But it could be a subconscious decision that still fulfills the goal.
True. In the case of my friend, I don’t think it was, but in cases where it is, then I think that it could be a perfectly sensible approach (depending on the situation).
This was the relevant part of the conversation:
So what if it were the situation was: tell the truth and make you less happy, your family less happy, and the rest of the world unaffected, or lie.
i would never approach it that way. my decisions aren’t that calculated (at least not consciously).
It’s possible that he had legitimately decided earlier to not put that much calculation into these sorts of decisions, because he thinks that this strategy will best lead to his terminal goals of happiness or goodness or whatever. But this situation actually didn’t involve any calculation at all. The calculations were done for him already—he just had to choose between the results.
To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
I should mention that I think that >99% of people are quite quite stupid. Most people don’t seem very agenty to me, given the way I define it. Most people seem to not put much thought behind the overwhelming majority of what they do and think and instead just respond to their immediate feelings and rationalize it afterwards. Most people don’t seem to have the open-mindedness to give consideration to ideas that go against their impulses (this isn’t to say that these impulses are useless), nor the strength to admit hard truths and choose an option in a lose-lose scenario.
Really, I don’t know how to word my thoughts very well on this topic. Eliezer addresses a lot of the mistakes people make in his articles. It’d take some time for me to really write up my thoughts on this. And I know that it makes me sound like a Bad Person for thinking that >99% people are really stupid, but unfortunate truths have to be dealt with. The following isn’t a particularly good argument, but perhaps it’s an intuitive one: consider how we think people 200 years ago were stupid, and people 200 years ago think people 400 years ago were stupid etc. (I don’t think this means that everyone will always be stupid. Ie. I think that not being stupid means something in an absolute sense, not just a relative one).
It’s exactly like that, just multiplied times infinity (adjusted for scope insensitivity) because hell is eternal.
I’m truly truly sorry that you had experienced this. No one should ever have to feel that. If there’s anything I could do or say to help, please let me know.
If you’re really curious, how convenient, I wrote about it here to explain myself to my Christian friends.
I had actually seen the link when I looked back at your first post in the welcome thread at some point. I confess that I just skimmed it briefly and didn’t pick up on the core idea. However, I’ve just read it more carefully.
I love your literary device. The Banana Tree thought experiment and analogy that is (I don’t actually know what I literary device is). And the fact that people believe that—a) God is caring, AND b) God created Hell and set the circumstances up where millions/billions of people will end up there—is… let’s just say inconsistent by any reasonable definition of the words consistent, caring and suffering.
In the same way that you talk about how God is bad for creating Hell, I actually think something similar about life itself. I’m a bit pessimistic. The happiness set point theory says that we have happiness set points and that we may temporarily deviate above or below them, but that we end up hovering back to our set points.
Furthermore, this set point seems to be quite neutral and quite consistent amongst humans. What I mean by neutral is that minute-to-minute, most people seem to be in a “chill” state of mind, not really happy or sad. And we don’t spend too much time deviating from that. And there’s also the reality that we’re all destined to die. Why does life have to be mediocre? Why can’t it be great? Why do we all have to get sick and die? I don’t know how or if reality was “created”, but to anthropomorphize, why did the creator make it like this? From the perspective of pre-origin-of-reality (if that’s even a thing), I feel the same feelings about neutralness that you expressed about the badness of Hell (but obviously Hell is far worse than neutralness). From a pre-origin perspective, reality could just as easily have been amazing and wonderful, so the fact that it’s neutral and fleeting seems… disappointing?
But how did I survive, believing in hell? Well, there’s this wonderful book of the Bible called Ecclesiastes that seems to mostly contradict the rest of Christian teachings. Most people find depressing. Personally, I loved it and read it every week to comfort myself. I still like it, actually. It’s short, you could read it in no time, but here’s a sample from chapter 3: 18-22:
If it got you through believing in hell, I will most certainly read it.
To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
So a possible distinction between virtue ethicists and consequentialists: virtue ethicists pursue their terminal values of happiness and goodness subconsciously, while consequentialists pursue the same terminal values consciously… as a general rule? And so the consequentialists seem more agenty because they put more thought into their decisions?
