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patrissimo (is satisficing rational? ):
The academic article: Doing Better but Feeling Worse (if you can access the whole article, could you please send me the PDF? lj at optimizelife com )
I think I tend to be very much a maximizer, irrationally so even... I have had the tendency to ignore my own time preference, search costs and emotional costs, just to fine tune my decisions.
I know many people who say that thinking makes them unhappy. I, OTOH, have learned to be a happy cynic. Or at least, I can control myself and not to think too much if it's depressing me. Going out or listening to the right music can help. (*)
Entertaining counterfactuals tends to make me unhappy. In fact, many counterfactuals can make me get revolted. I used to be the rabid libertarian, crying for all the life and utility lost or "stolen" due to arbitrary human stupidity. But this utility wasn't always realistic: I used to think of this idealized world as a sort of imperative, disregarding the human and political reality... "the world MUST be this way, and I won't be happy unless it is!". This was far from the optimal ideal to have: the ideal that is realizable.
But why do counterfactuals make people unhappy?
If thinking about those who are better off makes you sad, then thinking about those who are worse off than you ought to make you happier. But in fact it doesn't, and not only because people tend to avoid schadenfreude more than they avoid envy (afterall, envy is more socially acceptable): I think this is largely because people tend to look up, not down. This makes sense: looking up means keeping our eyes on the goal, which is how we make progress in life.
(*) Maybe music makes people happy because it is such an effective thoughtstopper.
patrissimo (is satisficing rational? ):A maximizer searches for the best option, a satisficer searches until they find a good option, then stops.
The academic article: Doing Better but Feeling Worse (if you can access the whole article, could you please send me the PDF? lj at optimizelife com )
I think I tend to be very much a maximizer, irrationally so even... I have had the tendency to ignore my own time preference, search costs and emotional costs, just to fine tune my decisions.
I know many people who say that thinking makes them unhappy. I, OTOH, have learned to be a happy cynic. Or at least, I can control myself and not to think too much if it's depressing me. Going out or listening to the right music can help. (*)
Entertaining counterfactuals tends to make me unhappy. In fact, many counterfactuals can make me get revolted. I used to be the rabid libertarian, crying for all the life and utility lost or "stolen" due to arbitrary human stupidity. But this utility wasn't always realistic: I used to think of this idealized world as a sort of imperative, disregarding the human and political reality... "the world MUST be this way, and I won't be happy unless it is!". This was far from the optimal ideal to have: the ideal that is realizable.
But why do counterfactuals make people unhappy?
If thinking about those who are better off makes you sad, then thinking about those who are worse off than you ought to make you happier. But in fact it doesn't, and not only because people tend to avoid schadenfreude more than they avoid envy (afterall, envy is more socially acceptable): I think this is largely because people tend to look up, not down. This makes sense: looking up means keeping our eyes on the goal, which is how we make progress in life.
(*) Maybe music makes people happy because it is such an effective thoughtstopper.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-21 10:55 pm (UTC)Satisficing is irrational because there is no good-enough option, only good-enough-for-now.. for example a computer system should be able to respond directly to my thoughts; Even though it can't yet, I can adjust and improve it so that there is much less time between thought and desired result.
Hence maximizing is long term optimized, doubly (both in making long-lasting improvements to the situation, and in the effect it has on your psyche.);
satisficing is short-term optimized.
"Entertaining counterfactuals" -- how is this related to the first part of your entry?
"But why do counterfactuals make people unhappy?
If thinking about those who are better off makes you sad, then thinking about those who are worse off than you ought to make you happier."
Oh, I see. Adding 'Absolute thought' clause next to 'no angst' and 'positive decisions' clauses. -- Comparing your value to others' value simplistically (regardless of who) leads to superiority/inferiority cycle, so both apply (you can feel inferior for spending the time to look down upon inferiors, for instance), and that kind of comparison is mostly emotion-whoring instead of reality-based.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-22 08:56 am (UTC)Maximizers entertain counterfactuals a lot. Satisfacers avoid thinking about them. Counterfactuals tend to make one unhappy.
Other people are an embodiment of counterfactuals. The more you see them as similar to yourself, the more concrete the counterfactual. This is why you envy / schadenfreude is almost always directed at one's age/gender peers.
Thinking about other people's fortunes tend to make one unhappy, *because* this is rubbing those counterfactuals in your face.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-22 09:58 am (UTC)As a general observation about human behaviour, I agree. My main disagreement lies in -- entertaining counterfactuals a lot is a scientific approach to maximization, and not a particularly effective one. The most effective method I know reserves consideration of counterfactuals for the beginning of the day (planning) and the end of the day (rumination + journalling). This accounts for the fact that excessive immediate maximization tends to reduce value over time (quicker mental burnout). I use this method and I believe
It works as a generalization, but not a universal.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-22 11:00 pm (UTC)ok. Technically "counterfactuals" are possibilities that contradict reality. So counterfactuals can be useful for analyzing the mistakes of the past, but when planning the future, the options we believe to be actualizable are not called "counterfactuals".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-23 02:18 am (UTC)It still applies to planning. You use your knowledge of past options taken/ not taken to choose better options now. What I presented is like a review at the start and end of each day.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-22 10:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-22 10:29 am (UTC)Irrational optimisation seems to be the Engineer's Vice: If an engineer has to choose between dumb-and-slow option (like entering 200 data records from one software type to another) and a smart-and-potentially-fast-but-probably-slower option (like writing some computer code for interacting with the files and converting the records directly), chances are they'll go for the latter option even when it's slower to do so. Such optimisation can quite easily become pathological: I don't consider myself that much of an engineer, but I have, for instance, spent an entire night trying to get a Java frame to refresh properly when resized, rather than sleeping, even though the feature was utterly peripheral to my research!