Ok, could we like Skype or something and you tell me everything you know about being happy and all of your experiences? I have a lot to learn and I enjoy hearing your stories!
Also, idk if you’ve come across this yet but what you’re doing is something that us lesswrongers like to call WINNING. Which is something that lesswrongers actually seem to struggle with quite a bit. There’s a handful of posts on it if you google. Anyway, not only are you killing it, but you seem to be doing it on purpose rather than just getting lucky. This amount of success with this amount of intentionality just must be analyzed.
You sound like you are somewhat intimidated by the people here and that they all seem super smart and everything. Don’t be. Your ability to legitimately analyze things and steer your life in the direction you want it is way more rare than you’d guess. You should seriously write about your ideas and experiences here for everyone to benefit from.
Or maybe you shouldn’t. Idk. You probably already know this, but never just listen to me or what someone else tells you (obviously). My point really is that I sense that others could legitimately benefit from your stories—idk if you judge that writing about it is the best thing for you to be doing though.
Sorry if I’m being weird. Idk. Anyway, here are the beginnings of a lot of questions I have:
Your idea to avoid not only negative things but also neutral things sounded pretty good at first, and then made a lot more sense when I heard your examples. I started thinking about my own life and the choices I’ve made and am starting to see that your approach probably would have made me better off. But… I can’t help but point out that it can’t always be true. Sometimes the upfront costs of mediocrity must be worth the longer term benefits right? But it seems like a great rule-of-thumb. Why? What makes a good rule-of-thumb? Well, my impression is that aside from being mostly right, it’s about being mostly right in a way that people normally don’t get right. Ie. being useful. And settling for neutralness instead of awesomeness seems to be a mistake that people make a lot. My friends give me shit for being close-minded (which I just laugh at). They point out how I almost never get convinced and change my mind (which is because normal people almost never think of things that I haven’t taken into consideration myself already). Anyway, I think that this may actually change my outlook on life and lead to a change in behavior. Congratulations. …so my question here was “do you just consider this a rule of thumb, and to what extent?”
This question is more just about you as a case study rather than your philosophy (I hope that doesn’t make me sound too much like a robot) - how often do you find yourself sacrificing the short term for the long term? And what is your thinking in these scenarios? And in the scenarios when you choose not to? Stories are probably useful.
You say you did competitive running. Forgive me, but I’ve never understood competitive running. It’s so painful! I get that lighter runs can be pleasant, but competitive running seems like prolonged pain to me. And so I’m surprised to hear that you did that. But I anticipate that you had good reason for doing so. Because 1) it seems to go against your natural philosophy, and you wouldn’t deviate from your natural philosophy randomly (a Bayesian would say that the prior probability of this is low) and 2) you’ve demonstrated to be someone who reasons well and is a PC (~an agent).
There’s an interesting conversation to be had about video games/TV and happiness vs. “physical motivators”. I’m a huge anti-fan of videogames/TV too. I have a feeling you have some good thoughts on this.
Your thoughts on the extent to which strategic thinking is worth it. I see a cost-benefit of stress vs. increased likelihood of good decision. Also, related topic—I notice that you said you spent a big chunk of time making that major decision. One of my recent theories as to how I could be happier and more productive is to allocate these big chunks of time, and then not stress over optimizing the remaining small chunks of time, due to what I judge are the cost-benefit analyses. But historically, I tend to overthink things and suffer from the stress of doing so. A big part of this is because I see the opportunity to analyze things strategically everywhere, and every time I notice myself forgoing an opportunity, I kick myself. I know its not rational to pursue every analysis, but… my thoughts are a bit jumbled.
Just a note—I hope rationality doesn’t taint you in any way. I sense that you should err on the site of maintaining your approach. Incremental increases in rationality usually don’t lead to incremental increases in winning, so be careful. There’s a post on that somewhere I could look up for you if you want. Have you thought about this? If so, what have your thoughts been?
