Note: in its original form, this comment also attempted to predict how this post would fare next year in the 2020 LW review. After receiving feedback from alkjash, I excised this. I still want to find a way to achieve my intentions with such predictions. But it is far more important to maintain a sense of warmth and camaraderie, and my original post failed to do that. For that, I apologize to alkjash.
In my experience, the idea that “no pain, no gain” is false is extraordinarily prominent. To the extent that we have to ask why highly educated Westerners are continuing to make themselves miserable despite almost all life advice givers consistently saying that they should focus on being happy and healthy first?
I have never been seriously told “no pain, no gain,” or encouraged to view pain tolerance as a virtue. Showing pain was an occasion to question whether I was making fundamentally wrong life choices, to the extent that I would hide pain that was an ordinary consequence of challenges or imperfect decision-making in order to avoid the additional irritation of misplaced concern. Even in situations where nothing can be done about a source of discomfort, it is the expected default that everyone involved will agree that “we should make a change,” even when no better option is apparent.
My guess is that if people deal with a lot of misery, it’s not because they prefer it or think it’s instrumentally useful.
One alternative explanation is that people pursuing accomplishment are usually in the midst of a learning process. Trying to refine it to the point of “doing it right” would actually be harder than pushing through the pain to get the basics before refining the details.
For example, I’m currently in the midst of a journey into grad school. I am taking lots of hard classes, working, doing applications, and trying to maintain relationships in the midst of a pandemic. Sometimes, I miss sleep. Sometimes, I fritter away my free time playing online chess. Sometimes, I eat take ‘n’ bake pizza several days in a row. Sometimes, I feel really frustrated with my classes.
The way I see it is that I’ve never tried to do this before. I’m in the midst of figuring out how to balance and accomplish all of life’s demands. If I made “be happy on a day to day basis” my top priority, I think it would be extremely hard to also accomplish my career goals. Instead, I put my career goals first, and aim to have as much happiness as possible within the pressures that puts on me. Sometimes, that amount is “not very much.” But I hope that it will grow with time.
In other words, “sometimes, people trade pleasure in the moment for long-term meaning or investment, and fail to get both because it’s a harder task to be happy and successful than to just be happy or just be successful.”
Your comment is interesting and helpful for me because I have only a small sample of people who don’t follow the “pain is the unit of effort” heuristic to a pathological extent. Perhaps this is explained by my circle of friends being dominated by Asian-Americans who went to the top universities. I definitely didn’t consider what possibly ill effects it might have on others for whom this is not true. So thanks for that information!
However, enough of my brain interpreted your comment as a status move/slapdown that I’d suggest you reconsider doing these reviews, at least in the tone you’re currently doing them. I don’t believe you intended it this way, but your comment comes off as claiming a position of authority and also encourages too much (imo) Goodharting on the LessWrong “top 15 posts” metric. Both of these feel icky to me. I predict you will at minimum annoy a lot of authors if you continue to write these.
I’m going to send you a PM, because I appreciate your feedback and hope to get some further thoughts from you. I’m going to heavily edit my earlier comment, because I appreciate that its tone—quite unintentionally, but also understandably—feels icky. As I said, this is an exploration/experiment, and your experience of it is evidence that I’m not going about it correctly.
No worries! Perhaps it’s worth reminding everyone here that asymmetric justice incentivizes inaction. I hope I didn’t do this just now, I very much appreciate the spirit of your experiment and encourage more people to try to state their beliefs and move fast and break things.
Thank you for being big about it! I plan to use your feedback to refine and improve my “peer preview” concept, not to shelve it. Your forthright but charitable response will be helpful in any success it may achieve.
Note: in its original form, this comment also attempted to predict how this post would fare next year in the 2020 LW review. After receiving feedback from alkjash, I excised this. I still want to find a way to achieve my intentions with such predictions. But it is far more important to maintain a sense of warmth and camaraderie, and my original post failed to do that. For that, I apologize to alkjash.
In my experience, the idea that “no pain, no gain” is false is extraordinarily prominent. To the extent that we have to ask why highly educated Westerners are continuing to make themselves miserable despite almost all life advice givers consistently saying that they should focus on being happy and healthy first?
I have never been seriously told “no pain, no gain,” or encouraged to view pain tolerance as a virtue. Showing pain was an occasion to question whether I was making fundamentally wrong life choices, to the extent that I would hide pain that was an ordinary consequence of challenges or imperfect decision-making in order to avoid the additional irritation of misplaced concern. Even in situations where nothing can be done about a source of discomfort, it is the expected default that everyone involved will agree that “we should make a change,” even when no better option is apparent.
My guess is that if people deal with a lot of misery, it’s not because they prefer it or think it’s instrumentally useful.
One alternative explanation is that people pursuing accomplishment are usually in the midst of a learning process. Trying to refine it to the point of “doing it right” would actually be harder than pushing through the pain to get the basics before refining the details.
For example, I’m currently in the midst of a journey into grad school. I am taking lots of hard classes, working, doing applications, and trying to maintain relationships in the midst of a pandemic. Sometimes, I miss sleep. Sometimes, I fritter away my free time playing online chess. Sometimes, I eat take ‘n’ bake pizza several days in a row. Sometimes, I feel really frustrated with my classes.
The way I see it is that I’ve never tried to do this before. I’m in the midst of figuring out how to balance and accomplish all of life’s demands. If I made “be happy on a day to day basis” my top priority, I think it would be extremely hard to also accomplish my career goals. Instead, I put my career goals first, and aim to have as much happiness as possible within the pressures that puts on me. Sometimes, that amount is “not very much.” But I hope that it will grow with time.
In other words, “sometimes, people trade pleasure in the moment for long-term meaning or investment, and fail to get both because it’s a harder task to be happy and successful than to just be happy or just be successful.”
Your comment is interesting and helpful for me because I have only a small sample of people who don’t follow the “pain is the unit of effort” heuristic to a pathological extent. Perhaps this is explained by my circle of friends being dominated by Asian-Americans who went to the top universities. I definitely didn’t consider what possibly ill effects it might have on others for whom this is not true. So thanks for that information!
However, enough of my brain interpreted your comment as a status move/slapdown that I’d suggest you reconsider doing these reviews, at least in the tone you’re currently doing them. I don’t believe you intended it this way, but your comment comes off as claiming a position of authority and also encourages too much (imo) Goodharting on the LessWrong “top 15 posts” metric. Both of these feel icky to me. I predict you will at minimum annoy a lot of authors if you continue to write these.
I’m going to send you a PM, because I appreciate your feedback and hope to get some further thoughts from you. I’m going to heavily edit my earlier comment, because I appreciate that its tone—quite unintentionally, but also understandably—feels icky. As I said, this is an exploration/experiment, and your experience of it is evidence that I’m not going about it correctly.
No worries! Perhaps it’s worth reminding everyone here that asymmetric justice incentivizes inaction. I hope I didn’t do this just now, I very much appreciate the spirit of your experiment and encourage more people to try to state their beliefs and move fast and break things.
Thank you for being big about it! I plan to use your feedback to refine and improve my “peer preview” concept, not to shelve it. Your forthright but charitable response will be helpful in any success it may achieve.