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How To Be Happy Anywhere

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Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#101

Post by frasertimo »

[deleted] wrote: post #92
frasertimo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you get an ego trip off your depression. Some of the worlds greatest artists, inventors, etc did their best work because they confronted the darkness of the world, and the darkness of themselves. And because of their darkness they had a lot to work with. But to say that only unhappy people see the world for what it is is highly facetious. No, in fact, it's more than that. It's evidence of a clear desire t…

[deleted]

Well yes, that's why it's my opinion.

Just a thought; when you get all these angry responses from people criticizing what you wrote does that make you think 'huh, a lot of people are mad about what I said, hence I must be wrong', or 'huh, a lot of people are mad about what I said, hence they must all be wrong'?

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#102

Post by snowwrestler »

[deleted] wrote: post #92
frasertimo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you get an ego trip off your depression. Some of the worlds greatest artists, inventors, etc did their best work because they confronted the darkness of the world, and the darkness of themselves. And because of their darkness they had a lot to work with. But to say that only unhappy people see the world for what it is is highly facetious. No, in fact, it's more than that. It's evidence of a clear desire t…

[deleted]

"Sure it hurts at first but like a child living in a warzone you normalize to it eventually and learn to live with it. The best part of depression is that you feel like you are seeing the world for what it really is, gone are the happy hormones that force the oppression of hope on you, gone are the dreams and fantasies that you know aren't ever going to come true. There's a beauty to it. You feel awake."

Emphasis mine, obviously.

This is why people are giving you that reaction. If you have replaced the "you"s with "I"s it would have been more obvious that you are being descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#104

Post by dripton »

gwern wrote: post #100
dripton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible that there's a co-factor: TV appeared about the same time as reliable birth control.

Reliable birth control penetrated each district or governmental sub-unit at the same time as the TV stations?

Possibly. (Not necessarily at exactly the same time.)

I read the study, and they did attempt to isolate this effect from others, but correlation is still not proof of causality.

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#105

Post by flaviojuvenal »

spodek wrote: post #28

Information and emotion are orthogonal. If you want to connect them you can, but you don't have to. In other words, you can use more or less information to make yourself happier or unhappier. The ability to manage your emotions is different than the ability to process information, but it can be learned just as well, they just don't teach it in school.

Why they are orthogonal? When I read a news story, it affects my emotions, it makes me draw correlations with my previous experiences. This is unconciouss and barely manageable. This may even be necessary, to survive we need to learn from other people experiences. We need to feel empathy.

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#106

Post by Klinky »

pjscott wrote: post #85
Klinky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person's rational is another person's irrational.

In perception, yes, but not in reality. If you want to be alive tomorrow, jumping off a tall building will be irrational even if you think it's the last step in a convoluted ritual to grant yourself immortality. That's an exaggerated example, but the principle holds in general: people's desires may differ, but the rationality of any actions taken in the pursuit of those desires is something you can evaluate objective…

What about jumping off a building with a parachute or because it's on fire?

I think real life contains many situations where the most rational situation isn't always clear.

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#107

Post by pjscott »

Klinky wrote: post #106
pjscott wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In perception, yes, but not in reality. If you want to be alive tomorrow, jumping off a tall building will be irrational even if you think it's the last step in a convoluted ritual to grant yourself immortality. That's an exaggerated example, but the principle holds in general: people's desires may differ, but the rationality of any actions taken in the pursuit of those desires is something you can evaluate objective…

What about jumping off a building with a parachute or because it's on fire? I think real life contains many situations where the most rational situation isn't always clear.

In that case, there is a rational answer; that it's hard to figure out in a hurry doesn't make it subjective.

Re: How To Be Happy Anywhere

#108

Post by Klinky »

pjscott wrote: post #107
Klinky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about jumping off a building with a parachute or because it's on fire? I think real life contains many situations where the most rational situation isn't always clear.

In that case, there is a rational answer; that it's hard to figure out in a hurry doesn't make it subjective.

I am not sure there is a rational answer when it comes to possibly jumping from a building and breaking your legs or maybe even dying versus staying in the building and possibly dying from smoke inhalation or burning to death. It would be very hard, even in hindsight to figure out what was the more rational decision.

If you want technological examples, say someone calls someone else irrational for basing their website off PHP instead of Ruby. Someone calls the printer industry irrational for making it cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink cartridges or that someone buys a new computer because their computer is infested with malware instead of re-installing Windows. You could say those are irrational choices, but the people who are making those choices probably have reasons for doing so which may make sense to them. The person with PHP may not know Ruby and would have to invest significant time in learning it. The printer companies bottom line will make their decision rational to many. The person buying a new computer may not have the skills to perform the task, the local computer shop wants hundreds of dollars to do the work & the computer is old.

So on the surface we say "that's irrational", but then later after learning more, maybe our opinion would change to "that's actually rational".

Also this does bring up the point that we often have to make a choice on what to do without the power of hindsight or with incomplete data. This can make our choices look irrational to those who are not in our shoes.

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