[HN Gopher] You can't optimize your way to being a good person
___________________________________________________________________
You can't optimize your way to being a good person
Author : rntn
Score : 43 points
Date : 2025-01-07 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| unbelauscht wrote:
| You can. It's called therapy.
| unsui wrote:
| therapy will generally recommend removing the need to optimize
| entirely, in order to achieve an emotional homeostasis
| (particularly given that the need to optimize often leads to
| obsessive/compulsive behavior).
|
| so, no
| burgh wrote:
| It does not lead to obsessive/compulsive behaviour if you
| simply optimize your emotional and awareness skills first.
| unsui wrote:
| > It does not lead to obsessive/compulsive behaviour if you
| simply optimize your emotional and awareness skills first.
|
| I don't think you understand what optimizing entails.
|
| Optimization is inherently antithetical to balance, in
| principle.
|
| Optimization is looking for local/global maxima. Balance is
| releasing the need from seeking local/global maxima
| entirely.
|
| I mean, you could _try_ to seek balance through
| optimization. Good luck with that.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Surfing really helps. And maybe if you get it on a
| physical/body level then "going with it" seeps into your
| mind somehow?
| f1shy wrote:
| I think you are overestimating how much an average person
| can change itself. I've seen therapy helping to surmount
| some hurdles, but completely changing a person, in a
| positive way, rarely. Again keyword: average.
| zer8k wrote:
| If you imagine therapy as a way to condition some sort of
| gradient descent on emotions and awareness you can already
| see the problem.
|
| The implication of your statement is you eventually reach
| some global optima. The reality is you become over-aware of
| some things and under-aware of others. This is the local
| optima and you've been caught in a bowl. Therapy "works"
| when your local optima is "good enough" for your own
| definition of done. However, it can often take several
| "bumps" out of those local optima to find it and once again
| you haven't really "optimized" like you are implying.
|
| I would think the focus on optimization of emotional and
| awareness skills would simply lead to more, not less,
| anxiety. It sounds like the same problem people have with
| always being online and being a good "global citizen". In
| this example, like your example, when you feed your
| learning algorithm data about some war in a far off land
| you necessarily reduce the weight on your immediate
| surroundings.
|
| Therefore, I believe it's impossible to "optimize" such
| things without making significant learning losses. Better
| to succumb to the brownian motion of life - imo.
| taeric wrote:
| Sadly, "therapy speak" entering in to someone's life can be its
| own form of getting worse.
|
| Still, I think your point is largely fair and correct. Easy to
| agree with the headline, in that you likely won't optimize your
| way to being a good person. But you can use optimization ideas
| to remove things that are making you not a good person. Indeed,
| the main optimization idea is to measure something, and then
| take action to move it in the direction you prefer. If what you
| are doing isn't moving in that direction, you aren't optimizing
| for it anymore.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm a moral incompletist.
|
| That is, no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be
| listed by an effective procedure is capable of proving all truths
| about moral actions. Either moral systems are complete, or they
| are consistent. Consistency and completeness are requirements for
| optimization, so the idea of moral optimization is dead on
| arrival for me. It's simply not possible, and like the author one
| will drive themselves to insanity over trying.
|
| Edit: I made an unfortunately error in the original version -
| accidentally mixing up consistent with inconsistent. My apologies
| for the confusion.
| f1shy wrote:
| > Either moral systems are complete, or they are inconsistent.
|
| That is interesting. I will be meditating if I can fully
| subscribe... maybe, but still not sure. What I can say, is that
| when I was 20 I thought I could clearly say what was right or
| wrong, then when I was 30, I had to change everything, then
| with 40... so yeah...
| roughly wrote:
| That's a good way to phrase it, and something I agree with. I'd
| heard the phrase "epistemological modesty" a while back, and it
| goes nicely with this - I think a great deal of harm is done in
| this world by people looking at other people suffering and
| either convincing themselves or being convinced that there's a
| greater systemic reason why those people need to suffer.
| Epistemological modesty suggests whatever grand designs we're
| contemplating are likely wrong, moral incompletionism suggests
| they can never be fully right, and both together suggest it's
| immoral to ignore suffering today because of some imagined
| future for some other people.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| >Either moral systems are complete, or they are inconsistent.
