Well, I intended for my above comment to have a conciliatory flavour, but apparently that didn't quite come across...
If someone believes in God because he likes believing in God more than he likes being an atheist would anyone on LW object to calling that person irrational?
That's not comparable because the truth-value of "God exists" is a function of reality, whereas the truth-value of "archery is a good hobby" is a function of reality and a utility function.
The issue involves so much mind-killing that I'm not allowed to judge things as right or wrong?
You're not allowed to judge other people's terminal preferences as rational or irrational because that's a category mistake. You're kind of not allowed to vocally judge them as right or wrong because it's impolite and pointless.
The issue involves so much mind-killing that I'm not allowed to judge things as right or wrong?
This, incidentally, is also impolite. I said no such thing.
If you can't provide a utility analysis for why you do the activities that you do then I do think that qualifies as irrational by LW standards. We all know that people are frequently irrational in their day to day decisions. If you don't have a utility analysis that backs up your decision, why should I assume that it's a rational decision?
Salsa: Not taking this up may be a perfectly rational case of risk aversion. One might basically be avoiding psychological bankruptcy, depending on how detrimental the fact of the first few months of infelicitous and awkward interaction would be on one's mind.
Archery: Well, maybe some people just find it very fun, are not good at retraining themselves at finding new things fun (you even admitted that you are probably special in that regard), and telling them to first learn to find arbitrary things fun is kind of besides the point when the discussion is about what are reasonable hobbies.
You're also not taking into account the possibility of temporal discounting. Why should it be impossible for a person to have simply too high a discounting rate, which need not be irrational, in order for this whole suffering and personality-changing to be happier in the far future to be worth it? (In particular, someone might value health benefits much less than you do. This alone means that while you can make a conditional argument that if you value health benefits a lot, there are much better options than archery, you're not entitled to assert that taking up archery is irrational because you're missing out on all those health benefits from other activities.)
And then one's value structure doesn't have to be such that changing one's emotional reactions to various things makes sense. This is clearest in aesthetic preferences: if I have a preference for beautiful things, that means that I want the things around me to be such that I would, by my present standards, consider them beautiful. It does not mean that I want my perception of beauty to be altered in such a way that I find the things which are, in fact, around me beautiful. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to be in the analogous situation with respect to happiness.
And what's that thing about MtG? I never mentioned that...
That's not comparable because the truth-value of "God exists" is a function of reality, whereas the truth-value of "archery is a good hobby" is a function of reality and a utility function.
Believing that God exist is an activity and activities do have utility functions. It also has a lot to do with priors and it makes sense to choose your priors based on a heuristic that you evaluate with an utility function.
...Why should it be impossible for a person to have simply too high a discounting rate, which need not be irrational, in order f
On ChrisHallquist's post extolling the virtues of money, the top comment is Eliezer pointing out the lack of concrete examples. Can anyone think of any? This is not just hypothetical: if I think your suggestion is good, I will try it (and report back on how it went)
I care about health, improving personal skills (particularly: programming, writing, people skills), gaining respect (particularly at work), and entertainment (these days: primarily books and computer games). If you think I should care about something else, feel free to suggest it.
I am early-twenties programmer living in San Francisco. In the interest of getting advice useful to more than one person, I'll omit further personal details.
Budget: $50/day
If your idea requires significant ongoing time commitment, that is a major negative.