RichardKennaway has hit the nail on the head. Mass_Driver, the question you ask is an old, old one, and I’m personally glad you raised it in this forum, because it’s so fundamental.
I think khafra is right to recommend that you take a look at the stoics. Classical stoicism is largely about dealing with the disappointments and general shittiness of life in a rational manner.
More broadly, education in philosophy and literature and history and the rest of the humanities were once supposed to help us answer these questions, to give us a role to play in the story of life and a sense of perspective. I don’t know anything about your education in the humanities in school, but mine was typical, and I think very bad.
I don’t know anything about your education in the humanities in school, but mine was typical, and I think very bad.
I’m sorry to hear it, Costanza. Sounds like you’ve managed to repair some of the damage, anyway.
I will definitely take another look at the stoics. I’ve read a full book by Epictetus and another by Marcus Aurelius a few times each, and found it a bit Pollyanna-ish...not so much advice for coping with a shitty world as exercises for tricking yourself into believing it isn’t shitty. There is a strand of mystical optimism even inside stoicism. Still, I will look again, and see what I can find. There was enough practical wisdom there that I can readily believe that they do have good advice for coping with adulthood.
As far as my general liberal arts education, it’s pretty good, but it’s contaminated by Marx and Hegel and Maslow and so on...my sense of perspective is keyed to the theme of very bad things often happening to very good people but everything nevertheless working out OK.
Sounds like you’ve already taken quite a look at the stoics. On another thread on this forum, I’ve seen the advice to check out the works of Albert Ellis. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/3eo/theory_and_practice_of_meditation/ . This would be one more thing on the growing list of things I have yet to do myself.
P.S. And fortyeridania’s post on this very same thread.
Once one groks these three principles, what should one do next?
Succeed.
No, that is exactly wrong. The whole problem is that no course of action guarantees success. The world is throwing curveballs.
My own solution is to shift my terminal values to the meta level. Instead of demanding success of myself (and then feeling bad if success turns out to be unattainable) I reward myself with a gold star if I judge that I have done my best. I live my life so as to have no regrets.
The difficulty (you might call it a trap) in this approach is in the need to retain a brutal honesty. It may be very tempting to respond to failures by giving yourself the star anyways, with the excuse “How could I have known?”. How could I have known that wouldn’t work? How could I have known that is not what they wanted? How could I have known that my ‘friend’ was a con artist? There may well have been a way you could have known—clues that you missed.
It can be tricky finding the middle road of learning from your mistakes, without falling into the error of denying mistakes or obsessing over them.
This is a good point. It occurs to me that a disproportional number of people in this forum may have had the experience growing up of being the smartest, most promising kid in class. Maybe you were always put into the advanced classes even in subjects you weren’t interested in. As you advance, the competition gets a little tougher, but you learn to push yourself, too.
For the overwhelming majority of people, this cycle has to end, early or late, with the shock of realizing that you are finally out of your league. Some poor bastard had to come to terms with knowing that he was obviously the dumbest physicist on the Manhattan Project, a net drag on the team.
The overwhelming number of people in historical times have died and been forgotten. How many people have lived? And of those, how many could possibly be even assigned a name by any historical records, let alone a place in popular memory?
Some poor bastard had to come to terms with knowing that he was obviously the dumbest physicist on the Manhattan Project, a net drag on the team
This doesn’t follow. It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least. Moreover, there might be enough variation in specific skill sets that no one is actually the dumbest (although I find this second argument to be weak. The truth is that some people really are better than others). Now it is more plausible that some of the dumber people who also worked less ended up distracting people in the project enough that they were net negatives. But that sort of argument requires that they be not only stupid but lazy and disruptive. In practice, few people with those traits last long in serious research.
It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least.
This is true. I was thinking, though, of the purely emotional impact on someone who is used to being the smartest person in the room to suddenly finding himself the least smart person in the room. Specifically, it’s a lesson I have had to learn myself—for me, it was a lesson I started learning in high school, and have re-learned the lesson many, many times since then. It’s not a fun lesson.
