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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.