|
| So you mean "incomplete or inconsistent"? It sounds like this
| is what you meant.
|
| Then I disagree. Two examples of a complete and consistent (and
| computable) moral system:
|
| * everything is good
|
| * everything is evil
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| d'oh. Thank you, You're right. Edited to reflect what I was
| trying to say.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Belief systems generally lack properties of identity to prove
| anything by logic or rational method.
|
| The first thing you need to prove anything is an objective
| unique definition, which isn't generally possible in the realm
| of the mind for all people, because we generally lack knowing
| or sufficient perception, making comparisons subjective.
|
| There could be optimization towards minimizing objectively
| destructive acts (evil), and the blindness associated with evil
| people , through rational objective practices and measures.
| Evil people being those who commit evil acts while blinding
| themselves in acts of self-violation, to the consequences of
| their actions; repeating them.
|
| Quite a lot of people today are no longer capable and fall to
| delusion because they were indoctrinated with false education
| and frameworks of thinking following a critical turn.
|
| When the insane are running an insane asylum, everyone in there
| dies from starvation, its just a matter of time waiting for the
| right circumstances.
| Clubber wrote:
| I always tell my daughter to be a kind person because there is
| currently an oversupply of assholes. I try to compliment someone
| on something whenever I go out and about. I like your hair, I
| like your shirt, etc. It's the simple things.
|
| The author and their anecdotes seem like compulsive
| behavior/thinking. They'll hopefully get over it once life beats
| them down a bit more. Just be good to people, don't over think
| it.
| f1shy wrote:
| > there is currently an oversupply of assholes.
|
| I say always that, and also of stupids, and the 2 are extremely
| difficult to tell apart.
| matwood wrote:
| > I try to compliment someone on something whenever I go out
| and about.
|
| And if you can't do that, just ask people how are they doing.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > there is currently an oversupply of assholes.
|
| My grandpa used to say, _" There are more horses' asses than
| there are horses."_
|
| Looks like there's a history around that quote:
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/11/15/horses-ass/
| atmosx wrote:
| > I always tell my daughter to be a kind person because there
| is currently an oversupply of assholes.
|
| I'm sorry to hear that. I don't want to come across as harsh,
| but your approach/wording seems condescending, egotistical, and
| ultimately an empty way to live. Wise people learn by observing
| others (as the saying goes), but allowing others to dictate who
| you are reflects a lack of character IMO.
| Dfiesl wrote:
| I'm guessing from your reply that you don't think its
| important to emphasise kindness as part of supporting your
| childrens' growth. If that is the case, what do you emphasise
| if anything?
| atmosx wrote:
| You're guessing wrong.
|
| Kindness has a merit on it's own and ultimately it's a good
| idea for a person to decide what they want to be and take
| responsibility for their choices.
|
| Being kind "because there are too many unkind people out
| there" sounds wrong. I have no idea how they measured the
| "too many unkind people out there" but lets assume for a
| moment this balance shifts - then what? They should be
| unkind because there are too many kind people out there? Is
| this is a simple act of balancing the two sides?
| Dfiesl wrote:
| I think the sentiment is that it feels like theres a lot
| of unkindness in the world and that makes it a worse
| place and you can either be part of that or you can make
| the world a better place by striving to be kind. Thats my
| interpretation anyway.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| "Being a good person" has been a theme in my entire adult life.
| I'm a member of an organization that stresses personal
| improvement (amongst other things).
|
| "Being a good person" can vary, by culture and context.
|
| For example, some cultures prescribe brusqueness, and direct
| communication, while other cultures want us to always "beat
| around the bush," before coming to the point. Think New York
| City, versus Richmond, Virginia.
|
| These are just communication styles, but they can be interpreted
| as attacking, or dishonesty. In either case, it's entirely
| possible for someone to label the other as "not-nice," when the
| opposite may actually be the case.
|
| I have found that fundamental Empathy, and reducing my own self-
| centeredness helps. Accepting others, and always looking for the
| good, before the bad, has helped me.
