xamdam comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: komponisto 07 June 2010 08:37AM

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Comment author: billswift 07 June 2010 11:17:33AM *  6 points [-]

Regrets and Motivation

Almost invariably everything is larger in your imagination than in real life, both good and bad, the consequences of mistakes loom worse, and the pleasure of gains looks better. Reality is humdrum compared to our imaginations. It is our imagined futures that get us off our butts to actually accomplish something.

And the fact that what we do accomplish is done in the humdrum, real world, means it can never measure up to our imagined accomplishments, hence regrets. Because we imagine that if we had done something else it could have measured up. The worst part of having regrets is the impact it has on our motivation.

somewhat expanded version of comment on OB a couple of months ago

Added: I didn't make the connection at first, but this is also Eliezer's point in this quote from The Super Happy People story, "It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison."

Comment author: xamdam 07 June 2010 04:35:27PM *  3 points [-]

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he mentioned a psychological study (I am trying to track down the source) that people tend to suffer MORE from failing to pursue certain opportunities than FAILING after pursuing them. So even if you're right about the overestimation of pleasure, it might just be irrelevant.

Comment author: Unnamed 08 June 2010 03:09:34AM *  4 points [-]

Here is a review of that psychological research (pdf), and there are more studies linked here (the keyword to look for is "regret"). The paper I linked is:

Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102, 379-395.

This article reviews evidence indicating that there is a temporal pattern to the experience of regret. Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run. The authors contend that this temporal pattern is multiply determined, and present a framework to organize the divergent causal mechanisms that are responsible for it. In particular, this article documents the importance of psychological processes that (a) decrease the pain of regrettable action over time, (b) bolster the pain of regrettable inaction over time, and (c) differentially affect the cognitive availability of these two types of regrets. Both the functional and cultural origins of how people think about regret are discussed.

Comment author: billswift 08 June 2010 02:39:48AM *  2 points [-]

I haven't seen a study, but that is a common belief. A good quote to that effect,

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. - - Sydney Harris

And I vaguely remember seeing another similar quote from Churchill.

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