pjeby comments on The Apologist and the Revolutionary - Less Wrong

159 Post author: Yvain 11 March 2009 09:39PM

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Comment author: pjeby 12 March 2009 06:14:21AM 7 points [-]

What's also interesting about that idea, is that it might also be that chronically unhappy rationalists are contemplating the idea that rationality leads to unhappiness, while failing to accept it as a fact.

I mean, most of the people who go around saying that intelligence isn't correlated with happiness, are NOT saying this to mean, "therefore I will stop being so damn intelligent." (Certainly I wasn't, when I thought that.)

What they're really doing -- or at least what I was doing -- is using their unhappiness to prove their intelligence. That is, "look, I have a useful quality that should be acknowledged, and by the way, I'm making a big sacrifice for all of you by giving up my own happiness in search of the Truth -- you can thank me later". The supposed lamentation is really just a disguised bid for status and approval.

However, if they were to emotionally accept that their theories are not working (as I eventually did, after enough pain) then they'd start being unhappy a bit less often.

Another interesting hypothesis to test, even if it's not as much fun as squirting cold water in somebody's ear. ;-)