I think that not being stupid means something in an absolute sense, not just a relative one)
I might agree with you about >99% of people being stupid. What exactly do you mean by it though? That they don’t naturally break things down like a reductionist? That they rarely seem to take control of their own lives, just letting life happen to them? Or are you talking about knowledge? We’ve definitely increased our knowledge over the past 400 years, but I don’t think we’ve really increased our intelligence.
And the fact that people believe that—a) God is caring, AND b) God created Hell and set the circumstances up where millions/billions of people will end up there—is… let’s just say inconsistent by any reasonable definition of the words consistent, caring and suffering.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get across, and it’s why I titled the post “Do You Feel Selfish for Liking What You Believe”! I hesitated to include the analogy since it was the only part with the potential to offend people (two people accused me of mocking God) and taint their thoughts about the rest of the post, but in the end I left it, partly as a hopefully thought-provoking interlude between the more theological sections and mostly so I could give my page a more fun title than Deconversion Story Blog #59845374987.
The happiness set point theory makes sense! Actually, it makes a lot of sense, and I think it’s connected to the idea that most people do not act in agenty ways! If they did, I think they could increase their happiness. Personally, I don’t find that it applies to me much at all. My happiness has steadily risen throughout my life. I am happier now than ever before. I am now dubbing myself a super-agent. I think the key to happiness is to weed not only the bad stuff out of your life, but the neutral stuff as well. Let me share some examples:
I got a huge scholarship after high school to pursue a career in the medicine field (I never expected to love my career, but that wasn’t the goal; I wanted to fund lots of missionaries). I was good at my science classes, and I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t like them either. I realized this after my first year of college. I acknowledged the sunk cost fallacy, cut my losses, wrote a long, friendly letter to the benefactor to assuage my guilt, and decided to pursue another easy high-income career instead, law, which would allow me to major in anything I wanted. So I sat down for a few hours, considered like 6 different majors, evaluated the advantages and disadvantages, and came up with a tie between Economics and Spanish. I liked Econ for many reasons, but mainly because the subject matter itself was truly fascinating to me; I liked Spanish not so much for the language itself but because the professor was hilarious, fun, casual, and flexible about test/paper deadlines, I could save money by graduating in only 3 years, and I would get the chance to travel abroad. I flipped a coin between the two, and majored in Spanish. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
My last summer after college, I was a cook at a boy scout camp. It was my third summer there. I worked about 80 hours a week, and the first two years I loved it because my co-workers were awesome. We would have giant (dumping 5 gallon igloos on each other in the middle of the kitchen, standing on the roof and dropping regular balloons filled with water on each other, etc) water fights in the kitchen, we would play cribbage in between meals, hang out together, etc. I also had two good friends among the counselors. Anyway, that third year, my friends had left and it was still a pretty good job in a pretty and foresty area, but it wasn’t super fun like it had been. So after the first half of the summer, once I had earned enough to pay the last of my college debt, I found someone to replace me at my job and wrote out pages of really detailed instructions for everything (to assuage my guilt), and quit, to go spend a month “on vacation” at home with my family before leaving for Guatemala. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
I dropped down to work part-time in Guatemala to pursue competitive running more. I left as soon as I got a stress fracture. I chose a family to nanny for based on the family itself, knowing that would affect my day-to-day happiness more than the location (which also turned out to be great).
My belief in God was about to cause not only logical discontent in my mind, but also a suboptimal level of real life contentment that I could not simply turn into an “ugh field” as I almost set off to pursue a career I didn’t love to donate to missionaries. Whatever real-life security benefits it brought me were about to become negligible, so I finally spent a few very long and thoughtful days confronting my doubts and freed myself from that belief.
