171–180 of 193 posts
I can't think of a more literal example of survivorship bias.
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Personally I've found the one reliable metric I have with which to evaluate decisions is: happiness. Everything else is inherently externally derived and I might have good models of how they affect me, but I can neither control nor reliably predict them. For example, I have a good idea of how something will impact me financially, but only to a point. I also can't actually control that outcome. How something affects m…
> Personally I've found the one reliable metric I have with which to evaluate decisions is: happiness. It's very similar, but rather than optimizing for happiness, I prefer Terence McKenna's advice to optimize for beauty... The Good , The True and The Beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-J09gk0mJk To me this seems superior in that it seems to be more all-encompassing, and can be more easily applied to others…
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This is the root of it, and something most on HN won't accept. Optimistic people generally see and seek opportunity (either knowingly or unknowingly) more frequently than pessimists.
Won't accept? It seems startups are the same. "Rationally" a poor way to get rich, but if enough people miscaulate their odds (or enjoy it for nonmonetary reasons) we'll get a few big successes.
Sometimes chances are low or times are bad and optimism should not equal refusing to see that.
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Won't accept? It seems startups are the same. "Rationally" a poor way to get rich, but if enough people miscaulate their odds (or enjoy it for nonmonetary reasons) we'll get a few big successes.
Yeah, there is that thing when optimism becomes euphemism for naive, not allowed to talk about problems and disadvantages. But I think that is manipulative way to see optimism. Sometimes chances are low or times are bad and optimism should not equal refusing to see that.
"Optimism Bias" improves our mental and physical well-being. Biases are irrational, by definition. Our mind is supposedly rational...and rationality is not always to our benefit. This kinda blew my mind when I was reading up some philosophy. My key takeaway was that rationality and logic is not always helpful to make decisions, esp. when it comes to complex systems such as people (i.e. relationships). As an engineer,…
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The reason for this had always seemed pretty clear to me. Numerous different political ideologies rely heavily on scare mongering, outrage and catastrophizing to motivate their base and inspire followers. Many of the most powerful people or groups around the world have an incredibly vested interest in getting as many people as possible to believe that some particular set of things is very, very wrong with the world,…
You make such a great point here. Social media has amplified and enabled these groups that relentlessly create outrage and spin everything to suit their worldview to get inside everyone's head. Following or reading the daily news is depressing enough, but social media just makes it worse by forcing me to endure a relentless stream of people reacting to it.
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Does it ever bother you when people find that youre "too happy" which people might take it to mean that no outcome to any given event, can really displease you? Have you read up on what such a "condition" - if it can be called that - is called medically? Do others share it as well?
the way people see it is that I dont react to bad situations. I have been called "stone cold". I have sometimes wondered if it is related to sociopathy. I am a giving person and would rather give than receive, so am not very selfish. However, bad things just dont bother me because there is always something positive that comes out of everything. When my wife had an aortic dissection and had a high chance of dying, peo…
I'm in awe of this, because my personal view is that happiness is a fleeting chaotic state that mostly has no easily measurable probability of emerging, despite my attempts to grasp the shape of the distribution and its evolution in response to my actions. While I would consider myself not to be pessimistic, I definitely tend to have extremely rare encounters with what one would call happiness, which seems to be so starkly different from your life experience.
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My dad survived flying 30 missions over Germany when his group had 80% casualties. He had accepted that he wouldn't survive. He was always an optimist. I'd ask him why, and he'd say he survived the war when so many of his buddies didn't, and was going to enjoy every day of it. (He lived to 93.)
Just wondering, do you often tell this anecdote ? Feels like I've read it a few times around here already.
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the way people see it is that I dont react to bad situations. I have been called "stone cold". I have sometimes wondered if it is related to sociopathy. I am a giving person and would rather give than receive, so am not very selfish. However, bad things just dont bother me because there is always something positive that comes out of everything. When my wife had an aortic dissection and had a high chance of dying, peo…
Sincere question here: what makes you certain that you would have found happiness? I guess the fundamental difference between your way of thinking and most peoples' is that you seem to be absolutely convinced that happiness exists and is continuously experienced regardless of the state of reality. Therefore, regardless of what happens, there will be some form of happiness and you will experience it. I'm in awe of thi…
There is a downside which is that I dont get that happy over good events, I also dont get sad over bad events. I dont need anything to be happy so when good things happen, they are nice, but simply not necessary. Overall though I feel very fortunate, satisfied, optimistic, and happy with life.