The potential problem is that our cute and trivial irrationalities are seldom the sole instances of that class of irrationality, and indulging in a cute irrationality that you’re aware of may be strengthening a more harmful irrationality of the same class that you’re not aware of.
For example, if “spending time making the song counts equal” shares ‘neural circuits’ with other OCD-like tendencies, or with a need to invent arbitrary aesthetic judgments about trivial things that you’d rather not waste time on if you could consider things from a third-person perspective, then even though the irrationality is trivial and harmless in and of itself, indulging it is harmful because of the side effects of doing so.
I acknowledge that indulging it has a cost (it takes time and I don’t always listen to exactly the song I would most enjoy). But eradicating it would also have a cost (it would also take time, and it would be emotionally uncomfortable at least for a while). I make this tradeoff rationally, even though my rational decision concludes that I should allow myself to be mildly irrational where iTunes is concerned.
The potential problem is that our cute and trivial irrationalities are seldom the sole instances of that class of irrationality, and indulging in a cute irrationality that you’re aware of may be strengthening a more harmful irrationality of the same class that you’re not aware of.
For example, if “spending time making the song counts equal” shares ‘neural circuits’ with other OCD-like tendencies, or with a need to invent arbitrary aesthetic judgments about trivial things that you’d rather not waste time on if you could consider things from a third-person perspective, then even though the irrationality is trivial and harmless in and of itself, indulging it is harmful because of the side effects of doing so.
I acknowledge that indulging it has a cost (it takes time and I don’t always listen to exactly the song I would most enjoy). But eradicating it would also have a cost (it would also take time, and it would be emotionally uncomfortable at least for a while). I make this tradeoff rationally, even though my rational decision concludes that I should allow myself to be mildly irrational where iTunes is concerned.