The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet? • Hacker News Board

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#161

Post by CrazyPyroLinux » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

parylose wrote: post #63

everdev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness is an emotion, it comes and goes. Even the premise of "are you happy?" is missing the point. Are we talking about feeling happiness twice as much as feeling sadness? 4x, 10x? Sadness can come from things outside our control. I think a better goal is are you present? Are you listening to yourself and to what you really want for your life? Everyone will want different things but making an emotion the goal is…

That reminds me of a Billy Joel (singer) interview. He said he was always asked if he was happy now and he stressed out when he couldn't answer yes. He ended up pursuing happiness at high cost. He eventually realized just because he wasn't happy didn't mean he was sad. Happiness and sadness are extremes. Most of the time you just are. He learned to just be and appreciate the happy times.

The Oatmeal did a great comic on this, which I think illustrates your point perfectly: https://theoatmeal.com/static/unhappy.html

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#162

Post by gerbilly » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #7

Americans are becoming too rational and this is a major problem. When you over-value rationality, you expect to be able to have a rational answer to every question. The hand-licking story that made the front page today illustrates this point perfectly. Approached rationally, the mom could not solve the problem, no amount of mental effort would yield a resolution or insight into the issue. When the mind expects an ans…

I agree that we overvalue reason.

To reason about something you have to reason from premises. But where do the premises come from?

I'm sure many of us have had that experience, when dealing with a difficult problem, where an insight comes to us out of the blue.

Where did that new insight come from, certainly not through rational deliberation. In fact, often it's not until we stop reasoning that the insight is free to appear.

Often we can't explain where the idea came from, it seems to be from some subconscious (irrational?) part of our mind.

Once we have the insight (a new premise) then we can start to reason from it. But in my opinion, reason comes in only after our mind has done the real work elsewhere.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#163

Post by dwild » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

untilHellbanned wrote: post #47

vorpalhex wrote: post #3

There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy. There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy. The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are…

It's not a choice.

It's a choice to become happy. It sadly won't happen by itself and if you do nothing to become happy, you'll most likely never be.

The path to become happy isn't instant though, it's much more complex than flipping a light switch, it's definitely harder for some than others (and possibly even impossible for some sadly), but for sure, you need to decide to become happy if you ever want to be.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#164

Post by TomMarius » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

pastor_elm wrote: post #143

emteycz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What discomfort does wealth create? It enables you to make yourself uncomfortable, yes, but wealth itself will not make you uncomfortable.

wealth creates a system in which you need to have money to survive.

Do you have any viable alternative?

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#165

Post by tuesdayrain » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #92

vorpalhex wrote: post #3

There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy. There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy. The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are…

Happiness is not a choice. If you think it is, try learning more about clinical depression.

Happiness is definitely a choice, although perhaps not for everyone. If I start thinking about some positive memories, I can consciously make myself happy right now.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#166

Post by beat » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

tuesdayrain wrote: post #165

beat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness is not a choice. If you think it is, try learning more about clinical depression.

Happiness is definitely a choice, although perhaps not for everyone. If I start thinking about some positive memories, I can consciously make myself happy right now.

Is that happiness, or just pleasure? They're different things. Pleasure is transient, fleeting. Happiness is a stable state.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#167

Post by _cs2017_ » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

fegu wrote: post #39

djohnston wrote: post #30

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yours…

Not advocating hanging yourself, but it is something you will never regret since if done "successfully" you will cease to exist and therefore not be able to regret anything.

This naive view is why for centuries we haven't seen any improvement in the happiness of ghosts.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#168

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

nybble41 wrote: post #146

vinceguidry wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are irrational until we understand the dynamics behind them. Then they become rational. When she decided not to press the issue, that wasn't a rational decision made on logic, it was an emotional one where she prioritized one kind of truth, that it was her hurting her child, over another kind of truth, that it was the hand licking that was hurting her child. Only in retrospect did the actuality of the situatio…

>> Finally, I had this moment where I felt that my efforts to ramp up the pressure to force him to stop had crossed some line. I felt I was turning into an abusive parent. >> At that moment, I decided this had to stop. I didn't care if he licked his hands the rest of his life. It couldn't be worse than this. > Rational analysis failed, some other way of deciding how to handle it took hold. Notice the semantic shift h…

> There was nothing incorrect or irrational about the actions the mother initially took.

I didn't spot this the first time, let me address it now. The actions were rational, because they were grounded in reasons that usually work for that kind of situation.

They were incorrect because they didn't have the desired outcome. When she corrected her course of action, they started to have the desired outcome, and the whole thing became clear a year later.

When she corrected course, she used an irrational basis to make that determination. What makes it irrational? The decision to not try to solve a problem is inherently irrational.

There's nothing wrong with using irrational bases for decision-making. What's wrong is making incorrect decisions. If you're irrational, and wrong, then that's a bad thing. If you're irrational and right, then that's a good thing. It's better to be rational and right, but in the absence of the foundation for reason, when you can't determine how things work or why, you're forced to operate along irrational lines.

I'll allow that her course correction was at least somewhat rational, after all we can articulate and understand her reasons, which we couldn't if they were totally irrational. But they're less rational than her earlier approach. Your perception that her second approach was more rational is the conflation of rationality and correctness. It was more correct. It was less rational. Reason could only enter the picture again when she had concrete evidence.

The only reason her story is salient at all is precisely because it messes with our conception of rationality.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#169

Post by InitialLastName » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

assblaster wrote: post #147

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paying off a debt under 4% faster at the expense of putting that money into a portfolio that is expected to earn 6%+ is making your overall assets less diversified. You're trading down on both variance and return expectation.

You make more money paying off debt earlier, instead of investing that same money at a possible return of 6% per year, I've done the calculations myself for my situation. You should do the same.

What?

If I have $100 in an investment at 6% yearly and $100 in debt at 4% yearly, after 1 year I have $106 in the investment and $104 in debt, so $2 more than I had a year ago. If I pay off the debt now, I have exactly the same amount of money I had a year ago.

Re: The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?

#170

Post by InitialLastName » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

mlcrypto wrote: post #96

All I need is a skateboard, a magic the gathering draft, a chart of the S&P 500, a game of Halo, and a good pizza and I'm pretty happy

Oh boy, you from the future would like to have a word with you about your oncoming knee arthritis, fading friend group, recession, cataracts and heartburn.