Do find mocking reality to be fun? I do sometimes. That didn’t make sense—let me explain. At some point in my junior year of college I decided to stop looking at my grades. I never took school seriously at all (since middle school at least). I enjoyed messing around. On the surface this may seem like I’m risking not achieving the outcomes I want, and that’s true, but it has the benefit of being fun, and I think that people really underestimate this. It was easy for me to not take school seriously, but I should probably apply this in life more. Idk. I’m also sort of good at taking materialistic things really not seriously. I ripped up $60 once to prove to myself that it really doesn’t matter :0. And it made me wayyy too happy, which is why I haven’t done it since (idk if that’s really really weird of me or not). I would joke around with my friends and say, “Yo, you wanna rip?”. And I really was offering them my own money up to say $100 to rip up so they could experience it for themselves. (And I fully admit that this was selfish because that money could have gone to starving kids, but so could a lot of the money I and everyone else spends. It was simply a trade of money for happiness, and it was one of the more successful ones I’ve made.) Anyway, I noticed that you flipped a coin to decide your major and got some sort of impression that something like this is your reasoning. But I only estimate a 20-30% probability of that.
I’m curious how much your happiness actually increased throughout your life. You seem to be evidence against the set point theory, which is huge. Or rather, that the set point theory in its most basic form is missing some things.
Actually, I should say that I’m probably getting a little carried away with my impressions and praise. I have to remember to take biases into account and acknowledge and communicate the truth. I have a tendency to get carried away when I come across certain ideas (don’t we all?). But I genuinely don’t think I’m getting that carried away.
Thoughts on long term planning.
Um, I’ll stop for now.
Time to go question every life decision I’ve ever made.
Also, idk if you’ve come across this yet but what you’re doing is something that us lesswrongers like to call WINNING. Which is something that lesswrongers actually seem to struggle with quite a bit. There’s a handful of posts on it if you google. Anyway, not only are you killing it, but you seem to be doing it on purpose rather than just getting lucky. This amount of success with this amount of intentionality just must be analyzed.
Hahaha, reading such fanmail just increased my happiness even more :) Sure, we can skype sometime. I’m going to wrap up my thoughts on terminal values first and then I’ll respond more thoroughly to all this, and maybe you can help me articulate some ideas that would be useful to share!
In the meantime, this reminded me of another little happiness tip I could share. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of the five “love languages” but they are words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, gifts, and physical touch. Everyone gives and receives in different ways. For example, I like receiving words of affirmation, and I like giving quality time. My mom likes receiving in physical touch, and giving in acts of service. The family I nanny for (in general) likes receiving in quality time and giving in gifts (like my new kindle which they gave me just in time to get the rationality ebook!) For people that you spend a lot of time with-family, partner, best friends, boss, co-workers-this can be worthwhile to casually bring up in conversation. Now when people know words of affirmation make me happy, they’ll be more likely to let me know when they think of something good about me or appreciate something I do. If I know the family I nanny for values quality time, I might sit around the table and chat with them an extra hour even though I’m itching to go read more of the rationality book. I know my mom values physical touch, so I hug her a lot and stuff even though I’m not generally super touchy. Happiness all around, although these decisions do get to be habits pretty quickly and don’t require much conscious effort :)
Just submitted my first article! I really should have asked you to edit it… if you have any suggestions of stuff/wording to change, let me know, quick!
Anyway, I’ll go reply to your happiness questions now :)
Just submitted my first article! I really should have asked you to edit it… if you have any suggestions of stuff/wording to change, let me know, quick!
First very quick glance, there’s some things I would change. I’ll try to offer my thoughts quickly.
Edit: LW really need a better way of collaboration. Ex. https://medium.com/about/dont-write-alone-8304190661d4. One of the things I want to do is revamp this website. Helping rational people interact and pursue things seems to be relatively high impact.
Anyway, I’ll go reply to your happiness questions now :)
Hey, no rush. It’s a big topic and I don’t want to overwhelm you (or me!) by jumping around so much. Was there anything else you wanted to finish up first? Do you want to take a break from this intense conversation? I really don’t want to put any pressure on you.
