I’m just not one of those people who enjoys “deeper” activities like reading a novel. I like watching TV and playing video games.
I’m just not one of those people who likes healthy foods. You may like salads and swear by them, but I am different. I like pizza and french fries.
I’m just not an intellectual person. I don’t enjoy learning.
I’m just not into that early retirement stuff. I need to maintain my current lifestyle in order to be happy.
I’m just not into “good” movies/music/art. I like the Top 50 stuff.
I’m curious why you chose these particular examples. I think they’re mostly quite bad and detract from the reasonable point of the overall post. The first three, and the fifth, I’d characterise as “acquired tastes”: they’re things that people may come to enjoy over time, but often don’t currently enjoy. So even someone who would grow to like reading novels, and would have a better life if they read more novels, may be totally correct in stating that they don’t enjoy reading novels.
The fourth is a good example for many people, but many others find that retirement is boring. Also, predicting what your life will look like after a radical shift is a pretty hard problem, so if this is the sort of thing people are wrong about it doesn’t seem so serious.
More generally, whether or not you enjoy something is different from whether that thing, in the future, will make you happier. At points in this post you conflate those two properties. The examples also give me elitist vibes: the implication seems to be that upper-class pursuits are just better, and people who say they don’t like them are more likely to be wrong. (If anything, actually, I’d say that people are more likely to be miscalibrated about their enjoyment of an activity the more prestigious it is, since we’re good at deceiving ourselves about status considerations).
I’m curious why you chose these particular examples.
I wanted to think of better ones but was having trouble doing so, didn’t want to dedicate the time to doing so, and figured that it would be better to submit a mediocre exploratory post about a topic that I think is important than to not post anything at all.
More generally, whether or not you enjoy something is different from whether that thing, in the future, will make you happier. At points in this post you conflate those two properties.
I agree, and I think it would have been a good thing to discuss in the main post. “I know that I don’t like salads now; I think I could develop a taste for them, but I don’t want to or can’t bring myself to do so” is definitely a different thing than “I don’t like salads now, so I’m not going to eat them” and “I don’t like salads now and I don’t think that I could ever like them”.
By discussing the above point, I think it would have the benefit of being more clear about what exactly the problem is. In particular, that “I know that I don’t like salads now; I think I could develop a taste for them, but I don’t want to or can’t bring myself to do so” is a different problem.
The examples also give me elitist vibes: the implication seems to be that upper-class pursuits are just better, and people who say they don’t like them are more likely to be wrong.
I definitely don’t mean to imply that this is true. I personally don’t think that it is. But I do see how the examples I chose would give off that vibe, and I think it would have been better to come up with examples that demonstrate a wider range of “I know what I like” attitudes.
I definitely don’t mean to imply that this is true. I personally don’t think that it is.
Your perception of them stays similar when you flip the signs? (“I don’t like watching TV, I only read novels” becomes “yep, that person is probably mistaken about what they want/like.”)
In the example of TV vs. novels, no, but there are other examples where I do think so:
Live-like-the-locals vacation vs. tourist vacation
Doing home improvement stuff yourself vs. paying someone to do it for you
Biking everywhere vs. having a car
On balance, I’m actually not sure of what I think about whether “high class” things tend to provide more happiness than “low class” things, so I spoke too soon in the previous comment.
I’m curious why you chose these particular examples. I think they’re mostly quite bad and detract from the reasonable point of the overall post. The first three, and the fifth, I’d characterise as “acquired tastes”: they’re things that people may come to enjoy over time, but often don’t currently enjoy. So even someone who would grow to like reading novels, and would have a better life if they read more novels, may be totally correct in stating that they don’t enjoy reading novels.
The fourth is a good example for many people, but many others find that retirement is boring. Also, predicting what your life will look like after a radical shift is a pretty hard problem, so if this is the sort of thing people are wrong about it doesn’t seem so serious.
More generally, whether or not you enjoy something is different from whether that thing, in the future, will make you happier. At points in this post you conflate those two properties. The examples also give me elitist vibes: the implication seems to be that upper-class pursuits are just better, and people who say they don’t like them are more likely to be wrong. (If anything, actually, I’d say that people are more likely to be miscalibrated about their enjoyment of an activity the more prestigious it is, since we’re good at deceiving ourselves about status considerations).
I wanted to think of better ones but was having trouble doing so, didn’t want to dedicate the time to doing so, and figured that it would be better to submit a mediocre exploratory post about a topic that I think is important than to not post anything at all.
I agree, and I think it would have been a good thing to discuss in the main post. “I know that I don’t like salads now; I think I could develop a taste for them, but I don’t want to or can’t bring myself to do so” is definitely a different thing than “I don’t like salads now, so I’m not going to eat them” and “I don’t like salads now and I don’t think that I could ever like them”.
By discussing the above point, I think it would have the benefit of being more clear about what exactly the problem is. In particular, that “I know that I don’t like salads now; I think I could develop a taste for them, but I don’t want to or can’t bring myself to do so” is a different problem.
I definitely don’t mean to imply that this is true. I personally don’t think that it is. But I do see how the examples I chose would give off that vibe, and I think it would have been better to come up with examples that demonstrate a wider range of “I know what I like” attitudes.
Your perception of them stays similar when you flip the signs? (“I don’t like watching TV, I only read novels” becomes “yep, that person is probably mistaken about what they want/like.”)
In the example of TV vs. novels, no, but there are other examples where I do think so:
Live-like-the-locals vacation vs. tourist vacation
Doing home improvement stuff yourself vs. paying someone to do it for you
Biking everywhere vs. having a car
On balance, I’m actually not sure of what I think about whether “high class” things tend to provide more happiness than “low class” things, so I spoke too soon in the previous comment.