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Decius comments on Parenting and Happiness - Less Wrong Discussion
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What do you want more than you want to be happy? I can understand "I think that a frontal lobotomy would end 'me', and I don't care about the creature that will occupy my body after I die in such a manner.", but that's different in a very key way from what you said.
Even if it was still "me" (say if you dropped the lobotomy part, but could still convince me that such a life would make me happier), I still wouldn't want it not approve of it.
See Not for the Sake of Happiness (Alone).
Maybe we should taboo “happiness” without adjectives and always precede it by “hedonic” or “eudaimonic”, because I think people usually start to talk at cross purposes during discussions like this one.
Semi-rhetorical questions:
Do you think that you have significant input into what it is that makes you happy?
Do you think that you can intentionally change what brain hormones are released in response to certain stimuli?
Do you think that you have free will?
Do you think that you can decide what your brain's reactions (micro and macro) to specific stimuli are?
My answer to all four questions is yes, even though I think the rational belief is no. I decide that I will adjust my happiness and my values such that I am made happiest by following my values- and one of the things which I value is the well-being of others. I sidestep all of the difficulty in calculating the well-being of others by simply noticing how I feel about it, and working outward from there.
Depends of your threshold for "significant"; no; yes; no.
Shouldn't that be a warning sign? "I believe X, but it's rational to believe not-X" usually means you don't really believe X, but are merely professing it, or you believe you believe it, etc.
I believe that I am not rational, and that it is rational to be rational. One of those is an observation about reality, and one of those is a logical conclusion.
All four questions are intended to be different statements of the same state-of-universe. Having different answers for them is not supposed to be possible.
I can't speak for Emile, but... are you suggesting that there's nothing you would choose over your own happiness?