|
| And, as has been pointed out, the older I get, the less simple my
| relationships are, with others.
| tombert wrote:
| I've been accused of having "pathological empathy" before [1],
| and to this day I refuse to accept that empathy is a weakness.
|
| Being able to fairly easily put myself in someone else's shoes
| is pretty much the only thing I actually like about myself. I
| feel like part of what defines us as a species is learning how
| to understand people who _do not deserve_ us to understand
| them.
|
| In 2023 my iPhone was stolen (story is parent to the linked
| comment). They eventually caught the kid who stole the phone,
| and I refused to press charges. Pretty much everyone thought I
| was dumb for doing that, but I didn't see it that way; I didn't
| see any good coming from throwing a 17 year old kid into jail,
| and I remember how stupid I was when I was 17.
|
| I doubt he's going to have some Les Miserables moment and turn
| his life around, but I would hope that if I were caught for
| something stupid when I was 17 someone else would have extended
| me the same benefit of the doubt. I don't regret it.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906469
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I encounter stuff like that, almost every day.
|
| It's really important for me to feel empathy for others. It
| is not the same as weakness.
|
| I was always told that it's really important to _understand_
| our enemies, and that often includes admitting that they are
| human, and have human motives.
|
| That's not the same as being weak.
|
| I've also been told "If you want to understand rats, talk to
| an exterminator."
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I guess i would have done the same.
|
| Do they throw 17 yos in jail, where you live? If so, do they
| do that over stealing a phone? If so... maybe it would be
| more moral in stepping into a political career and try to
| change some laws?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I knew someone that spent about 18 years in Maximum
| Security adult prison, from 17, because he burgled the
| house of an important person.
|
| One of the smartest people I ever knew. Probably had an IQ
| of 140. He was an HVAC tech, and had trouble staying
| employed.
|
| It totally wrecked his life, and he ended badly.
|
| Yes, we do that stuff in the US.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Was his "trouble staying employed" because HVAC bored him
| out of his mind, or attention span issues, or other
| factors?
|
| The world has plenty of people who are really smart, yet
| are really not "good employee" material.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| He was _angry_. I mean, _really_ angry.
|
| He was also very big and intimidating. That didn't help.
|
| Most of the anger came from prison, and from being
| screwed over, to be thrown in there.
|
| That can make it difficult to get along with others, and
| those who don't play well with others, have trouble
| staying employed.
|
| But it's also possible to transcend that kind of thing. I
| see it regularly. It just takes a lot of work. Painful,
| humbling, work.
| tombert wrote:
| I can't even imagine how much prison would fuck me up.
|
| Between potential sexual abuse, being around a lot of
| violent people, the general disregard Americans have for
| prisoners and convicted felons and their well-being, and
| the "doing what you have to to survive" mentality that
| seems to scar incarcerated people, it would be hard for
| it not to change you as a person.
|
| I really hate how the US handles prisons, and I really
| hate the "lock them up and throw away the key" mentality
| we have here. I hope it's obvious, that's _not_ something
| I agree with.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > He was also very big and intimidating.
|
| I'll bet that was unhelpful at age 17, when our <cough/>
| justice system was deciding his fate.
| tombert wrote:
| Tons of factors in the US for this stuff; which state
| you're in, how they stole the phone (e.g. violent vs. just
| grabbing it off a table when the owner isn't looking),
| prior history, if they're tried as a child vs adult, and
| (let's be honest) if they can afford a good lawyer.
|
| It definitely wouldn't be "weird" to throw a 17 year old in
| jail for stealing an iPhone, particularly in my case it
| would likely have been tried as a "mugging" and I suspect
| classified in the "violent" category (even though I was
| unharmed).
|
| I'd be lying if I said I wasn't _tempted_ to throw the book
| at this kid, it did kind of cause a bit of frustration and
| trauma that I still haven 't completely worked through, but
| I still think I made the right choice, even if everyone
| else in my life disagrees.
| geodel wrote:
| Sure. Though politician more likely to win would be one
| who's hardliner on crime and propose tough laws not
| compassionate ones.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| A friend of mine got life in prison with no parole at 17.