Every day examples of inertia-breaking happiness-inducing activities: I’m going for a run and run past a lilac bush. It smells really good, so I stop my watch and go stand by it for a while. I’m driving in the car, and there’s a pretty lookout spot, so I actually stop for a while. I do my favorite activities like board games, pickup sports, and nature stuff like hiking and camping every weekend, not just once in a while. I don’t watch TV because there’s always something I’d rather be doing. If I randomly wake up early, I consciously think about whether I would get more satisfaction out of lazing around in bed, or getting up to make a special breakfast for the kids I nanny for.
What’s my point? I have very noticeably different happiness levels based on the actions I take. If I’m just going with the flow, taking life as it comes, I have an average amount of happiness compared to those around me; I occasionally do let myself slip into neutral situations. If I put myself in a super fun and amazing situation, I have way more happiness than those around me (which is a good thing, since happiness is contagious). Sometimes I just look at my life and can’t help but laugh with delight at how wonderful it is. If I ever get a sense that my happiness is starting to neutralize/stabilize, I make a big change and get it back on the right track. For instance, I think that thanks to you, I have just realized that my happiness is not composed of pleasure alone, but also personal fulfillment. I always knew that “personal fulfillment” influenced other people, but I’m either just realizing/admitting this to myself, or my preferences are changing a bit as I get older, but I think it influences me too. So, I’m spending some time reading and thinking and writing, instead of only playing games and reading fiction and cooking and hiking. Result: I am even happier than I knew possible :)
Maybe I don’t fully understand that happiness set point theory, but I don’t think it is true for everyone, just 99% of people or so. I don’t think it is true for me. That said, I will acknowledge that an individual’s range of potential happiness levels is fixed. Some happy-born people, no matter how bad their lives get, will never become as unhappy as naturally unhappy people with seemingly good lives are.
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.
So a possible distinction between virtue ethicists and consequentialists: virtue ethicists pursue their terminal values of happiness and goodness subconsciously, while consequentialists pursue the same terminal values consciously… as a general rule?
I think that’s “true” in practice, but not in theory. An important distinction to make.
And so the consequentialists seem more agenty because they put more thought into their decisions?
Definitely.
What exactly do you mean by it though?
The problem is that I’m not completely sure :/. I think a lot of it falls under the category of being attached to their beliefs though. Here’s an example: I was just at lunch with a fellow programmer. He said that “the more programmers you put on a project the better”, and he meant it as an absolute rule. I pointed out the incredibly obvious point that it depends on the trade off between how much they cost and how much profit they bring in. He didn’t want to believe that he was wrong, and so he didn’t actually give consideration to what I was saying, and he continues to believe that “the more programmers you put on a project the better”.
This is an extreme case, but I think that analogous things happen all the time. The way I think about it, knowledge and aptitude don’t even really come in to play, because close-mindedness limits you so much earlier on than knowledge and aptitude do. “Not stupid” is probably a better term than “smart”. To me, in order to be “not stupid”, you just have to be open-minded enough to give things an honest consideration and not stubbornly stick to what you originally believe no matter what.
In short, I think I’d say that, to me, it’s mostly about just giving an honest effort (which is a lot harder than it sounds).
I hesitated to include the analogy since it was the only part with the potential to offend people (two people accused me of mocking God) and taint their thoughts about the rest of the post,
What are your objectives with this blog? To convince people? Because you like writing?
Edit: idea—maybe your way of having an impact on the world is to just keep living your awesome and happy life and lead by example. Maybe you could blog about it too. Idk. But I think that just seeing examples of people like you is inspiring, and could really have a pretty big impact. It’s inspired me.
I think that’s “true” in practice, but not in theory. An important distinction to make.
Haha, what?? Interesting.
To me, in order to be “not stupid”, you just have to be open-minded enough to give things an honest consideration and not stubbornly stick to what you originally believe no matter what.
Aha, so basically, to you, stupidity involves a lot of flinching away from ideas or evidence that contradict someone’s preconceived notions about the world. And lack of effort at overcoming bias. Yeah, most people are like that, even lots of people with high IQ’s and phd’s. I think you’re defining “stupid” as “irrational thinking + ugh fields” which was what I originally thought you meant until I read your example about past vs. present. Why do you think we’ll be less stupid in the future then? Just optimism, or is this connected to your thoughts on AI?
