> I always hear the situation put this way, but it rings false to me. If you gave me a perfect happiness drug, I wouldn't want to sit in bed all day and take it.
Reason is a poor way of estimating behavior, in special, your own.
> Happiness is a reward. Chasing happiness is a fundamentally mistaken project because if you just want to be in a mental state of happiness, do drugs, it's that easy. We got plenty of pharmaceuticals that short circuit all the annoying steps you have to do to be happy.
Drugs don't work like that. Over time, your body gets used to them, and you need drugs just to feel normal - and without them, you feel terrible. Just like with less dangerous addictions, e.g. to coffee.
> I am convinced happy people with fulfilling lives don't get addicted.
Even if that were true, it would still be possible that it was true because the same innate features which incline toward addiction work against having a happy fulfilled life in the same external conditions that someone without those features would have a happy, fulfilled life.
> What makes you happy today might feel miserable tomorrow.
Not to get too philosophical, but I honestly don't think that things make people happy or unhappy. Happiness appears to be a choice. I say this based on my observation that I've known people who've lived in objectively awful circumstance, but were genuinely happy -- and I've known people who've lived in ideal circumstances, but were miserable.
And what if the body decides that the best thing for itself is crack cocaine? You don't want happiness per se, but a fulfilling and satisfying life.
Think about it, if you could wire yourself to a machine that injected all the happiness chemicals into your brain for the rest of your life would you do it?
"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
>So, one hour spent Really Happy, outweighs a year spent Just Happy, because that Really Happy is all received by your present self.
I find making decisions that end up along lines of this really, really difficult. The rational part of my brain knows very well which one should I choose, but it has really, really hard time arguing with that more... I don't know, primal? part of me.
I think it's really fascinating, how relatively weak our conscious self is in arguments with our short term desires.
> Where you appeared to be justifying creating dissatisfaction on the basis that you are providing a solution to that dissatisfaction. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your point here.
Touché. I did say that. Balderdash.
My point (poorly stated) was that while I think it's cruel to create a problem where it doesn't exist, it's not cruel to promote the solution to a real problem that already exists. However, promoting the solution involves reminding you of the problem, which creates or emphasizes a dissatisfaction you may have been ignoring.
> I suppose that I did -- and I still do, because I don't see how my reply was unresponsive.
My point in using heroin as an example was to say there are plenty of ways to create happiness that aren't necessarily beneficial in the long run.
Perhaps some better examples would be:
- Sitting on the beach all day
- Not exercising
- Spending every dollar I have today and ignoring my future needs
All of these would lead to me being happy for a while. But eventually they're detrimental. Yes?
> At an overarching level, my primary wish in life is to leave something in the world that serves as an artifact of what kind of person I was. Maybe this wish is at fault and I ought to get a better wish instead, or I'll be destroying my drive for creation at every turn. But in the present, this is how I honestly feel.
Yes, I'm saying you would be better off dropping that, and instead just engaging in pure creation without any dependencies.
> Why would I be doing this if I was only going to keep all of it to myself?
That's my whole point. You shouldn't need a reason beyond "fun" or "just because" or even "keeping the hands/ears busy".
People are unreliable, having reasons that depend on other people are unreliable. Letting go of that and having only reasons that depend on yourself is reliable.
> Otherwise, the entire effort is nothing but toil with no sense of reward.
Once again, it is entirely possible to just do it without any sense of reward. I know because I've developed this mindset, while I used to crave reward.
>Most people desire to be happy. I don't believe I need to prove this.
Happy isn't a long term state of being. It's a short term emotion like anger or sadness.
If you expect to feel that way all the time, and think you can achieve that through some kind of changes to your life you are setting yourself up for failure.
You should aim to build a life that is in line with your values, and accept that you're going to have down days. If you were to rate each day on a 1-10 scale, you're going to have 2s and 3s and probably some 8s and 9s. But if you've done the work, most days will be a solid 6 or 7.
And therapy. Therapy really helps. I think everybody should go to therapy.
Evolution has designed us to desire to be happy, but to be unhappy (to some degree, at some times). Otherwise we'd have no drive to do anything ever.
Some degree of unhappiness coupled with the desire to increase happiness is a state we should often expect in a healthy, intelligent individual. A state of unassailable optimal happiness should probably be pathologized (if it isn't already so).
> Telling me that because my life doesn't fit your pattern I must be unhappy is a bit presumptuous, don't you think?
No, what I’m telling you is that because your goal is evidently not to enjoy life no matter what — you’d rather feel morose and listless and frustrated at times — your solutions (withdrawal) are of no relevance to someone whose goal is to enjoy life no matter what (bien dans ma peau and joie de vivre).
> Optimizing for happiness would logically call for denying unpleasant truths because pointing them out would make people unhappy
Not if you take the long term into account. Denying unpleasant truth might make people happy -- though I don't think this works if your subconscious still knows the truth -- but then you cannot deal with the issue and it makes you unhappy.
> if the depressed commit suicide it would drive up the average happiness.
If someone's life is so unpleasant it isn't worth living and they cannot be treated, suicide isn't inhumane.
> Even if given tighter constraints it would still have disturbing ignorance is bliss promotion.
Something being disturbing doesn't mean it's actually bad. Reactionaries find homosexuality disturbing.
Do you have a reason for considering ignorance is bliss promotion disturbing aside from lack of familiarity?
> I disagree - especially since optimizing for anything blindly/without constraints can lead to horrific outcomes.
I don't think an outcome that makes people happy, including in the long run, can be horrific.
Reason is a poor way of estimating behavior, in special, your own.
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