Rationalist11235

• Rationalist11235 16 May 2026 14:56 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: It’s nice of you to worry about me, but I re­ally do have a life

  I think that most people are really bad at managing their mental health and identifying what makes then feel good/​bad.

  Work, which is not a choice, provides the necessary challenge for many people. But they don’t want to go to work. And when they don’t, nothing is a challenge, the don’t know how to challenge themselves enough to be happy.

  In a UBI scenario we just have to teach people, maybe even in school, how to manage your mental health without externally forced challenges. That’s it.

  And people who already know how to do that (like you) at just fine.

• Rationalist11235 14 May 2026 13:35 UTC

  4 points

  1

  on: What I did in the he­do­nium shock­wave, by Emma, age six and a half

  This story shines a light on a particular stage in the transition from the regular human existance to the pure bliss after.

  This stage is obviously unoptimized, since it causes humans to activate their survival instincts, which don’t approve such a transition.

  But, this doesn’t mean the pure bliss isn’t better, because humans only want to stay human because of the specific instincts in the brain that make us want to stay as we are, and also want to want that.

  And this particular state of existance is very random, our wishes are specific, and our desires are shaped by our specific evolution, but they are not inherently better than any other general values (e.g. maximizing the amount of paperclips).

  So this doesn’t show that hedonium is inherently bad, it shows that there is a particular stage in the transition that will not feel good to the common human.

  Do you get what I mean?

  Stop wanting to want things, and then you’ll see that the quickest way to solve our problems is to not want to solve them.

  (I’m not sure I really think that way, but I am yet to find a good opposing argument, please help)

Prevent­ing the apoc­a­lypse with power dis­tri­bu­tion theory

• Rationalist11235 24 Dec 2024 11:13 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: When Is In­surance Worth It?

  The problem with your explanation lies in the way companies calculate the cost of insurance. They do not base it solely on the nominal value of potential losses; instead, they account for the real value. For instance, if there’s a potential loss of $1,000, insurance companies calculate the cost by considering its real value, including factors like the money they’ll collect and invest over time, leveraging the compounding effect. As a result, compounding does not make insurance profitable for the insured in the long run.

  When evaluating insurance, the key factor to consider is the expected value of your money. No matter how you calculate it, the expected value of your money when you use insurance will always be lower than if you didn’t use it. This is because insurance is inherently a financial product designed to profit the company offering it.

  However, insurance remains logical for most people because the potential impact of losing all their money—or falling into significant debt—goes far beyond the nominal value of the loss. This is due to the fact that money’s value isn’t constant; its impact on a person’s life depends on their financial situation. For someone with limited resources, losing $100 has a much greater effect on their quality of life than it would for a wealthy individual.

  This disparity is why it often makes sense for an average person to insure against significant damages, even if insurance is, technically speaking, a financial loss in the long term. For individuals with smaller financial reserves, the potential damage from a significant loss outweighs the cost of insurance. Meanwhile, the insurance company is able to absorb and spread that risk across a large pool of clients, which minimizes the impact of any individual claim.