Aleksander comments on Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 19 January 2015 12:04AM

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Comment author: Darklight 19 January 2015 04:10:06PM 2 points [-]

I have a slate of questions that I often ask people to try and better understand them. Recently I realized that one of these questions may not be as open-ended as I'd thought, in the sense that it may actually have a proper answer according to Bayesian rationality. Though, I remain uncertain about this. The question is actually quite simple and so I offer it to the Less Wrong community to see what kind of answers people can come up with, as well as what the majority of Less Wrongers think. If you'd rather you can private message me your answer.

The question is:

Truth or Happiness? If you had to choose between one or the other, which would you pick?

Comment author: Aleksander 22 January 2015 05:13:16AM 0 points [-]

Hey it's a good question. I'd pick Happiness.

When I was much younger I might have said Truth. I was a student of physics once and loved to repeat the quote that the end of man is knowledge. But since then I have been happy, and I have been unhappy, and the difference between the two is just too large.