Ok, yeah, let’s take a little break! I’m actually about to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, and should really start thinking about the trip and get together some good playlists/podcasts to listen to on the drive. I’ll be back on Tuesday though and will be ready jump back into the conversation :)
I learned something new and seemingly relevant to this discussion listening to a podcast on the way home from the Grand Canyon: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which as knowledgeable as you seem, you’re probably already familiar with. Anyway, I think I’ve been doing just fine on the bottom four my whole life. But here’s the fifth one:
Self-Actualization needs—realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
So it seems like I’m working backwards on this self-actualization list now. I’ve had tons of super cool peak experiences already. Now, for the first time, I’m kind of interested in personal growth, too. On the page I linked, it talked about characteristics of self-actualizers and behavior of self-actualizers… I think it all describes me already, except for “taking responsibility and working hard” and maybe I should just trust this psychology research and assume that if I become ambitious about something, it will actually make me even happier. What do you think? Have you learned much psychology? How relevant is this to rationality and intentionally making “winning” choices?
:) I remember reading about it for the first time in the parking lot when I was waiting for my Mom to finish up at the butcher. (I remember the place I was at when I learned a lot of things)
Psychology is very interesting to me and I know a pretty good amount about it. As far as things I’m knowledgeable about, I know a decent amount about: rationality, web development, startups, neuroscience and psychology (and basketball!). And I know a little bit about economics, science in general, philosophy, and maybe business.
Anyway, I think I’ve been doing just fine on the bottom four my whole life. But here’s the fifth one:
Interesting. I actually figured that you were good with the top one too. For now, I’ll just say that I see it as more of a multiplier than a hole to be filled up. Ie. someone with neutral self-actualization would mostly be fine—you multiply zero (neutral) by BigNumber. Contrast this with a hole-to-be-filled-up view, where you’re as fulfilled as the hole is full. (Note that I just made this up; these aren’t actual models, as far as I know). Anyway, in the multiplier view, neutral is much much better than negative, because the negative is multiplied by BigNumber. So please be careful!
Hi again :) I’m back from vacation and ready to continue our happiness discussion! I’m not sure how useful this will be since happiness is so subjective, but I’m more than willing to be analyzed as a case study, it sounds fun!
You sound like you are somewhat intimidated by the people here and that they all seem super smart and everything. Don’t be. Your ability to legitimately analyze things and steer your life in the direction you want it is way more rare than you’d guess.
Oh, I still am! I wouldn’t trade my ability to make happiness-boosting choices for all their scientific and historical knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I’m not humbled and impressed by it. Now for your bullet points...
Avoiding neutralness isn’t actually a rule of thumb I’ve consciously followed or anything. It just seemed like a good way to summarize the examples I thought of of acting to increase my happiness. It does seem like a useful rule of thumb though, and I’m psyched that you think it could help you/others to be happier :) I might even consciously follow it myself from now on. But you ask whether the upfront costs of avoiding mediocrity are sometimes worth the long term benefits… you may well be right, but I can’t come up with any examples off the top of my head. Can you?
I don’t have any clear strategies for choosing between short-term vs. long-term happiness. I think my general tendency is to favor short-term happiness, kind of a “live in the moment” approach to life. Obviously, this can’t be taken too far, or we’ll just sit around eating ice cream all day. Maybe a good rule of thumb—increase your short-term happiness as much as possible without doing anything that would have clear negative affects on your long-term happiness? Do things that make you happy in the short-term iff you think there’s a very low probability you’ll regret them? I think in general people place too much emphasis on the long-term. Like me choosing to change my major. If I ultimately were going to end up in a career I didn’t love, and I had already accepted that, what difference did it make what I majored in? In the long term, no predictable difference. But in the short-term, those last 2 years would quite possibly account for over 2% of my life. Which is more than enough to matter, more than enough to justify a day or two in deep contemplation. I think that if I consistently act in accordance with my short-term happiness, (and avoiding long-term unhappiness like spending all my money and having nothing left for retirement or eating junk food and getting fat) I’ll consistently be pretty happy. Could I achieve greater total happiness if I focused only on the long-term? Maybe! But I seem so happy right now, the potential reward doesn’t seem worth the risk.