What are your objectives with this blog? To convince people? Because you like writing?....Maybe your way of having an impact on the world is to just keep living your awesome and happy life and lead by example. Maybe you could blog about it too.
In the case of the only three posts I’ve done, they were just to defend myself, encourage anyone else who was going through similar doubts, and stir up some cognitive dissonance. I do like writing though (not so much writing itself, I have a hard time choosing the right words… but I love sharing ideas) and maybe I will soon blog about how rationality can improve happiness :) :) I actually am just about to write a “Terminal Virtues” post and share my first idea on LW. And then I want to write something with far more practical value, a guide to communicating effectively and getting along well with less rational people :)
But I’ll say quickly that you seem like the most awesome person I’ve ever “met”. And I’m going to have to get some advice from you about being happy
Aw, well thanks! I am enjoying this conversation immensely, partly because I’ve never talked to someone else who was so strategic, analytic, and open-minded before, and knowledgeable, and I really appreciate those qualities. And partly because I feel like even the occasional people who think I’m awesome don’t appreciate me for quite the same reason I’ve always “appreciated” myself, which I always thought was “because I’m pretty good at thinking” which I can now call “rationality” :)
In practice, it seems to me that a lot of virtue ethicists value happiness and goodness a lot. But in theory, there’s nothing about being a virtue ethicist that says anything about what the virtues themselves are.
But I’m realizing that my incredibly literal way of thinking about this may not be that useful and that the things you’re paying attention to may be more useful. But at the same time, being literal and precise is often really important. I think that in this case both we could do both, and as a team we have :)
Yeah, most people are like that, even lots of people with high IQ’s and phd’s.
Exactly. Another possibly good way to put it. People who are smart in the traditional way (high IQ, PhD...) have their smartness limited very much to certain domains. Ie. there might be a brilliant mathematician who has proved incredibly difficult theorems, but just doesn’t have the strength to admit that certain basic things are true. I see a lot of traditionally smart people act very stupidly in certain domains. To me, I judge people at their worst when it comes to “not stupidness”, which is why I have perhaps extreme views. Idk, it makes sense to me. There’s something to be said for the ability to not stoop to a really low level. Maybe that’s a good way to put it—I judge people based on the lowness they’re capable of stooping to. (Man, I’m loosing track of how many important things I’ve come across in talking to you.)
And similarly with morality—I very much judge people by how they act when it’s difficult to be nice. I hate when people meet someone new and conclude that they’re “so nice” just because they acted socially appropriate by making small talk and being polite. Try seeing how that person acts when they’re frustrated and are protected by the anonymity of being in a car. The difference between people at their best and their worst is huge. This clip explains exactly what I mean better than I could. (I love some of the IMO great comedians like Louis CK, Larry David and Seinfeld. I think they make a handful of legitimately insightful points about society, and they articulate and explain things in ways that make so much sense. In an intellectual sense, I understand how difficult it is to communicate things in such an intuitive way. Every little subtlety is important, and you really have to break things down to their essence. So I’m impressed by a lot of comedians in an intellectual sense, and I don’t know many others who think like that.).
And I take pride in never/very rarely stooping to these low levels. I love basketball and play pick up a lot and it’s amazing how horrible people are and how low they stoop. Cheating, bullying, fighting, selfishness, pathetic and embarrassing ego dances etc. I never cheat, ever (and needless to say I would never do any of the other pathetic stuff). And people know this and never argue with me (well, not everyone).
not so much writing itself, I have a hard time choosing the right words… but I love sharing ideas
Oh. I love trying to find the right words. Well, sometimes it could be difficult, but I find it to be a “good difficult”. One of my favorite things to do, and one of the two or three things I think I’m most skilled at, is breaking things down to their essence. And that’s often what I think choosing the right words is about. (Although these comments aren’t exactly works of art :) )
maybe I will soon blog about how rationality can improve happiness
To the extent that your goal here is to influence people, I think it’s worth being strategic about. I could offer some thoughts if you’d like. For example, that blogger site you’re using doesn’t seem to get much audience—a site like https://medium.com/ might allow you to reach more people (and has a much nicer UI).