Yes, indeed. I like it very much. Thank you. Though the recommendation might be more useful to people if it had appeared in a decision-theory (Newcomb, expected utility maximization, etc.) thread, rather than here in a practical rationality thread.
My own solution is to shift my terminal values to the meta level. Instead of demanding success of myself (and then feeling bad if success turns out to be unattainable) I reward myself with a gold star if I judge that I have done my best. I live my life so as to have no regrets.
Trouble is, “doing one’s best” is an elusive concept. Sure, there are situations where you have a clear goal and see a clear plan of action for how to give your best shot at it, so if you fail despite following it, you can still give yourself a gold star for doing your best. But at least in my experience, typical mistakes and failures in life are nothing like that. Truly critical problems and dilemmas usually can’t be tackled with such a clear and accurate model of reality.
When I reflect on my own mistakes and failures, most of them were due to misunderstandings of the situation and errors of judgment that seem clear in retrospect and would have been avoided by someone more shrewd and knowledgeable in the same situations, but were completely beyond my mental and intellectual powers at the time. Others were due to lack of willpower that seems like “failure to do my best” in retrospect, but back at the time, the necessary level of willpower seemed (and probably was) impossible. In both sorts of situations, I did “give my best” in a very real sense, since nothing else could have been expected from me. But this leads to a tautological interpretation of “doing one’s best” that would imply that nobody should ever have regrets about anything.
C’mon; it’s not as if I forgot about that part. There’s only 26 words in the summary, and 2 of them are “succeed.” What I’m looking for is details on how to find new coping mechanisms now that I’m not indulging in the belief that everything is supernaturally guaranteed to go acceptably well.
Well, OK, that’s a great summary. Thanks for condensing my post, I guess. Now, do you have any suggestions as to an appropriate response?
How did you reach adulthood? Or have you? Once one groks these three principles, what should one do next?
RichardKennaway has hit the nail on the head. Mass_Driver, the question you ask is an old, old one, and I’m personally glad you raised it in this forum, because it’s so fundamental.
I think khafra is right to recommend that you take a look at the stoics. Classical stoicism is largely about dealing with the disappointments and general shittiness of life in a rational manner.
More broadly, education in philosophy and literature and history and the rest of the humanities were once supposed to help us answer these questions, to give us a role to play in the story of life and a sense of perspective. I don’t know anything about your education in the humanities in school, but mine was typical, and I think very bad.
I’m sorry to hear it, Costanza. Sounds like you’ve managed to repair some of the damage, anyway.
I will definitely take another look at the stoics. I’ve read a full book by Epictetus and another by Marcus Aurelius a few times each, and found it a bit Pollyanna-ish...not so much advice for coping with a shitty world as exercises for tricking yourself into believing it isn’t shitty. There is a strand of mystical optimism even inside stoicism. Still, I will look again, and see what I can find. There was enough practical wisdom there that I can readily believe that they do have good advice for coping with adulthood.
As far as my general liberal arts education, it’s pretty good, but it’s contaminated by Marx and Hegel and Maslow and so on...my sense of perspective is keyed to the theme of very bad things often happening to very good people but everything nevertheless working out OK.
Sounds like you’ve already taken quite a look at the stoics. On another thread on this forum, I’ve seen the advice to check out the works of Albert Ellis. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/3eo/theory_and_practice_of_meditation/ . This would be one more thing on the growing list of things I have yet to do myself.
P.S. And fortyeridania’s post on this very same thread.
Succeed.
No, that is exactly wrong. The whole problem is that no course of action guarantees success. The world is throwing curveballs.
My own solution is to shift my terminal values to the meta level. Instead of demanding success of myself (and then feeling bad if success turns out to be unattainable) I reward myself with a gold star if I judge that I have done my best. I live my life so as to have no regrets.
