NancyLebovitz comments on "Epiphany addiction" - Less Wrong

52 Post author: cousin_it 03 August 2012 05:52PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 August 2012 07:21:03PM 7 points [-]

I independently invented a similar concept, "epiphany junkies", but didn't get around to posting it yet. A couple of points that would've been in that post:

  • Achieving an amazing insight about your past suffering (especially other people hurting you somehow), is probably not worth much. The past is past, and unreachable; five seconds ago is as far away as forever. You shouldn't even have been chewing that cud in the first place.
  • You probably need a lot of small, nondramatic life optimizations more than you need any particular big huge insight. Besides the addictive quality, a problem with being an epiphany junkie is that it trains you to think that progress comes in the form of dramatic, self-justifying insights about your mother, instead of realizing that you need to stop thinking about all the things wrong with an email after you send it.
Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 August 2012 05:24:07PM 3 points [-]

True, but not always. Sometimes people need to realize that the suffering that other people have caused them isn't the only way life with people can be.