This is a really small point though, and there are a lot of other things to consider if you want to influence people. http://www.2uo.de/influence/ is a great book on how to influence people. It’s one of the Dark Arts of rationality. If you’re interested, I’d recommend putting it on your reading list. If you’re a little interested, I’d just recommend taking 5-10 minutes to read that post. If you’re not very interested, which something tells me is somewhat likely to be true, just forget it :)
One reason why I like writing is so I could refer people to my writing instead of having to explain it 100 times. Not that I ever mind explaining things, but at the same time it is convenient to just link to an article.
But a lot of people “write for themselves”. Ie. they like to get their ideas down in words or whatever, but they make it available in case people want to read it.
I am enjoying this conversation immensely, partly because I’ve never talked to someone else who was so strategic, analytic, and open-minded before, and knowledgeable, and I really appreciate those qualities.
I try :)
even the occasional people who think I’m awesome
Are you trying to be modest? I can’t imagine anyone not thinking that you’re awesome.
don’t appreciate me for quite the same reason I’ve always “appreciated” myself, which I always thought was “because I’m pretty good at thinking” which I can now call “rationality” :)
Yea, I feel the same way, although it doesn’t bother me. It takes a rational person to appreciate another rational person (“real recognize real”), and I don’t have very high expectations of normal people.
Indeed.
True. In the case of my friend, I don’t think it was, but in cases where it is, then I think that it could be a perfectly sensible approach (depending on the situation).
This was the relevant part of the conversation:
It’s possible that he had legitimately decided earlier to not put that much calculation into these sorts of decisions, because he thinks that this strategy will best lead to his terminal goals of happiness or goodness or whatever. But this situation actually didn’t involve any calculation at all. The calculations were done for him already—he just had to choose between the results.
To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
I should mention that I think that >99% of people are quite quite stupid. Most people don’t seem very agenty to me, given the way I define it. Most people seem to not put much thought behind the overwhelming majority of what they do and think and instead just respond to their immediate feelings and rationalize it afterwards. Most people don’t seem to have the open-mindedness to give consideration to ideas that go against their impulses (this isn’t to say that these impulses are useless), nor the strength to admit hard truths and choose an option in a lose-lose scenario.
Really, I don’t know how to word my thoughts very well on this topic. Eliezer addresses a lot of the mistakes people make in his articles. It’d take some time for me to really write up my thoughts on this. And I know that it makes me sound like a Bad Person for thinking that >99% people are really stupid, but unfortunate truths have to be dealt with. The following isn’t a particularly good argument, but perhaps it’s an intuitive one: consider how we think people 200 years ago were stupid, and people 200 years ago think people 400 years ago were stupid etc. (I don’t think this means that everyone will always be stupid. Ie. I think that not being stupid means something in an absolute sense, not just a relative one).
I’m truly truly sorry that you had experienced this. No one should ever have to feel that. If there’s anything I could do or say to help, please let me know.
I had actually seen the link when I looked back at your first post in the welcome thread at some point. I confess that I just skimmed it briefly and didn’t pick up on the core idea. However, I’ve just read it more carefully.
I love your literary device. The Banana Tree thought experiment and analogy that is (I don’t actually know what I literary device is). And the fact that people believe that—a) God is caring, AND b) God created Hell and set the circumstances up where millions/billions of people will end up there—is… let’s just say inconsistent by any reasonable definition of the words consistent, caring and suffering.
In the same way that you talk about how God is bad for creating Hell, I actually think something similar about life itself. I’m a bit pessimistic. The happiness set point theory says that we have happiness set points and that we may temporarily deviate above or below them, but that we end up hovering back to our set points.