I love that you asked about my competitive running. I do enjoy running, but I rarely push myself hard when I’m running on my own. The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it on my own. Running was a social thing for me. My best friend there was a Guatemalan “elite” (much lower standard in for this there than in the US, of course), and I was just a bit faster than she was. So we trained together, and almost every single practice was a little bit easier for me than it was for her. Gradually, we both improved a ton and ran faster and faster times, but I was always training one small notch below what I could have been doing, so it didn’t get too painful. In the races, my strategy was always negative splits—start out slowly, then pass people at the end. This was less painful and more fun. Of course, there was some pain involved, but I could short-term sacrifice a few minutes of pain in a race for long-term benefits of prize money and feeling good about the race the whole next week. But again, it was the social aspect that got me into competitive running. I never would have pursued it all on my own; it was just a great chance to hang out with friends, practice my Spanish, stay fit, and get some fresh air.
Is strategic thinking worth it? I have no idea! I don’t think strategically on purpose; I just can’t help it. As far as I know, I was born thinking this way. We took a “strengths quest” personality test in college and “Strategic” was my number one strength. (My other four were relator, ideation, competitive, and analytical). I’m just wired to do cost-benefit analyses, I guess. Come to think of it, those strengths probably play a big role in my happiness and rationality. But for someone who isn’t instinctively strategic, how important are cost-benefit analyses? I like your idea of allocating large chunks of time, but not worrying too much in the day-to-day stuff. This kind of goes back to consequentialism vs. virtue ethics. Ask yourself what genuinely makes you happy. If it’s satisfying curiosity, just aim to ‘become more curious’ as an instrumental goal. Maybe you’ll spend time learning something new when you actually would have been happier spending that time chatting with friends, but instrumental goals are convenient and if they’re chosen well, I don’t think they’ll steer you wrong very often. Then, if you need to, maybe set aside some time every so often and analyze how much time you spend each day doing which activities. Maybe rank them according to how much happiness they give you (both long and short term, no easy task) and see if you spend time doing something that makes you a little happy, but may not be the most efficient way to maximize your happiness. Look for things that make you really happy that you don’t do often enough. Don’t let inertia control you too much, either. There’s an old saying among runners that the hardest step is the first step out the door, and it’s true. I know I’ll almost always be glad once I’m running, and feel good afterward. If I ever run for like 5 minutes and still don’t feel like running, I’ll just turn around and go home. This has happened maybe 5 times, so overall, forcing myself to run even when I don’t think I feel like it has been a good strategy.
Thanks! I don’t think it will taint me too much. Honestly, I think I had exceptionally strong rationality skills even before I started reading the ebook. Some people have lots of knowledge, great communication skills, are very responsible, etc...and they’re rational. I haven’t developed those other skills so well (yet), but at least I’m pretty good at thinking. So yeah, honestly I don’t think that reading it is going to make me happy in that it’s going to lead me to make many superior decisions (I think we agree I’ve been doing alright for myself) but it is going to make me happy in other ways. Mostly identity-seeking ways, probably.
I got a kick out of your money ripping story. I can definitely see how that could make you way more happy than spending it on a few restaurant meals, or a new pair of shoes, or some other materialistic thing :) I wouldn’t do it myself, but I think it’s cool! As for not taking school seriously for the sake of fun, I can relate… I took pride in strategically avoiding homework, studying for tests and writing outlines for papers during other classes, basically putting in as little effort as I could get away with and still get good grades (which I wanted 90% because big scholarship money was worth the small trade-off and 10% simply because my competitive nature would be annoyed if someone else did better than I did). In hindsight, I think it would have been cool to pay more attention in school and come out with some actual knowledge, but would I trade that knowledge for the hours of fun hanging out with my neighbors and talking and playing board games with my family after school? Probably not, so I can’t even say I regret my decision.
As for me flipping a coin… I think that goes with your question about how much cost-benefit analysis it’s actually worthwhile to do. I seriously considered like 6 majors, narrowed it down to 2, and both seemed like great choices. I think I (subconsciously) thought of diminishing marginal returns and risk-reward here. I had already put a lot of thought into this, and there was no clear winner. What was the chance I would suddenly have a new insight and a clear winner would emerge if I just invested a few more hours of analysis, even with no new information? Not very high, so I quit while I was ahead and flipped a coin.
How much has my happiness actually increased? Some (probably due to an increase in autonomy when I left home) but not a ton, really… because I believe in a large, set happiness range, and the decisions I make keep me at the high end of it. But like I said, sometimes it will decrease to a “normal” level, and it’s soo easy to imagine just letting it stay there and not taking action.
