Be happy (for Decision Theory reasons)

for it would make me so happy too ⋆⟡✿♡

[probably most useful if you don’t want to hear it, see rule of equal and opposite advice]

If you read my post on guilt and pride, you can probably infer that I don’t feel a strong internal sense of self-worth. I do like my own existence and want it to continue, but I don’t really feel in any way “worthy”.

I emotionally feel like I don’t really “do good” through action, but rather that I am “allowing bad things to happen” through inaction or imperfect action. And I am pretty utilitarian, and the world is very big, so I feel like there is so much to be done.

I struggle to change my view, even if it is not a healthy mindset long-term. I still see that, you can feel personally unhappy if it makes other sufficiently happy. And I’m not sure this is right.

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seeing symmetry

But when I look at my friends, I see that they have done all sorts of good things, have things I would want them to be proud of, and yet they too still mostly just feel guilt about not having done more too... and I just want them to be happy.

I would be very willing to feel unhappy for all my friends to feel happy. And yet, to large part, they feel symmetry.

Hmm, something is not quite right…

How could this happen?

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decision theory reasons

All of me and my friends and you¹ are stuck in some loop, where we each would press the button that makes myself feel guilt, but that makes my friend happy and not feel guilt.

Unfortunately, I cannot make you decide that you don’t want to feel guilt. I can try to persuade you, but I can only really decide to not really feel guilt of my own.

But there should be some threshold of evidence you can get from others that you don’t need to feel guilty about every inaction that you take. For it is exhausting.

And given enough evidence, you should then you should truly stop feeling guilty.

For did you really spend time trying to not feel guilty and be happy? How can you really expect your friends to do something you yourself do not do?

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suffering is not the unit of effort

I want the inadequacy of all my inaction to be clear, that I should be doing much more. To some extent, I still believe this.

However, mulling over this fact is probably not the single best thing you could be doing.

People say you should spend some time prioritizing happiness, because it leads to better outcomes. I’m not so sure that is true to be honest. I guess I do believe some people can be very miserable and be very effective.²

But I think it is unreasonable to expect anyone, lest alone your friends, to be doing this.³

It is just far too easy to mistake suffering as the unit of effort.

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bargaining

I did a lot of journalling at some point, some of which I shared with my friends.⁴

If you are like me, you still might think:

i still feel like probably others suffer more and deserve more

but this is not a useful framing.

It sucks that we are in a world of sub-optimal circumstances.

It’s unfair that your circumstance is better than the circumstances of the person in the single most dire of circumstances.

But feeling too much guilt about this in particular is not making their circumstances better.⁵

a kind friend once told me:

everyone suffers more than they deserve, and everyone deserves more and better than they get, and that includes you, and actions taken to alleviate such things are good.

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utility monsters

the same nice friend was also wrote

i’m actually the utility monster and you denying yourself reasonable things that will make you happy for some nebulous potential gain will make me infinitely sad

and i take it to heart.

As a downstream, I want you, the reader, to be happy too.

:)

1. conditioned you are similar enough to me and my friends.
(eg: actually do care about others, maybe feel guilty that you don’t care about others enough, maybe feel guilty that you don’t do enough to help your friends. Maybe you are also a EA and/or GWWC pledger and/or Vegan and/or spend most of your time on directly useful volunteering or work or helping friends and/or other things….)

2. yay for sharing vulnerability slop

3. I guess I feel conflicting feelings on this. I wouldn’t want all my friends to be doing this, and if they were, but I guess I would still want some friends to be doing the thing if it was really good. But I would also want to do whatever I can to make their lives easier and better if I could.

4. Anecdotally, I felt like when playing sports or similar, I would often have played better if I was in a slightly sour mood? But I don’t think all positive and negative valence moods are equal. And I don’t really remember that much from when I was younger I guess.

5. Idk, it is better that, given you do have a good circumstance, that you be happy about it. Though also, don’t feel too guilty about using your resources optimally… sigh