The hypersane are among us, if only we are prepared to look

I have visited back-to-lander hippies, and stayed with them at times. There are certainly aspects of their lifestyle I admire, but I think you're romanticizing it more than is accurate. It's particularly off-base to think that hippie-ism prevents opiate addiction: drug use is rampant in that community, and while you might see a decrease in opiates due to their social stigma in that community, there's still an opiate problem, and there are full-on epidemics of issues with other drugs. The same is true for a few related alternate-lifestyle communities I've interacted with.

The responders pointing out that the back-to-the-landers often don't have adequate medical care aren't entirely off-base. Pharma is fundamentally broken in the US, and this places strict restrictions on the freedom of many people here: if you need medical help on a regular basis, you have no option except to work--the "rat race" as it were. Work itself won't make you happy, but I think for most people, dying of illness that went untreated because they can't afford care isn't happiness either.

But some of us are healthy, and I do have choices. In the past ten years, I've worked a rat race job, then actively chosen poverty and didn't have health insurance, and finally started a company that's successful enough that I have health insurance again. I don't think it's accurate to say that individuals don't have choices. And that goes for everyone. Certainly some have more choices than others, but we all have at least a small degree of agency in our lives. So I don't think it's entirely fair to think that everyone is unhappy because they chose a life outside norms (i.e. without health insurance).

The question remains though, whether choosing to step outside of the norms actually makes us happy. I think the answer to that is somewhat individual: we all have different things that make us happy. But for anyone, there's a certain amount of hubris in assuming that you know better than the norms. Often, norms became norms because they work for a lot of people. I think, for example, we have lots of evidence at this point that percentage-wise money does buy happiness--up to a certain amount, and depending on how you spend it[1]. But those are percentages, not absolutes--there are miserable and happy people at both extremes of wealth and everywhere in between.

I don't know where this leads us. I suspect the reality is more complicated than any of us understand.

[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/danielgilbert/files/if-mon...

>I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm trying to give you a framework to understand your own opinion.

The fact that you don't seem to comprehend how absurd and arrogant it is that you think you need to help me understand my own opinion (which you continue to misrepresent) is the reason why I am not inclined to do a charitable reading of what you're saying. You seem to think very highly of yourself, to the point where you seem completely unable to conceive that you might have misapprehended the words of others, and assume immediately that anything that seems illogical to you must be the result of others being confused.

While I'm sure you think you're helping me by showering me with your amazing knowledge and clarity of mind, or something along those lines, you're actually just being annoying. Which is why I'm not inclined to read your comments "with an open mind", thank you very much.

>you are expressing something that is purely an opinion, and can never be anything more than an opinion

Yes. Indeed. You are 100% correct about that. You seem to think I believe "sanity=success" to be an objective fact. I do not.

What I believe is "rationality = acting in a manner one believes they will further their own success, however they define their own success", and that rationality requires sanity. When I state this, I am not stating it to be objective fact. I am making it clear where I stand. If you disagree with me on these premises, well, that's that. We disagree, and that's OK. The rest of my argument stands on the premises that rationality = taking decisions that one believes will further one's own success, and that rationality -> sanity (and therefore insanity implies irrationality, but one can be sane and irrational).

Your example about temporary insanity is actually interesting, because it reveals exactly what you have misapprehended.

>What if my goal is to go temporarily insane to see what that is like? Then you are claiming that I'm only sane if I'm insane...

You seem to think I am saying that you are only rational while you are succeeding, but that's not it. I am claiming you are rational if you act in a way you believe will lead to you succeeding. Or, in other terms, if you strive to act in ways that you believe will maximize your own "success" metric - or "utility", if you will.

So if your ultimate goal is to go insane (and going insane will not interfere with any other goals which are more important than going insane), if you are doing things you believe will make yourself insane, you are rational.

However, once you make yourself insane, you will, by virtue of the fact that insanity implies irrationality, not be rational anymore.

Failing to go insane does not mean you are irrational, just as someone whose greatest goal is to become rich does not become irrational simply by failing to become rich, as long as they keep trying to become rich while becoming rich is their goal (or "increases their utility").

If I believed what you seem to think I believe, I'd have to believe that every single person who makes a resolution to achieve some goal is insane as long as the goal has not been achieved.

I hate this meme; and that's what is is nowadays, a meme. There are generics for both EpiPen and fast acting insulin. You can walk into a Walmart and buy R for $25/bottle [1]; it didn't even require a prescription, the last I bought it. Sure, it's not as good as Apidra and the like, but it does work; it just requires a more controlled diet. The generic EpiPen is just over $100 for a 2-pack.

I get it, there's stories every now and then of some person that died because they couldn't afford their insulin (for $275/bottle). And every time I stare at the story wondering why that person decided to kill themself for reason.

I get it that newer insulins should be cheaper, that they're way over priced. But it's disingenuous to pretend there aren't options for people that can't afford them.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/novolin-r-relion/129783484

> I am claiming you are rational if you act in a way you believe will lead to you succeeding

This is worse than what you were saying before. Even irrational people believe they are acting in a way that will lead to success, why would someone ever act in a way they believe will fail to work? There has to be some kind of external test of whether it is 'reasonable' for the person to believe that the way they are acting will work, right?

I mean lots of people do things like making hats out of aluminum foil to prevent the CIA from reading their thoughts, and they believe it works, but I don't think you can say they are acting rationally by any definition.

"It's not really a measure of mental health to be well-adjusted in a society that's very sick." -The OA