To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
So a possible distinction between virtue ethicists and consequentialists: virtue ethicists pursue their terminal values of happiness and goodness subconsciously, while consequentialists pursue the same terminal values consciously... as a general rule? And so the consequentialists seem more agenty because they put more thought into their decisions?
I think that not being stupid means something in an absolute sense, not just a relative one) I might agree with you about >99% of people being stupid. What exactly do you mean by it though? That they don't naturally break things down like a reductionist? That they rarely seem to take control of their own lives, just letting life happen to them? Or are you talking about knowledge? We've definitely increased our knowledge over the past 400 years, but I don't think we've really increased our intelligence.
And the fact that people believe that - a) God is caring, AND b) God created Hell and set the circumstances up where millions/billions of people will end up there - is... let's just say inconsistent by any reasonable definition of the words consistent, caring and suffering.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get across, and it's why I titled the post "Do You Feel Selfish for Liking What You Believe"! I hesitated to include the analogy since it was the only part with the potential to offend people (two people accused me of mocking God) and taint their thoughts about the rest of the post, but in the end I left it, partly as a hopefully thought-provoking interlude between the more theological sections and mostly so I could give my page a more fun title than Deconversion Story Blog #59845374987.
The happiness set point theory makes sense! Actually, it makes a lot of sense, and I think it's connected to the idea that most people do not act in agenty ways! If they did, I think they could increase their happiness. Personally, I don't find that it applies to me much at all. My happiness has steadily risen throughout my life. I am happier now than ever before. I am now dubbing myself a super-agent. I think the key to happiness is to weed not only the bad stuff out of your life, but the neutral stuff as well. Let me share some examples:
I got a huge scholarship after high school to pursue a career in the medicine field (I never expected to love my career, but that wasn't the goal; I wanted to fund lots of missionaries). I was good at my science classes, and I didn't dislike them, but I didn't like them either. I realized this after my first year of college. I acknowledged the sunk cost fallacy, cut my losses, wrote a long, friendly letter to the benefactor to assuage my guilt, and decided to pursue another easy high-income career instead, law, which would allow me to major in anything I wanted. So I sat down for a few hours, considered like 6 different majors, evaluated the advantages and disadvantages, and came up with a tie between Economics and Spanish. I liked Econ for many reasons, but mainly because the subject matter itself was truly fascinating to me; I liked Spanish not so much for the language itself but because the professor was hilarious, fun, casual, and flexible about test/paper deadlines, I could save money by graduating in only 3 years, and I would get the chance to travel abroad. I flipped a coin between the two, and majored in Spanish. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
My last summer after college, I was a cook at a boy scout camp. It was my third summer there. I worked about 80 hours a week, and the first two years I loved it because my co-workers were awesome. We would have giant (dumping 5 gallon igloos on each other in the middle of the kitchen, standing on the roof and dropping regular balloons filled with water on each other, etc) water fights in the kitchen, we would play cribbage in between meals, hang out together, etc. I also had two good friends among the counselors. Anyway, that third year, my friends had left and it was still a pretty good job in a pretty and foresty area, but it wasn't super fun like it had been. So after the first half of the summer, once I had earned enough to pay the last of my college debt, I found someone to replace me at my job and wrote out pages of really detailed instructions for everything (to assuage my guilt), and quit, to go spend a month "on vacation" at home with my family before leaving for Guatemala. Result: a lasting increase in happiness.
I dropped down to work part-time in Guatemala to pursue competitive running more. I left as soon as I got a stress fracture. I chose a family to nanny for based on the family itself, knowing that would affect my day-to-day happiness more than the location (which also turned out to be great).
My belief in God was about to cause not only logical discontent in my mind, but also a suboptimal level of real life contentment that I could not simply turn into an "ugh field" as I almost set off to pursue a career I didn't love to donate to missionaries. Whatever real-life security benefits it brought me were about to become negligible, so I finally spent a few very long and thoughtful days confronting my doubts and freed myself from that belief.
Every day examples of inertia-breaking happiness-inducing activities: I'm going for a run and run past a lilac bush. It smells really good, so I stop my watch and go stand by it for a while. I'm driving in the car, and there's a pretty lookout spot, so I actually stop for a while. I do my favorite activities like board games, pickup sports, and nature stuff like hiking and camping every weekend, not just once in a while. I don't watch TV because there's always something I'd rather be doing. If I randomly wake up early, I consciously think about whether I would get more satisfaction out of lazing around in bed, or getting up to make a special breakfast for the kids I nanny for.
What's my point? I have very noticeably different happiness levels based on the actions I take. If I'm just going with the flow, taking life as it comes, I have an average amount of happiness compared to those around me; I occasionally do let myself slip into neutral situations. If I put myself in a super fun and amazing situation, I have way more happiness than those around me (which is a good thing, since happiness is contagious). Sometimes I just look at my life and can't help but laugh with delight at how wonderful it is. If I ever get a sense that my happiness is starting to neutralize/stabilize, I make a big change and get it back on the right track. For instance, I think that thanks to you, I have just realized that my happiness is not composed of pleasure alone, but also personal fulfillment. I always knew that "personal fulfillment" influenced other people, but I'm either just realizing/admitting this to myself, or my preferences are changing a bit as I get older, but I think it influences me too. So, I'm spending some time reading and thinking and writing, instead of only playing games and reading fiction and cooking and hiking. Result: I am even happier than I knew possible :)
Maybe I don't fully understand that happiness set point theory, but I don't think it is true for everyone, just 99% of people or so. I don't think it is true for me. That said, I will acknowledge that an individual's range of potential happiness levels is fixed. Some happy-born people, no matter how bad their lives get, will never become as unhappy as naturally unhappy people with seemingly good lives are.
tl;dr Being an agent is awesome!
1,2,3,4,5...
[mind officially blown]
Ok, could we like Skype or something and you tell me everything you know about being happy and all of your experiences? I have a lot to learn and I enjoy hearing your stories!
Also, idk if you've come across this yet but what you're doing is something that us lesswrongers like to call WINNING. Which is something that lesswrongers actually seem to struggle with quite a bit. There's a handful of posts on it if you google. Anyway, not only are you killing it, but you seem to be doing it on purpose rather than just getting ...
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!