Furthermore, this set point seems to be quite neutral and quite consistent amongst humans. What I mean by neutral is that minute-to-minute, most people seem to be in a “chill” state of mind, not really happy or sad. And we don’t spend too much time deviating from that. And there’s also the reality that we’re all destined to die. Why does life have to be mediocre? Why can’t it be great? Why do we all have to get sick and die? I don’t know how or if reality was “created”, but to anthropomorphize, why did the creator make it like this? From the perspective of pre-origin-of-reality (if that’s even a thing), I feel the same feelings about neutralness that you expressed about the badness of Hell (but obviously Hell is far worse than neutralness). From a pre-origin perspective, reality could just as easily have been amazing and wonderful, so the fact that it’s neutral and fleeting seems… disappointing?
If it got you through believing in hell, I will most certainly read it.
So a possible distinction between virtue ethicists and consequentialists: virtue ethicists pursue their terminal values of happiness and goodness subconsciously, while consequentialists pursue the same terminal values consciously… as a general rule? And so the consequentialists seem more agenty because they put more thought into their decisions?
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get across, and it’s why I titled the post “Do You Feel Selfish for Liking What You Believe”! I hesitated to include the analogy since it was the only part with the potential to offend people (two people accused me of mocking God) and taint their thoughts about the rest of the post, but in the end I left it, partly as a hopefully thought-provoking interlude between the more theological sections and mostly so I could give my page a more fun title than Deconversion Story Blog #59845374987.
The happiness set point theory makes sense! Actually, it makes a lot of sense, and I think it’s connected to the idea that most people do not act in agenty ways! If they did, I think they could increase their happiness. Personally, I don’t find that it applies to me much at all. My happiness has steadily risen throughout my life. I am happier now than ever before. I am now dubbing myself a super-agent. I think the key to happiness is to weed not only the bad stuff out of your life, but the neutral stuff as well. Let me share some examples:
I got a huge scholarship after high school to pursue a career in the medicine field (I never expected to love my career, but that wasn’t the goal; I wanted to fund lots of missionaries). I was good at my science classes, and I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t like them either. I realized this after my first year of college. I acknowledged the sunk cost fallacy, cut my losses, wrote a long, friendly letter to the benefactor to assuage my guilt, and decided to pursue another easy high-income career instead, law, which would allow me to major in anything I wanted. So I sat down for a few hours, considered like 6 different majors, evaluated the advantages and disadvantages, and came up with a tie between Economics and Spanish. I liked Econ for many reasons, but mainly because the subject matter itself was truly fascinating to me; I liked Spanish not so much for the language itself but because the professor was hilarious, fun, casual, and flexible about test/paper deadlines, I could save money by graduating in only 3 years, and I would get the chance to travel abroad. I flipped a coin between the two, and majored in Spanish. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
My last summer after college, I was a cook at a boy scout camp. It was my third summer there. I worked about 80 hours a week, and the first two years I loved it because my co-workers were awesome. We would have giant (dumping 5 gallon igloos on each other in the middle of the kitchen, standing on the roof and dropping regular balloons filled with water on each other, etc) water fights in the kitchen, we would play cribbage in between meals, hang out together, etc. I also had two good friends among the counselors. Anyway, that third year, my friends had left and it was still a pretty good job in a pretty and foresty area, but it wasn’t super fun like it had been. So after the first half of the summer, once I had earned enough to pay the last of my college debt, I found someone to replace me at my job and wrote out pages of really detailed instructions for everything (to assuage my guilt), and quit, to go spend a month “on vacation” at home with my family before leaving for Guatemala. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
I dropped down to work part-time in Guatemala to pursue competitive running more. I left as soon as I got a stress fracture. I chose a family to nanny for based on the family itself, knowing that would affect my day-to-day happiness more than the location (which also turned out to be great).
My belief in God was about to cause not only logical discontent in my mind, but also a suboptimal level of real life contentment that I could not simply turn into an “ugh field” as I almost set off to pursue a career I didn’t love to donate to missionaries. Whatever real-life security benefits it brought me were about to become negligible, so I finally spent a few very long and thoughtful days confronting my doubts and freed myself from that belief.