|
| I myself got 6 months jail time at 17 after being subject
| to a highly illegal and corrupt legal racket in a small
| town, when a meth-dealing police officer planted weed on me
| at the scene of an accident. I was also homeless. Good
| times.
| bumby wrote:
| > _I 've been accused of having "pathological empathy" before
| [1], and to this day I refuse to accept that empathy is a
| weakness._
|
| To put it in a different context, the psychologist Paul Bloom
| wrote an interesting book titled "Against Empathy." He makes
| a distinction between "emotional empathy" and "cognitive
| empathy". He is an advocate of the latter, while
| acknowledging that the former can lead to many sub-optimal
| outcomes.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm not terribly concerned with optimizing, honestly. I try
| and make decisions that I'm unlikely to regret, at least
| not for long term. Hurting someone, or not helping someone
| that I should have helped, are things that I end up really
| regretting, and those are the things that keep me up at
| night.
|
| I don't lose a lot of sleep for doing something that I
| genuinely thought was right. If someone takes advantage of
| my empathetic nature and exploits me, I'm not exactly slap-
| happy about it, but I can go to bed knowing that I did the
| right thing, and that person is just an asshole.
|
| Pretty much every single bad thing I've done that I lose
| sleep over has come as a direct result of me trying to
| "override" my natural empathy. I'm done doing that.
| bumby wrote:
| An economists perspective would be that your utility
| function can be whatever you want. According to what you
| said above, you would be minimizing regret, which is an
| optimization goal (although it sounds overly dry in that
| context).
|
| Blooms point is that when we take on the emotions of
| someone else, it has the ability to override our rational
| decision making and that rational decisions tend to lead
| to objectively better outcomes.
| tombert wrote:
| There's probably some truth to this, and I suppose you
| can define "objectively better" as "maximizing your
| optimization goal" or "minimizing the bad stuff" or
| something, quantifying that however you want.
|
| That said, I'm not 100% convinced that my "rational
| brain" actually is better at making decisions that
| minimize regret than just relying on emotions. My
| rational brain is very good at rationalizing shit to
| where I can convince myself that something that's very
| obviously bad is "actually ok when you think about it
| like this...", and then I regret it afterwards.
|
| At least for me, that doesn't really happen when I just
| rely heavily on my emotional brain.
| bumby wrote:
| I think this is all true, with an added nuance:
|
| We typically make decisions with our emotional mind, and
| justify it with our rational mind after the fact. I
| believe Bloom is in the camp that we can override that
| initial emotional impulse, but there are people who
| disagree with him. In any event, if the end goal is
| emotional ("minimize regret") I'm not sure there's much
| to be gained by bringing the rational into it.
|
| The biggest takeaway I had from his book is that being
| overly emotionally empathetic can make us biased and lose
| out on the bigger picture, like making one focused on the
| short-term wants at the cost of longer-term needs. (There
| are other biased aspects, like the fact that we tend to
| empathize more with people who are similar to us, that
| can lead to obvious less-than-great outcomes.)
| tombert wrote:
| > like making one focused on the short-term wants at the
| cost of longer-term needs
|
| Yeah, that's fair.
|
| In my previous apartment, there was a guy named Julius. I
| really liked him, he was very pleasant to talk to, funny,
| charming, and just very nice.
|
| We were in that apartment for three years, and nothing
| too remarkable happened, but the last year, Julius fell
| into some kind of lifestyle that I'm unsure of the
| details of, but ended up with him constantly stoned,
| missing teeth, and evicted from the apartment.
|
| He was still in my neighborhood (homeless as far as I
| could tell), and he would still talk to me, always really
| polite, but with increasingly-yellow eyes, and it made me
| really sad, because I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone,
| let alone someone who was always kind to me.
|
| My wife and I discussed maybe giving him some money to
| try to get back on his feet, but we decided against it
| because we were confident that if we did it would likely
| go to drugs. We really wanted to help, but we were
| afraid, like you said, it would be a short-term want
| overshadowing a long term gain.
