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SuspiciousTitForTat comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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Society, by survival, in the survival of the fittest sense, stimulates people to be of service, be interesting, useful, effective, and even altruistic.
I suspect, and would like to know your opinion, that we are, for that social and traditional reason biased against a life of personal hedonic exploration, even if for some particular kinds of minds, that means, literally, reading internet comics, downloading movies and multiplayer games for free, exercising near your home, having a minimal amount of friends and relationships, masturbating frequently, and eating unhealthy for as long as the cash lasts.
So two questions, do you think we are biased against these things, and do you think doing this is a problem?
What do you mean by biased? Is there a difference between being biased towards something and desiring to do it?
For example, a bias could be if your prediction of how much you will enjoy X is systematically smaller than how much you actually do enjoy X when you are doing it.
So what you're asking is if people are good at maximizing their own happiness?
We are not. Our happiness is set up to make sure we maximize inclusive genetic fitness. Rather than fixing a bias, evolution can simply account for it. For example, the joy of sex does not compare with the discomfort of pregnancy, but due to time discounting, it's enough to make women want to have sex.
As for what would maximize happiness, I'm not an expert. You'd need to ask a psychologist. I'm given to understand that doing things that at first appear to make you happy will tend to reset your hedonic setpoint and have little effect. The obvious conclusion from that is that no matter what you do, your happiness will be the same, but I'm pretty sure that's not right either. People can change how generally happy they are.
I am in favor of happiness, so all else being equal, I'd prefer it if people were more successful at making themselves happy.
what do you mean by 'personal hedonic exploration'? The things you list don't sound very exploratory...