= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Psychohistorian comments on Choose To Be Happy - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (25)
This post's basic claims:
If you 'should' feel bad about bad things (e.g. suffering), you 'should' feel bad about them in proportion to their magnitude.
Doing 1 is not a good idea, because a. it's intrinsically bad to feel bad, and b. feeling bad does not help you to fight bad things.
Therefore you should try not to feel bad about bad things, only to alleviate them.
All of which boils down to the proposition "It is instrumentally irrational to feel bad about bad things."
The problem is that 2.b. is blatantly false. Human beings are not capable of completely disconnecting action from emotion. Certainly, if you feel bad enough then due to the way the human brain works it's possible that you will (instrumentally irrationally) lapse into depression, and therefore do less to achieve your goals than if you never felt bad at all. And there are obviously cases in which what you feel emotionally can be overridden by calculation (e.g. trolley problem for many utilitarians). But given that no one performs explicit calculations to determine even most of their actions in more than a few small parts of their life, emotions determine most of our decisions. Do you really believe that someone who felt happy despite knowing about the state of suffering in the world would be more strongly motivated to reduce suffering than someone who felt a great sadness and a burning desire to stop it every time they thought about it? Do you think being happily mortal is the best emotional state for someone crusading to stop death?
If your actual goal is to end suffering -- if your moral system dictates, as most of ours do, that reducing suffering is currently by far the best thing you could do, and you actually want, unlike most of us, to follow your morals to their conclusions -- then you will do your absolute best to make your emotions about suffering dwarf all other emotions, because that is what will make you spend a life reducing suffering, and not any amount of abstract calculation.
On the other hand, if your real goal is to be as happy as you can, this post is great advice. But so is wireheading.
This seems to miss the point rather dramatically. Assume that there is suffering in the world that we can measure at -$200 trillion. We'll just assume that's the cost of alleviating that suffering. Pretty much no matter who you are, you can't alleviate more than a few million dollars of that suffering. Even if you're a complete outlier, like Bill Gates, you might be able to reduce world suffering by .1%.
If you feel bad in proportion to the amount of suffering in the world, given the inability of human feeling to make extremely nuanced distinctions (e.g. how much worse would it actually feel to lose $283.27 versus $283.07?), if you attempt to feel suffering in proportion to the amount that exists in the world, there actually isn't much of a point in combating suffering. It'd feel rather like dedicating your whole life to dropping a tablespoon of water into a swimming pool.
Strong emotions are also often conducive to irrational behaviour (and things such as depression).
Also, everyone has a utility function that is heavily self-centered. Exceptions may exist, but it is an extreme minority of people who sincerely act as if they do not count for substantially more than other individuals in their utility function. I'd argue this is a good thing, but that aside, it is reality. Given that, not feeling miserable throughout life is a rather important end. This is even more true if you cannot demonstrate a clear connection between feeling miserable about the world in general and striving to make the world a better place. I have to admit I do not know many people I would describe as successful activists for any cause who are also genuinely unhappy in life. General unhappiness seems to be a major inhibitor of success in any of one's pursuits.
See note on ambiguity at the end of my second post.
This is great -- if you can, this insight should be turned into another top-level post.