The difficulty (you might call it a trap) in this approach is in the need to retain a brutal honesty. It may be very tempting to respond to failures by giving yourself the star anyways, with the excuse “How could I have known?”. How could I have known that wouldn’t work? How could I have known that is not what they wanted? How could I have known that my ‘friend’ was a con artist? There may well have been a way you could have known—clues that you missed.
It can be tricky finding the middle road of learning from your mistakes, without falling into the error of denying mistakes or obsessing over them.
This is a good point. It occurs to me that a disproportional number of people in this forum may have had the experience growing up of being the smartest, most promising kid in class. Maybe you were always put into the advanced classes even in subjects you weren’t interested in. As you advance, the competition gets a little tougher, but you learn to push yourself, too.
For the overwhelming majority of people, this cycle has to end, early or late, with the shock of realizing that you are finally out of your league. Some poor bastard had to come to terms with knowing that he was obviously the dumbest physicist on the Manhattan Project, a net drag on the team.
The overwhelming number of people in historical times have died and been forgotten. How many people have lived? And of those, how many could possibly be even assigned a name by any historical records, let alone a place in popular memory?
Q: What do they call the person who graduates at the bottom of their class at medical school?
A: Doctor.
Hell yeah! And may that doctor help to repair this deeply messed-up world!
This doesn’t follow. It might be that the dumbest person is still contributing productively. They’ll just be contributing the least. Moreover, there might be enough variation in specific skill sets that no one is actually the dumbest (although I find this second argument to be weak. The truth is that some people really are better than others). Now it is more plausible that some of the dumber people who also worked less ended up distracting people in the project enough that they were net negatives. But that sort of argument requires that they be not only stupid but lazy and disruptive. In practice, few people with those traits last long in serious research.
This is true. I was thinking, though, of the purely emotional impact on someone who is used to being the smartest person in the room to suddenly finding himself the least smart person in the room. Specifically, it’s a lesson I have had to learn myself—for me, it was a lesson I started learning in high school, and have re-learned the lesson many, many times since then. It’s not a fun lesson.
Maybe you will like this one:
No Regrets, or: Edith Piaf Revamps Decision Theory—Frank Arntzenius
Yes, indeed. I like it very much. Thank you. Though the recommendation might be more useful to people if it had appeared in a decision-theory (Newcomb, expected utility maximization, etc.) thread, rather than here in a practical rationality thread.
Yay—hookup points!
I have mentioned that paper previously here—on the Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory thread.
Perplexed:
Trouble is, “doing one’s best” is an elusive concept. Sure, there are situations where you have a clear goal and see a clear plan of action for how to give your best shot at it, so if you fail despite following it, you can still give yourself a gold star for doing your best. But at least in my experience, typical mistakes and failures in life are nothing like that. Truly critical problems and dilemmas usually can’t be tackled with such a clear and accurate model of reality.
When I reflect on my own mistakes and failures, most of them were due to misunderstandings of the situation and errors of judgment that seem clear in retrospect and would have been avoided by someone more shrewd and knowledgeable in the same situations, but were completely beyond my mental and intellectual powers at the time. Others were due to lack of willpower that seems like “failure to do my best” in retrospect, but back at the time, the necessary level of willpower seemed (and probably was) impossible. In both sorts of situations, I did “give my best” in a very real sense, since nothing else could have been expected from me. But this leads to a tautological interpretation of “doing one’s best” that would imply that nobody should ever have regrets about anything.
C’mon; it’s not as if I forgot about that part. There’s only 26 words in the summary, and 2 of them are “succeed.” What I’m looking for is details on how to find new coping mechanisms now that I’m not indulging in the belief that everything is supernaturally guaranteed to go acceptably well.
I know. I was feeling snarky and defeatist. I apologize for not contributing to the discussion.
I’ve posted my best idea on how to handle this as a top-level comment.
Thanks; apology accepted.