|
| If I had genuinely thought that writing him a check for
| $1,000 would dramatically improve his life, I would have
| done it in a heartbeat, but I didn't, and I felt like
| there was a good chance it would fuel a bender that would
| lead to an overdose.
|
| I would occasionally buy him lunch at the nearby Wendy's,
| and I offered to try and help him fix up his resume to
| maybe make him more employable, but nothing ever came of
| that.
|
| We eventually moved from that apartment and I'm not sure
| what happened to Julius. I hope he's ok, but I suspect
| that he's probably dead now, from an overdose or alcohol
| poisoning. A part of me wishes I had given him some money
| to dig himself out, but I think I made the right choice.
|
| I don't lose sleep over my actions on that one; there
| wasn't really anything I could have done much different.
| Sometimes sad shit just happens, and it's no one's fault.
| alganet wrote:
| > I refuse to accept that empathy is a weakness.
|
| It is not. But also, empathy is not the same thing as
| kindness.
|
| Empathy, as you mentioned, is the ability to put oneself in
| someone else's shoes. To imagine what is like to be other.
|
| Fraudsters, cheaters, psycopaths. All of these are great
| empaths. They understand others in a deep level. But they're
| not kind, they are ruthless.
|
| > I feel like part of what defines us as a species is
| learning how to understand people who do not deserve us to
| understand them.
|
| Here you are talking about kindness. I think similarly.
|
| I also believe this is correlated with creativity and
| collaboration skills. To me, there is something about the
| inner act of kind understanding that seems to be a
| _prerequisite_ for advanced communication. Totally out of my
| ass, I'm no psychologist.
|
| > I would hope that if I were caught for something stupid
| when I was 17 someone else would have extended me the same
| benefit of the doubt
|
| Not only you understood that, but you were able to
| communicate something to the kid that is remarkably
| uncommunicable. The kind act is also a kind message, you
| _meant it_ as a message somehow. Not all empaths want or can
| do that.
| tombert wrote:
| I don't think I disagree with anything you said (though I'm
| hesitant to call myself creative).
|
| I guess when I say "empathy", I also mean "feeling
| someone's pain", in addition to the "someone else's shoes".
|
| I think being able to understand someone's situation, and
| see how they're actually hurting, and how you'd hurt if
| someone did that to you, is the part of empathy/kindness
| that is a key ingredient in being a "decent human". I'm not
| perfect at it, obviously, I've acted selfishly plenty of
| times and I regret the times that I have, but it's the
| closest thing I have to a "moral code".
|
| In regards to this kid, I just remember how angry I was at
| everything when I was 17. I hated going to school, I hated
| most of my teachers, I hated most of my classmates, I hated
| girls who wouldn't date me, and I hated guys who wouldn't
| be my friend. I was an idiot. It's a tough age for anyone,
| and I think a lot of people (particularly those in charge
| the US penal codes) forget that fact.
| alganet wrote:
| I meant creativity in a broader sense. Like "using stone
| tools", not "painting and dancing" (but not excluding
| it!).
|
| Kind empathy has been demonstrated in some rats (a highly
| intelligent animal):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyolz2Qf1ms
|
| Note the researchers mentioning a "social contagion" that
| encourages empathy (another one of your kind crying, you
| cry). The goal of the experiment is to detect an even
| deeper kind of empathy (the savior rat is also in high
| stress and must overcome its instincts to save his fellow
| rat).
|
| The thing you did for the kid required much more
| sophistication than that. Some of that sophistication
| comes from or manifests as empathy, in the sense that
| they're correlated.
|
| I'm also saying it in a broader sense than only
| biological in rats. But that's the part that science has
| no data yet, so that's why I say it comes from my
| conjecturing ass.
| martinmakesgame wrote:
| Empathy is I feel what you feel. Compassion is I
| understand what you feel, how can we help? It is usually
| better to aim for compassion because if a person is
| having a crisis you don't want to go down in flames with
| them, compassion gives us emotional space to be helpful
| rather than affected by emotions that can pull us down.
| apprentice7 wrote:
| I really resonate with this sentiment and want to share a
| similar story.