I don’t think you’re getting carried away, either, but maybe we just think really alike :) but happiness is important to everyone, so if there’s any way it could be analyzed to help people, it seems worth a try
Long-term planning depends on an individual’s values. Personally I think most people overrate it a bit, but it all depends on what actually makes a person happy.
[mind officially blown]
Ok, could we like Skype or something and you tell me everything you know about being happy and all of your experiences? I have a lot to learn and I enjoy hearing your stories!
Also, idk if you’ve come across this yet but what you’re doing is something that us lesswrongers like to call WINNING. Which is something that lesswrongers actually seem to struggle with quite a bit. There’s a handful of posts on it if you google. Anyway, not only are you killing it, but you seem to be doing it on purpose rather than just getting lucky. This amount of success with this amount of intentionality just must be analyzed.
You sound like you are somewhat intimidated by the people here and that they all seem super smart and everything. Don’t be. Your ability to legitimately analyze things and steer your life in the direction you want it is way more rare than you’d guess. You should seriously write about your ideas and experiences here for everyone to benefit from.
Or maybe you shouldn’t. Idk. You probably already know this, but never just listen to me or what someone else tells you (obviously). My point really is that I sense that others could legitimately benefit from your stories—idk if you judge that writing about it is the best thing for you to be doing though.
Sorry if I’m being weird. Idk. Anyway, here are the beginnings of a lot of questions I have:
Your idea to avoid not only negative things but also neutral things sounded pretty good at first, and then made a lot more sense when I heard your examples. I started thinking about my own life and the choices I’ve made and am starting to see that your approach probably would have made me better off. But… I can’t help but point out that it can’t always be true. Sometimes the upfront costs of mediocrity must be worth the longer term benefits right? But it seems like a great rule-of-thumb. Why? What makes a good rule-of-thumb? Well, my impression is that aside from being mostly right, it’s about being mostly right in a way that people normally don’t get right. Ie. being useful. And settling for neutralness instead of awesomeness seems to be a mistake that people make a lot. My friends give me shit for being close-minded (which I just laugh at). They point out how I almost never get convinced and change my mind (which is because normal people almost never think of things that I haven’t taken into consideration myself already). Anyway, I think that this may actually change my outlook on life and lead to a change in behavior. Congratulations. …so my question here was “do you just consider this a rule of thumb, and to what extent?”
This question is more just about you as a case study rather than your philosophy (I hope that doesn’t make me sound too much like a robot) - how often do you find yourself sacrificing the short term for the long term? And what is your thinking in these scenarios? And in the scenarios when you choose not to? Stories are probably useful.
You say you did competitive running. Forgive me, but I’ve never understood competitive running. It’s so painful! I get that lighter runs can be pleasant, but competitive running seems like prolonged pain to me. And so I’m surprised to hear that you did that. But I anticipate that you had good reason for doing so. Because 1) it seems to go against your natural philosophy, and you wouldn’t deviate from your natural philosophy randomly (a Bayesian would say that the prior probability of this is low) and 2) you’ve demonstrated to be someone who reasons well and is a PC (~an agent).
There’s an interesting conversation to be had about video games/TV and happiness vs. “physical motivators”. I’m a huge anti-fan of videogames/TV too. I have a feeling you have some good thoughts on this.
Your thoughts on the extent to which strategic thinking is worth it. I see a cost-benefit of stress vs. increased likelihood of good decision. Also, related topic—I notice that you said you spent a big chunk of time making that major decision. One of my recent theories as to how I could be happier and more productive is to allocate these big chunks of time, and then not stress over optimizing the remaining small chunks of time, due to what I judge are the cost-benefit analyses. But historically, I tend to overthink things and suffer from the stress of doing so. A big part of this is because I see the opportunity to analyze things strategically everywhere, and every time I notice myself forgoing an opportunity, I kick myself. I know its not rational to pursue every analysis, but… my thoughts are a bit jumbled.
Just a note—I hope rationality doesn’t taint you in any way. I sense that you should err on the site of maintaining your approach. Incremental increases in rationality usually don’t lead to incremental increases in winning, so be careful. There’s a post on that somewhere I could look up for you if you want. Have you thought about this? If so, what have your thoughts been?