Every day examples of inertia-breaking happiness-inducing activities: I’m going for a run and run past a lilac bush. It smells really good, so I stop my watch and go stand by it for a while. I’m driving in the car, and there’s a pretty lookout spot, so I actually stop for a while. I do my favorite activities like board games, pickup sports, and nature stuff like hiking and camping every weekend, not just once in a while. I don’t watch TV because there’s always something I’d rather be doing. If I randomly wake up early, I consciously think about whether I would get more satisfaction out of lazing around in bed, or getting up to make a special breakfast for the kids I nanny for.
What’s my point? I have very noticeably different happiness levels based on the actions I take. If I’m just going with the flow, taking life as it comes, I have an average amount of happiness compared to those around me; I occasionally do let myself slip into neutral situations. If I put myself in a super fun and amazing situation, I have way more happiness than those around me (which is a good thing, since happiness is contagious). Sometimes I just look at my life and can’t help but laugh with delight at how wonderful it is. If I ever get a sense that my happiness is starting to neutralize/stabilize, I make a big change and get it back on the right track. For instance, I think that thanks to you, I have just realized that my happiness is not composed of pleasure alone, but also personal fulfillment. I always knew that “personal fulfillment” influenced other people, but I’m either just realizing/admitting this to myself, or my preferences are changing a bit as I get older, but I think it influences me too. So, I’m spending some time reading and thinking and writing, instead of only playing games and reading fiction and cooking and hiking. Result: I am even happier than I knew possible :)
Maybe I don’t fully understand that happiness set point theory, but I don’t think it is true for everyone, just 99% of people or so. I don’t think it is true for me. That said, I will acknowledge that an individual’s range of potential happiness levels is fixed. Some happy-born people, no matter how bad their lives get, will never become as unhappy as naturally unhappy people with seemingly good lives are.
tl;dr Being an agent is awesome!
[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.
I think that’s “true” in practice, but not in theory. An important distinction to make.
Definitely.
The problem is that I’m not completely sure :/. I think a lot of it falls under the category of being attached to their beliefs though. Here’s an example: I was just at lunch with a fellow programmer. He said that “the more programmers you put on a project the better”, and he meant it as an absolute rule. I pointed out the incredibly obvious point that it depends on the trade off between how much they cost and how much profit they bring in. He didn’t want to believe that he was wrong, and so he didn’t actually give consideration to what I was saying, and he continues to believe that “the more programmers you put on a project the better”.
This is an extreme case, but I think that analogous things happen all the time. The way I think about it, knowledge and aptitude don’t even really come in to play, because close-mindedness limits you so much earlier on than knowledge and aptitude do. “Not stupid” is probably a better term than “smart”. To me, in order to be “not stupid”, you just have to be open-minded enough to give things an honest consideration and not stubbornly stick to what you originally believe no matter what.
In short, I think I’d say that, to me, it’s mostly about just giving an honest effort (which is a lot harder than it sounds).
What are your objectives with this blog? To convince people? Because you like writing?
Edit: idea—maybe your way of having an impact on the world is to just keep living your awesome and happy life and lead by example. Maybe you could blog about it too. Idk. But I think that just seeing examples of people like you is inspiring, and could really have a pretty big impact. It’s inspired me.
Haha, what?? Interesting.
Aha, so basically, to you, stupidity involves a lot of flinching away from ideas or evidence that contradict someone’s preconceived notions about the world. And lack of effort at overcoming bias. Yeah, most people are like that, even lots of people with high IQ’s and phd’s. I think you’re defining “stupid” as “irrational thinking + ugh fields” which was what I originally thought you meant until I read your example about past vs. present. Why do you think we’ll be less stupid in the future then? Just optimism, or is this connected to your thoughts on AI?