|
| Where I live, supermarkets have a reception where you can
| leave your belongings while you're shopping. The employee in
| charge gives you a numbered card that matches the drawer in
| which they stored your things (all of this is handled by the
| employee) and off you go. No keys or anything, only a drawer
| with a card.
|
| A few months ago I left my backpack at a one of these. 20
| minutes later, as I was about to leave, I went to return the
| card in order to retrieve my stuff and to my surprise they
| gave me someone else's backpack.
|
| I kindly asked what happened and after the manager had gone
| to check the CCTV footage they told me they gave my backpack
| to another customer. The problem? The numbered card didn't
| match the drawer and no one had realised. And there I was
| with the stranger's backpack and no way to contact him.
|
| I agreed to wait until this man came back to return my stuff
| so we could switch backpacks (he had to; his work ID was on
| his backpack). I went home, told my family what happened, and
| they asked me what I told the supermarket staff. "Nothing,
| I'm just gonna wait" I said, and they rambled on about how I
| should have yelled at them and made a scene and maybe even
| made them fire the employee that grabbed my backpack.
|
| I didn't do any of that because I precisely didn't want them
| to fire the poor minimum wage worker. Besides, I understood
| all of this happened because the system of numbered card/open
| drawer is completely broken. It wasn't relly the employee's
| fault; although it was his mistake not checking the numbers
| not matching. Yelling wouldn't have fixed anything.
|
| I got my backpack back the next morning. No one was fired.
| The supermarket manager didn't even apologize for the
| inconvenience though, but ok.
|
| Be kind.
| tombert wrote:
| I think you did the right thing. Mistakes happen, and very
| little good would come out of demanding that this person
| gets fired as a result of one (though the employee probably
| did deserve a bit of embarrassment). The manager probably
| should have apologized, but it's not the end of the world.
|
| I will admit that I get a bit paranoid with those bag-check
| things at the stores here. At the stores in my
| neighborhood, they know me well enough to where they almost
| never even check my card, it would be super easy for me to
| grab someone else's bag. I've never done it, I don't want
| to do it, but I _could_...that 's why I usually don't go
| directly before or after work, because I don't want my bag
| with an expensive Macbook to get stolen.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Those with a lot of introspection can do this, and it can be
| a benefit to yourself and others when used correctly.
|
| In my opinion, you were dumb for doing that, but I can't say
| I haven't done something similar. Given my experience, I
| wouldn't do this again.
|
| My experience involved a crazed homeowner in their 40s
| shooting at me standing on the public sidewalk for taking
| pictures of the neighborhood for a realtor, this was around
| 2009. They thought I worked for their mortgage lender who was
| foreclosing.
|
| The wood fence took most of the damage, but there were kids
| playing in the paved cul-de-sac right behind where I was
| standing. No serious injuries, thankfully, and the police
| confiscated the firearm. I didn't press charges, because I
| empathized as my family had people who lost their entire
| retirements in the fallout from the market and that was real
| fresh.
|
| I would press charges today having had that experience (and
| others). Very few people change themselves unless they are
| forced to through isolated introspection or negative
| circumstance. Being young, or stupid, or a victim, isn't a
| defensible justification. Its letting them off the hook for
| their actions without consequence.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I would press charges, too. Shooting is a lot different
| from stealing.
|
| I might not let people off the hook, because I think it
| might change _them_ , but it might change someone else who
| saw it happen, or, maybe, a family member that depends on
| them.
|
| This goes doubly true, these days, with everything being
| live-streamed.
|
| I get a little nauseous, though, at some of the staged
| crap, out there.
| tombert wrote:
| It's certainly violating and I was pretty upset to have my
| phone stolen, but there's always a risk of someone fucking
| you over for doing nearly anything. I said it in a sibling
| response; I don't lose sleep for doing something that I
| genuinely thought was right. I might be a bit more cautious
| now, but I cannot imagine a scenario where, if a 17 year
| old said he needed to call his mom, that I don't try and
| help _somehow_ , though I'd probably point him to the
| nearest police station nowadays (it's NYC, they're
| everywhere).
