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Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

latimes.com

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Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#81

Post by anyfoo »

zackmorris wrote: post #34

My whole life is regret and I found the article very insightful. I heard a religious quote that I wish I could remember: it's better to earn gold along the way by investing in relationships than to bet it all on a gold mine. As a hacker trying to win the internet lottery since.. 1992-ish, I put all of my eggs in one basket most of the time, and I've been part of at least a dozen ventures that all failed. It's like fl…

> I put all of my eggs in one basket most of the time, and I've been part of at least a dozen ventures that all failed. It's like flipping a coin and getting tails 30 times in a row, which feels like 1 in a billion odds of losing to this extent.

But it's not. It's more like playing the lottery over and over. The chance of succeeding even once is pretty low.

> My best years were invested in techs like C++ that nobody even uses anymore, and I wouldn't use because they don't provide enough leverage.

Bit of an odd choice. Not only is C++ still being used, as far as I know, but even if it weren't: If you know C++, you know C, and that is definitely very relevant. If you know C, you have vastly more low-level knowledge than the average programmer nowadays. C is not my favorite language by far (I like rust, or Haskell, depending), but just being proficient in it means I can program a lot of different things.

Anyway, to the rest of your point: I never wanted to get rich or anything like that, I always just did what interested me on a technical level. I fared very well with that.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#82

Post by fordfastlane »

dullcrisp wrote: post #75
matwood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early 20s is when people peak at risk taking behavior. Add a large amount of money into the mix and the types of risks can go way up. Think go from sitting around playing beer pong, to doing coke and speeding around in a Ferrari. Even later in life, large amounts of money can cause people to do stupid things (see many famous people), but maturity has a chance then.

I dunno you can always drink beer and speed around in a Ford Fiesta. Irresponsibly is free.

Sure but that's has a somewhat less consistent feedback loop..

When I was new to driving I tended to drive around the ex-highways in the outer burbs and end up in little drag races at each light in the beater I could afford.. One time I looked over at the guy with the aggressively gunning the engine in his VW rabbit(?) and realized how utterly sad that was.

Plenty of Ferrari drivers, when they get negative feedback, probably get feedback that seems cool to rebel against instead of people exhibiting utter shame of association.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#83

Post by akira2501 »

retrac wrote: post #35
Fraterkes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to pry but I often see people make statements along the lines of 'if Id been rich when I was younger I wouldve died' and I never quite get it. Just drugs stuff?

The story of lottery winners is sometimes an unhappy one. A windfall can ruin relationships, lead to a loss of normalcy, make one a target for crime, and as you say, enable vices.

If you win the lottery put it in a living trust. If you don't have experience managing large sums of cash the likelihood of you navigating that challenge correctly is basically zero.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#84

Post by akira2501 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #73
l5870uoo9y wrote: post #45

The best advice I've read about avoiding regrets was in “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William B. Irvine. William B. Irvine has an entire chapter dedicated to it titled; Fatalism. The basic approach of the Stoics was that the past (and present) should be viewed fatalistically; fate would have it so, and therefore there is no rational (again a key word for the Stoics) reason to regret this…

I almost wrote this: > I disagree. The best thing to do to avoid regrets is to act, to take the step forward. Not to resign ourselves and diminish ourselves hoping to soften the nastiness the world is sending us. > Stoicism is good when you are being tortured (hello John McCain), when you are in the final stage of incurable illness, when you are a slave (hello Epictetus edit: oops, I meant Epictus) and have no agency…

> when you are a slave (hello Seneca) and have no agency.

It seemed to serve Marcus Aurelius (hello Emperor) quite well. Stoicism is strongly tied to duty, to ones self, to ones family, and to ones nation.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#85

Post by kevindamm »

geor9e wrote: post #43
paulpauper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is why I never thrown out old computers or wipe out disks. They just sit around. Never know when you might need something on there

That's what I used to say, until I ran out of spare bedrooms, and the tunnel of carefully stacked old computers collapsed on me. Luckily I escaped and was able to buy a 32 TB NAS which is now 1% full of early 2000s disk images. Now it's just me, a NAS, and a mattress on the floor. I'm never going back.

but what do you do for heating now?

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#86

Post by gwbas1c »

dullcrisp wrote: post #75
matwood wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early 20s is when people peak at risk taking behavior. Add a large amount of money into the mix and the types of risks can go way up. Think go from sitting around playing beer pong, to doing coke and speeding around in a Ferrari. Even later in life, large amounts of money can cause people to do stupid things (see many famous people), but maturity has a chance then.

I dunno you can always drink beer and speed around in a Ford Fiesta. Irresponsibly is free.

You can drink a lot more beer if you don't have to show up for work.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#87

Post by kevindamm »

anthonyrstevens wrote: post #67
adammarples wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our brains are machines for trying to avoid future mistakes, and doubling down on focusing on them isn't ideal. It's good that at least you're not also tying them to the past, which is doomed, but that's not what the future has to be. It's better not to focus on fears and let the possibility of the future open up instead.

I think I could make a good argument that our brains are machines for repeating past mistakes. Interesting to think about the opposite sides of the argument.

I've got a pretty solid case that it's both

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#88

Post by maverwa »

Curious. I think this applies less to me than I had hoped. I don’t feel regrets over these „you win some, you loose some“ coin toss decisions. Looking back, I clearly made avoidable mistakes but they where the obvious one (for me, back then, in that context) and I can clearly learn from them. But the ones I truly regret don’t fit in that scheme for me. They are just pure loss, no reasoning whatsoever, just stupid. Most of them socially. Not finishing my bachelor but instead canceling and going to work due to financial pressure I can deal with easily. I can „sell that“ to myself. Threading people poorly and loosing good friends that? No way I’m ever forgiving myself that. But these don’t fit in that „portfolio“ framework. They where just stupid decision. I still learn from that and know what to work on. But I cannot reason them away.

Re: Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

#90

Post by tomcam »

johnchristopher wrote: post #70
tomcam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife grew up in the Cultural Revolution. I grew up in an unsafe and disordered environment. When I made peak money we spent a lot on awesome experiences, then saved a good chunk. Instead of making payments on a house in the kind of enclave where pro athletes lived, we paid cash in a FAANG neighborhood. Both of us have zero expectations about the future. We have no debt and I retired comfortably but not too lavishl…

> Fatalism has worked out well for us. Why didn't she stay in China ? Why did you leave that unsafe and disordered environment ?

She had no choice. She and many of her peers were sent here to work. At least half of them, wife included, defected. I left home young because I would have killed myself otherwise.
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