Do find mocking reality to be fun? I do sometimes. That didn’t make sense—let me explain. At some point in my junior year of college I decided to stop looking at my grades. I never took school seriously at all (since middle school at least). I enjoyed messing around. On the surface this may seem like I’m risking not achieving the outcomes I want, and that’s true, but it has the benefit of being fun, and I think that people really underestimate this. It was easy for me to not take school seriously, but I should probably apply this in life more. Idk. I’m also sort of good at taking materialistic things really not seriously. I ripped up $60 once to prove to myself that it really doesn’t matter :0. And it made me wayyy too happy, which is why I haven’t done it since (idk if that’s really really weird of me or not). I would joke around with my friends and say, “Yo, you wanna rip?”. And I really was offering them my own money up to say $100 to rip up so they could experience it for themselves. (And I fully admit that this was selfish because that money could have gone to starving kids, but so could a lot of the money I and everyone else spends. It was simply a trade of money for happiness, and it was one of the more successful ones I’ve made.) Anyway, I noticed that you flipped a coin to decide your major and got some sort of impression that something like this is your reasoning. But I only estimate a 20-30% probability of that.
I’m curious how much your happiness actually increased throughout your life. You seem to be evidence against the set point theory, which is huge. Or rather, that the set point theory in its most basic form is missing some things.
Actually, I should say that I’m probably getting a little carried away with my impressions and praise. I have to remember to take biases into account and acknowledge and communicate the truth. I have a tendency to get carried away when I come across certain ideas (don’t we all?). But I genuinely don’t think I’m getting that carried away.
Thoughts on long term planning.
Um, I’ll stop for now.
Time to go question every life decision I’ve ever made.
Hahaha, reading such fanmail just increased my happiness even more :) Sure, we can skype sometime. I’m going to wrap up my thoughts on terminal values first and then I’ll respond more thoroughly to all this, and maybe you can help me articulate some ideas that would be useful to share!
In the meantime, this reminded me of another little happiness tip I could share. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of the five “love languages” but they are words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, gifts, and physical touch. Everyone gives and receives in different ways. For example, I like receiving words of affirmation, and I like giving quality time. My mom likes receiving in physical touch, and giving in acts of service. The family I nanny for (in general) likes receiving in quality time and giving in gifts (like my new kindle which they gave me just in time to get the rationality ebook!) For people that you spend a lot of time with-family, partner, best friends, boss, co-workers-this can be worthwhile to casually bring up in conversation. Now when people know words of affirmation make me happy, they’ll be more likely to let me know when they think of something good about me or appreciate something I do. If I know the family I nanny for values quality time, I might sit around the table and chat with them an extra hour even though I’m itching to go read more of the rationality book. I know my mom values physical touch, so I hug her a lot and stuff even though I’m not generally super touchy. Happiness all around, although these decisions do get to be habits pretty quickly and don’t require much conscious effort :)
Ok, take your time. And sorry for continuing to bombard you.
Happily!
Interesting. I’ll ask more about this in the future when you’re ready.
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m3b/do_terminal_virtues_exist/
Just submitted my first article! I really should have asked you to edit it… if you have any suggestions of stuff/wording to change, let me know, quick!
Anyway, I’ll go reply to your happiness questions now :)
First very quick glance, there’s some things I would change. I’ll try to offer my thoughts quickly.
Edit: LW really need a better way of collaboration. Ex. https://medium.com/about/dont-write-alone-8304190661d4. One of the things I want to do is revamp this website. Helping rational people interact and pursue things seems to be relatively high impact.
Hey, no rush. It’s a big topic and I don’t want to overwhelm you (or me!) by jumping around so much. Was there anything else you wanted to finish up first? Do you want to take a break from this intense conversation? I really don’t want to put any pressure on you.
Thanks so much!!
Ok, yeah, let’s take a little break! I’m actually about to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, and should really start thinking about the trip and get together some good playlists/podcasts to listen to on the drive. I’ll be back on Tuesday though and will be ready jump back into the conversation :)
Awesome! Ok, whatever works for you.
