yours.
Unfortunately, I’ve met a lot of people who forget the instrumental purposes of crying and/or feeling bad. =[
But if you look at it other way, then pointing out unpleasant facts about other people’s condition (that don’t apply to us) is equivalent to pointing out good facts about our condition, which should make us feel better, as it leaves us in a better world than we started out in.
That’s exactly the kind of thinking the world needs less of, and the kind that I was trying to warn readers against in the parent comment. Why? Just why would a worse world for someone else make for a better world for you, if that someone is not your mortal enemy? It just makes for a worse world, period.
The point isn’t that you’re taking pleasure in their misfortune, it’s that you’re taking pleasure in your own fortune. “I’m so lucky for having X.” If you don’t do that, then any improvements in your standard of living or situation in general will end up having no impact on your happiness, since you just get used to them and take them for granted and don’t even realize that you would have a million reasons to be happy. And then (in the most extreme case) you’ll end up feeling miserable because of something completely trivial, because you’re ignoring everything that could make you happy and the only things that can have any impact on your state of mind are negative ones.
Someone commented above about the instrumental value of crying and feeling bad, and you’re actually pointing out the case where crying and feeling bad fail at being instrumental. Basically, I’m for whatever attitude that gets you to stop crying and start fixing some problem, and if resetting your baseline helps, it’s fair game! It definitely works for me in some cases.
I think this quote is trying to argue against the attitude that problems that are minor compared to other problems don’t deserve any attention at all. That everyone without shoes should just wrench themselves into happiness and go around being grateful, rather than acknowledging that they keep stepping on snails and pointy things, which sucks, and making productive steps toward acquiring shoes.
I remember reading something about plastic surgeons getting kind of looked down upon because they’re not proper heroic doctors that handle real medical problems.
… I think I see where you’re coming from—by realizing we’re not at the far end of the unhappiness scale (since we have a counterexample to that), we should calibrate our feelings about our situation accordingly, yes?
It’s still not the way I view things; I’d like to say I prefer judging these things according to an absolute standard, but it’s likely that that would be less true for me than I want it to be. To the extent that it doesn’t hold true for me, I think it’s better to take into consideration better states as well as worse ones. Saying, “at least I don’t have it as bad as X” just doesn’t feel enough; everybody who doesn’t have it as bad as X could say it, and people in this category can vary widely in their levels of satisfaction, the more so the worse X has it. It’s more complete to say “Yes, but I don’t have it as good as Y either” or, better yet, “I have it better/worse than my need requires”.
Yes, pretty much.
Yes, yes, but now you are going into far more depth than the original quote. The idea behind the quote seems to have been (at least as I read it): “Be happy that you have feet, having feet is not something you should take for granted.” The quote says nothing more than that. (Well, not quite. The point it makes is not only meant to be reserved for feet specifically, but rather seems to be meant as a comment on anything people take for granted.)
What’s an actual utility?
In the example above: the fact that you have no shoes equates to negative utility for you. If you’re a normal human being who is generally well-intended and wants people to have both feet and shoes for those feet, you would feel upset if you saw someone without feet, hence more negative utility. Your negative utility from you having no shoes + negative utility from seeing someone have no feet can only amount to a more negative total score than just the one obtained by considering your own lack of shoes. Even in the case where you’re a complete egoist for whom others’ misfortunes have absolutely no impact on your own personal happiness, if you sum them up again you still end up with the same negative utility from having no shoes. Only if you’re the kind of monster that rejoices in other people’s suffering is it possible for your utility score to raise after seeing someone with no feet. Yet it seems that even people who aren’t complete monsters seem to take comfort in the fact that someone else has it worse than them, and this seems intuitive for most people, and counter-intuitive for others, i.e. me, and the person who made the quote.
(Disclaimer: I haven’t studied utilitarianism formally; probably I’m using more of an everyday definition of the word “utility”, akin to “feel-good-ness” in a broad sense. The way I’ve thought about this problem stems purely from my intuitions.)