Omegaile comments on How to Be Happy - Less Wrong

129 Post author: lukeprog 17 March 2011 07:22AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (201)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: AlephNeil 17 March 2011 09:35:39AM *  7 points [-]

This is a great post. I don't mean to hijack it, but it's amusing to me to match up the happiness advice with my own life. So skipping over 1 and 2 on the list:

  1. -
  2. -
  3. I'm extremely introverted, cannot read body language or facial expressions very well. For instance, I scored 22 in this.
  4. I'm very low in self-esteem.
  5. I have a tendency to be "disagreeable", as I'm sure several people on this website would agree.
  6. It's not far wrong to say that I procrastinate away 100% of my waking hours.
  7. Well OK, I do feel gratitude to the people who are funding my current existence. But perhaps 'gratitude to' is the wrong phrase. More like 'guilt at wasting the resources of'.
  8. I have no sense of purpose whatsoever. (I certainly don't believe in the Lesswrong ideology! For instance, I'm not a utilitarian, I don't think "explicit utility functions and priors" are at all the right way to think about building an AI, I disagree with the fundamental premise that there isn't anything stupid (as opposed to unfriendly) about optimizing paperclips. I don't think cryonics is worthwhile. I don't think UFAI is necessarily a dangerous existential threat - I flatly don't buy the "it can escape any box" arguments. I think 'peak oil' and even global warming are much more important threats for the foreseeable future. I don't think doing mathematics is the right way to begin thinking about friendliness, although this mathematics is interesting in its own right, which is really the main reason why I'm here.)
  9. I'm unemployed and not looking, without even a half-serious plan about 'what to do next'. (I'm not claiming benefits either. That takes even more effort than working!)
  10. Of course I don't have a romantic partner.
  11. I stay indoors 24/7.
  12. I rarely 'challenge myself' with any kind of non-trivial task.
  13. I'm never 'mindful' in that sense, except 'mindful' of how I'm wasting my life.
  14. Aha! Well at least I'm avoiding consumerism since I never actually buy anything.

Funnily enough, I don't feel unhappy, or at least I don't feel as though I feel unhappy. I do think killing myself would 'objectively make things better' though.

Comment author: Omegaile 25 July 2012 07:15:51PM 3 points [-]

Just out of curiosity, how are you now, a little more than a year later? Taking out "3", that seems harder to change, how much of these points still apply in your life?