In the case of the only three posts I’ve done, they were just to defend myself, encourage anyone else who was going through similar doubts, and stir up some cognitive dissonance. I do like writing though (not so much writing itself, I have a hard time choosing the right words… but I love sharing ideas) and maybe I will soon blog about how rationality can improve happiness :) :) I actually am just about to write a “Terminal Virtues” post and share my first idea on LW. And then I want to write something with far more practical value, a guide to communicating effectively and getting along well with less rational people :)
Aw, well thanks! I am enjoying this conversation immensely, partly because I’ve never talked to someone else who was so strategic, analytic, and open-minded before, and knowledgeable, and I really appreciate those qualities. And partly because I feel like even the occasional people who think I’m awesome don’t appreciate me for quite the same reason I’ve always “appreciated” myself, which I always thought was “because I’m pretty good at thinking” which I can now call “rationality” :)
In practice, it seems to me that a lot of virtue ethicists value happiness and goodness a lot. But in theory, there’s nothing about being a virtue ethicist that says anything about what the virtues themselves are.
But I’m realizing that my incredibly literal way of thinking about this may not be that useful and that the things you’re paying attention to may be more useful. But at the same time, being literal and precise is often really important. I think that in this case both we could do both, and as a team we have :)
Exactly. Another possibly good way to put it. People who are smart in the traditional way (high IQ, PhD...) have their smartness limited very much to certain domains. Ie. there might be a brilliant mathematician who has proved incredibly difficult theorems, but just doesn’t have the strength to admit that certain basic things are true. I see a lot of traditionally smart people act very stupidly in certain domains. To me, I judge people at their worst when it comes to “not stupidness”, which is why I have perhaps extreme views. Idk, it makes sense to me. There’s something to be said for the ability to not stoop to a really low level. Maybe that’s a good way to put it—I judge people based on the lowness they’re capable of stooping to. (Man, I’m loosing track of how many important things I’ve come across in talking to you.)
And similarly with morality—I very much judge people by how they act when it’s difficult to be nice. I hate when people meet someone new and conclude that they’re “so nice” just because they acted socially appropriate by making small talk and being polite. Try seeing how that person acts when they’re frustrated and are protected by the anonymity of being in a car. The difference between people at their best and their worst is huge. This clip explains exactly what I mean better than I could. (I love some of the IMO great comedians like Louis CK, Larry David and Seinfeld. I think they make a handful of legitimately insightful points about society, and they articulate and explain things in ways that make so much sense. In an intellectual sense, I understand how difficult it is to communicate things in such an intuitive way. Every little subtlety is important, and you really have to break things down to their essence. So I’m impressed by a lot of comedians in an intellectual sense, and I don’t know many others who think like that.).
And I take pride in never/very rarely stooping to these low levels. I love basketball and play pick up a lot and it’s amazing how horrible people are and how low they stoop. Cheating, bullying, fighting, selfishness, pathetic and embarrassing ego dances etc. I never cheat, ever (and needless to say I would never do any of the other pathetic stuff). And people know this and never argue with me (well, not everyone).
Oh. I love trying to find the right words. Well, sometimes it could be difficult, but I find it to be a “good difficult”. One of my favorite things to do, and one of the two or three things I think I’m most skilled at, is breaking things down to their essence. And that’s often what I think choosing the right words is about. (Although these comments aren’t exactly works of art :) )
To the extent that your goal here is to influence people, I think it’s worth being strategic about. I could offer some thoughts if you’d like. For example, that blogger site you’re using doesn’t seem to get much audience—a site like https://medium.com/ might allow you to reach more people (and has a much nicer UI).
This is a really small point though, and there are a lot of other things to consider if you want to influence people. http://www.2uo.de/influence/ is a great book on how to influence people. It’s one of the Dark Arts of rationality. If you’re interested, I’d recommend putting it on your reading list. If you’re a little interested, I’d just recommend taking 5-10 minutes to read that post. If you’re not very interested, which something tells me is somewhat likely to be true, just forget it :)
One reason why I like writing is so I could refer people to my writing instead of having to explain it 100 times. Not that I ever mind explaining things, but at the same time it is convenient to just link to an article.
But a lot of people “write for themselves”. Ie. they like to get their ideas down in words or whatever, but they make it available in case people want to read it.
I try :)
Are you trying to be modest? I can’t imagine anyone not thinking that you’re awesome.
Yea, I feel the same way, although it doesn’t bother me. It takes a rational person to appreciate another rational person (“real recognize real”), and I don’t have very high expectations of normal people.