Also:
I learned something new and seemingly relevant to this discussion listening to a podcast on the way home from the Grand Canyon: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which as knowledgeable as you seem, you’re probably already familiar with. Anyway, I think I’ve been doing just fine on the bottom four my whole life. But here’s the fifth one:
Self-Actualization needs—realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
So it seems like I’m working backwards on this self-actualization list now. I’ve had tons of super cool peak experiences already. Now, for the first time, I’m kind of interested in personal growth, too. On the page I linked, it talked about characteristics of self-actualizers and behavior of self-actualizers… I think it all describes me already, except for “taking responsibility and working hard” and maybe I should just trust this psychology research and assume that if I become ambitious about something, it will actually make me even happier. What do you think? Have you learned much psychology? How relevant is this to rationality and intentionally making “winning” choices?
:) I remember reading about it for the first time in the parking lot when I was waiting for my Mom to finish up at the butcher. (I remember the place I was at when I learned a lot of things)
Psychology is very interesting to me and I know a pretty good amount about it. As far as things I’m knowledgeable about, I know a decent amount about: rationality, web development, startups, neuroscience and psychology (and basketball!). And I know a little bit about economics, science in general, philosophy, and maybe business.
Interesting. I actually figured that you were good with the top one too. For now, I’ll just say that I see it as more of a multiplier than a hole to be filled up. Ie. someone with neutral self-actualization would mostly be fine—you multiply zero (neutral) by BigNumber. Contrast this with a hole-to-be-filled-up view, where you’re as fulfilled as the hole is full. (Note that I just made this up; these aren’t actual models, as far as I know). Anyway, in the multiplier view, neutral is much much better than negative, because the negative is multiplied by BigNumber. So please be careful!
Hi again :) I’m back from vacation and ready to continue our happiness discussion! I’m not sure how useful this will be since happiness is so subjective, but I’m more than willing to be analyzed as a case study, it sounds fun!
Oh, I still am! I wouldn’t trade my ability to make happiness-boosting choices for all their scientific and historical knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I’m not humbled and impressed by it. Now for your bullet points...
Avoiding neutralness isn’t actually a rule of thumb I’ve consciously followed or anything. It just seemed like a good way to summarize the examples I thought of of acting to increase my happiness. It does seem like a useful rule of thumb though, and I’m psyched that you think it could help you/others to be happier :) I might even consciously follow it myself from now on. But you ask whether the upfront costs of avoiding mediocrity are sometimes worth the long term benefits… you may well be right, but I can’t come up with any examples off the top of my head. Can you?
I don’t have any clear strategies for choosing between short-term vs. long-term happiness. I think my general tendency is to favor short-term happiness, kind of a “live in the moment” approach to life. Obviously, this can’t be taken too far, or we’ll just sit around eating ice cream all day. Maybe a good rule of thumb—increase your short-term happiness as much as possible without doing anything that would have clear negative affects on your long-term happiness? Do things that make you happy in the short-term iff you think there’s a very low probability you’ll regret them? I think in general people place too much emphasis on the long-term. Like me choosing to change my major. If I ultimately were going to end up in a career I didn’t love, and I had already accepted that, what difference did it make what I majored in? In the long term, no predictable difference. But in the short-term, those last 2 years would quite possibly account for over 2% of my life. Which is more than enough to matter, more than enough to justify a day or two in deep contemplation. I think that if I consistently act in accordance with my short-term happiness, (and avoiding long-term unhappiness like spending all my money and having nothing left for retirement or eating junk food and getting fat) I’ll consistently be pretty happy. Could I achieve greater total happiness if I focused only on the long-term? Maybe! But I seem so happy right now, the potential reward doesn’t seem worth the risk.
I love that you asked about my competitive running. I do enjoy running, but I rarely push myself hard when I’m running on my own. The truth is, I wouldn’t have done it on my own. Running was a social thing for me. My best friend there was a Guatemalan “elite” (much lower standard in for this there than in the US, of course), and I was just a bit faster than she was. So we trained together, and almost every single practice was a little bit easier for me than it was for her. Gradually, we both improved a ton and ran faster and faster times, but I was always training one small notch below what I could have been doing, so it didn’t get too painful. In the races, my strategy was always negative splits—start out slowly, then pass people at the end. This was less painful and more fun. Of course, there was some pain involved, but I could short-term sacrifice a few minutes of pain in a race for long-term benefits of prize money and feeling good about the race the whole next week. But again, it was the social aspect that got me into competitive running. I never would have pursued it all on my own; it was just a great chance to hang out with friends, practice my Spanish, stay fit, and get some fresh air.
