but I don't think this is a case of someone making a conscious decision to pursue their terminal goals.
Few people make that many conscious decisions! But it could be a subconscious decision that still fulfills the goal. For my little sister, this kind of thing actually is a conscious decision. Last Christmas break when I first realized that unlike almost all of my close friends and family in Wisconsin, I didn't like our governor all that much, she eventually cut me off, saying, "Dad and I aren't like you, Ellen. We don't like thinking about difficult issues." Honesty, self-awareness, and consciously-selected ugh fields run in the family, I guess.
I was raised Jewish, but people around me were about as not religious as it gets.
That's funny. I just met someone like you, probably also a Reform Jew, who told me some jokes and about all these Jewish stereotypes that I had never even heard of, and they seem to fit pretty well.
Hey, um... I have a question. I'm not sure if you're comfortable talking about it though. Please feel free to not answer.
It sounds really stressful believing that stuff. Like it seems that even people with the strongest faith spend some time deviating from those instructions and do things like have fun or pursue their personal interests. And then you'd feel guilty about that. Come to think of it, it sounds similar to my guilt for ever spending time not pursuing ambitions.
It's exactly like that, just multiplied times infinity (adjusted for scope insensitivity) because hell is eternal.
And what about believing in Hell? From what I understand, Christians believe that there's a very non-negligible chance that you end up in Hell, suffering unimaginably for eternity. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that if I believed that, I would be in a mental hospital crying hysterically and trying my absolute hardest to be a good person and avoid ending up in Hell.
Yeah, hell is basically what led me away from Christianity. If you're really curious, how convenient, I wrote about it here to explain myself to my Christian friends. You'll probably find it interesting. You can see how recent this is for me and imagine what a perfect resource the rationality book has been. I just wish I had discovered it just a few weeks earlier, when I was in the middle of dozens of religious discussions with people, but I think I did an okay job explaining myself and talking about biases I had recognized in myself but didn't even know were considered "biases" like not giving much weight to evidence that opposes your preferred belief (label: confirmation bias) and the tendency to believe what people around you believe (label: I forget, but at least I now know it has one) and many more.
But how did I survive, believing in hell? Well, there's this wonderful book of the Bible called Ecclesiastes that seems to mostly contradict the rest of Christian teachings. Most people find it depressing. Personally, I loved it and read it every week to comfort myself. I still like it, actually. It's short, you could read it in no time, but here's a sample from chapter 3: 18-22:
18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” 22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
Few people make that many conscious decisions!
Indeed.
But it could be a subconscious decision that still fulfills the goal.
True. In the case of my friend, I don't think it was, but in cases where it is, then I think that it could be a perfectly sensible approach (depending on the situation).
This was the relevant part of the conversation:
...So what if it were the situation was: tell the truth and make you less happy, your family less happy, and the rest of the world unaffected, or lie.
i would never approach it that way. my decisions aren't that calcul
This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!