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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes Thread February 2016 - Less Wrong
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Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute; Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
Omar Khayyam http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html Verse LIV
Translation: it's better to be drunk.
Not sure this qualifies as a rationality quote.
Orthodox Islamic apologists rescue Khayyam by interpreting "wine" as spiritual intoxication. (How well this really fits is another matter. And the Song of Solomon is about Christ's love for His Church.) But one can as easily interpret the verse in a rationalist way. Channelling Fitzgerald for a moment...
The sot knows nothing but the tavern's wine
Rumi and Shams but ecstacy divine
The Way of Eli is not here nor there
But in the pursuit of a Fun sublime!
Great literature has as many versions as there are readers.
That's true of most everything if you squint in just the right way :-)
In any case, great literature relies on context and a multilayered web of meanings -- it doesn't work well as an isolated quote stuck into the middle of PUA discussions...
I think paraphrasings of "do what makes you happy" are fair as rationality quotes. What else are you gonna do?
Focus on doing meaningful work.
Even if "do what makes you happy" were the best rationality advice, the big problem is figuring out what actually makes you happy, how to achieve it, and how to maintain/improve it. Getting drunk is pretty bad advice for a rationality standpoint, because it's sacrificing long term gain for short term pleasure, which is basically the opposite of what you should do. The man drinking at a bar all day is happier right now than the one working extra hours or studying, but in a few years, their happiness will probably be reversed as the latter's investment pays off and the former is still just drinking (only with more health problems).
Investment dude is just working so he can buy booze, yeah? If booze in this metaphor is pleasure anyway. He's saved up a bunch of stuff, but its not like he gets bonus points when he croaks for how much is in his bank account. Ultimately, the most efficient life only does as much of what you have to as necessary to do what you want to, yeah? Anything beyond that is a fail.
"its not like he gets bonus points when he croaks for how much is in his bank account." is a valuable quote in its own right
First, I'm not sure that straight all-out short-term hedonism qualifies as rationality.
Second, we're talking about alcohol and there are... many side-effects to "making you happy" :-/
I feel like there should be some constraint on harming group happiness while you "do what makes you happy."
It seems like "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. If you had to turn that word into a sentence or two to let me understand what you mean, what would it be?
I would say that actions that make a particular person happy can have consequences that decrease the collective happiness of some group. I might use a tyrant or an addict as examples. In answering the question "What else are you gonna do?" I'd propose at least "As long as you harm no group happiness, do what makes you happy," the Wiccan Rede "An' ye harm none, do what thou wilt" probably being too strict (rules out being Batman, for example).