Is strategic thinking worth it? I have no idea! I don’t think strategically on purpose; I just can’t help it. As far as I know, I was born thinking this way. We took a “strengths quest” personality test in college and “Strategic” was my number one strength. (My other four were relator, ideation, competitive, and analytical). I’m just wired to do cost-benefit analyses, I guess. Come to think of it, those strengths probably play a big role in my happiness and rationality. But for someone who isn’t instinctively strategic, how important are cost-benefit analyses? I like your idea of allocating large chunks of time, but not worrying too much in the day-to-day stuff. This kind of goes back to consequentialism vs. virtue ethics. Ask yourself what genuinely makes you happy. If it’s satisfying curiosity, just aim to ‘become more curious’ as an instrumental goal. Maybe you’ll spend time learning something new when you actually would have been happier spending that time chatting with friends, but instrumental goals are convenient and if they’re chosen well, I don’t think they’ll steer you wrong very often. Then, if you need to, maybe set aside some time every so often and analyze how much time you spend each day doing which activities. Maybe rank them according to how much happiness they give you (both long and short term, no easy task) and see if you spend time doing something that makes you a little happy, but may not be the most efficient way to maximize your happiness. Look for things that make you really happy that you don’t do often enough. Don’t let inertia control you too much, either. There’s an old saying among runners that the hardest step is the first step out the door, and it’s true. I know I’ll almost always be glad once I’m running, and feel good afterward. If I ever run for like 5 minutes and still don’t feel like running, I’ll just turn around and go home. This has happened maybe 5 times, so overall, forcing myself to run even when I don’t think I feel like it has been a good strategy.
Thanks! I don’t think it will taint me too much. Honestly, I think I had exceptionally strong rationality skills even before I started reading the ebook. Some people have lots of knowledge, great communication skills, are very responsible, etc...and they’re rational. I haven’t developed those other skills so well (yet), but at least I’m pretty good at thinking. So yeah, honestly I don’t think that reading it is going to make me happy in that it’s going to lead me to make many superior decisions (I think we agree I’ve been doing alright for myself) but it is going to make me happy in other ways. Mostly identity-seeking ways, probably.
I got a kick out of your money ripping story. I can definitely see how that could make you way more happy than spending it on a few restaurant meals, or a new pair of shoes, or some other materialistic thing :) I wouldn’t do it myself, but I think it’s cool! As for not taking school seriously for the sake of fun, I can relate… I took pride in strategically avoiding homework, studying for tests and writing outlines for papers during other classes, basically putting in as little effort as I could get away with and still get good grades (which I wanted 90% because big scholarship money was worth the small trade-off and 10% simply because my competitive nature would be annoyed if someone else did better than I did). In hindsight, I think it would have been cool to pay more attention in school and come out with some actual knowledge, but would I trade that knowledge for the hours of fun hanging out with my neighbors and talking and playing board games with my family after school? Probably not, so I can’t even say I regret my decision. As for me flipping a coin… I think that goes with your question about how much cost-benefit analysis it’s actually worthwhile to do. I seriously considered like 6 majors, narrowed it down to 2, and both seemed like great choices. I think I (subconsciously) thought of diminishing marginal returns and risk-reward here. I had already put a lot of thought into this, and there was no clear winner. What was the chance I would suddenly have a new insight and a clear winner would emerge if I just invested a few more hours of analysis, even with no new information? Not very high, so I quit while I was ahead and flipped a coin.
How much has my happiness actually increased? Some (probably due to an increase in autonomy when I left home) but not a ton, really… because I believe in a large, set happiness range, and the decisions I make keep me at the high end of it. But like I said, sometimes it will decrease to a “normal” level, and it’s soo easy to imagine just letting it stay there and not taking action.
I don’t think you’re getting carried away, either, but maybe we just think really alike :) but happiness is important to everyone, so if there’s any way it could be analyzed to help people, it seems worth a try
Long-term planning depends on an individual’s values. Personally I think most people overrate it a bit, but it all depends on what actually makes a person happy.