Clarity comments on Rationality Quotes Thread February 2016 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: elharo 02 February 2016 06:17PM

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Comment author: Glen 08 February 2016 08:31:38PM 5 points [-]

That's not even true, though. If you are kidnapped and then tortured, you are not remotely in control of your own happiness, just to take the most obvious extreme answer. Even for more mundane situations, people can be trapped in terrible situations, where cruel people have power over them. If you are working at a minimum wage job with bills coming seemingly every day and which you only overcome by working 18 hour days before collapsing exhausted and doing it all again in the morning, there is very little you can do about it. Now if one of the supervisors at one of your jobs is a petty tyrant who makes you miserable, what choice do you have that would increase your happiness?

I see what the quote is trying to say, as a call to action to change your own life, but it simply isn't true. It also fails the false wisdom reversal test, in that a quote saying "You have no true control over your own happiness; therefore, you must accept your lot in life with all the grace you can muster" sounds just as deep and helpful.

Comment author: Clarity 09 February 2016 09:44:06AM *  0 points [-]

That's not even true, though.

It's not true, epistemically, but is true instrumentally.

I explicitly wrote it was an instrumental rationality quote, not epistemically rational because of the kind of literalism you've so gratuitously supplied :)

Comment author: bbleeker 10 February 2016 09:12:15AM *  4 points [-]

I don't think it's true, period. It's true that "No one is in control of your happiness but you", but it does not follow that "therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change". And for it to be true instrumentally, it should give us a tip about how to control your happiness.

Comment author: Clarity 13 February 2016 04:56:37AM 0 points [-]

The tip is implicit.

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleep_of_Reason_Produces_Monsters

That one makes the same or similar claim, but explicitly. Do you get it now?

Comment author: bbleeker 13 February 2016 09:31:07AM 1 point [-]

Yeah, that one is better. :-)