|
| Things would definitely be different if it were an armed
| robbery, however. The reason I didn't feel the need to
| press charges is because I genuinely don't think I was ever
| in any "danger". As far as I'm aware, the kid wasn't armed,
| outside of a light shove that was clearly not meant to hurt
| me, there wasn't even physical contact, so I think it was
| just some idiot teenager who snatched a phone.
|
| If they had had a gun or a knife or physically assaulted
| me, I would probably have pressed charges, since that's a
| more-direct public safety issue at hand there.
| losteric wrote:
| > I'm a member of an organization that stresses personal
| improvement (amongst other things).
|
| Do you mind if I ask what kind of organization? I've struggled
| to find active groups focused on values/principles instead of
| hobbies. Or maybe by organization, you mean work?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Won't go into detail. Recovery fellowship.
| lisper wrote:
| > they can be interpreted as attacking, or weakness
|
| I think a more constructive way to look at it is one style puts
| a higher cost on wasting time than and the other style puts a
| higher cost on appearing unsympathetic. I call it "country
| style" (putting more value on appearing empathetic than being
| time-efficient) and "city style" (the opposite). People who
| grow up in one environment or the other often have trouble
| transitioning to the other simply because they don't understand
| that there are different quality metrics in play.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup.
|
| I live in New York, and have a friend from Atlanta. He has
| that "meandering" style, where it can take him a while, to
| get to the point.
|
| I swapped "weakness" for "dishonesty," because that's what a
| lot of New Yorkers think of that style.
|
| He's a really decent chap, but he seems to get a lot of New
| Yorkers pissed at him.
| lisper wrote:
| > I swapped "weakness" for "dishonesty,"
|
| But both of those are unnecessarily uncharitable readings.
| Country style is neither weak nor dishonest, it's just
| different. A lot of country-style people consider city-
| style to be "rude" but it's not, it's just more efficient
| than they're used to.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _For example, some cultures prescribe brusqueness, and direct
| communication, while other cultures want us to always "beat
| around the bush," before coming to the point. Think New York
| City, versus Richmond, Virginia._
|
| Askers vs. Guessers - a fun spectrum to think about, once you
| realize it exists:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/05/askers-...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a great thread[0]!
|
| [0] https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-
| bet...
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This whole article just feels like analysis paralysis. Maybe it's
| me, but I don't think being a good person really requires that
| much thought.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| This was my impression as well, not sure who the article is for
| but it's not me, I don't like feeling patronized.
| nimish wrote:
| Absolutely correct
| trod1234 wrote:
| You can be a good person by minimizing being objectively evil. If
| you can't see things you can't optimize things, which the title
| suggests, but the content itself is lacking in proper support
| while not covering certain obvious aspects, not lacking in
| volume. They were quite mistaken about a number of things.
|
| Objectively, evil people (at least in the past) is characterized
| by a willful blindness to the consequences of said person's evil
| actions. Evil acts being objectively destructive acts.
|
| Altruism and its derivatives as belief systems are evil.
|
| They are value systems where a person's worth is only based upon
| what they give up to others. Under such belief systems, if you
| aren't selfless, you are evil and have no worth.
|
| People use false claims and false justification under these
| systems, of all sorts, to blind themselves and by extension
| result in destructive acts towards the ideal of what the system
| considers good.
|
| To be selfless, and impose that on others, eventually to the
| point of destruction (others), and eventual self-destruction
| (self). Its all quite wrong.
|
| You can't optimize towards truth or beneficial outcomes, if you
| don't recognize the truth or those outcomes. Generally speaking,
| there are far more things that you can do that are destructive,
| than there are those that are beneficial.
|
| Its also of primary important to retain an objective grip on
| reality. Blindness leads to delusion.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| If you think you can't optimize your way into something, your
| objective function or constraints are simply wrong. You can
| always optimize.
| cheald wrote:
| Au contraire, I wear very large shoes, so my step size becomes
| a limiting factor at some point.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| There's always a bigger gradient.
| gitpusher wrote:
| If you spend all your time worrying about how to be a good
| person, chances are you're not being a good person. Just go do
| nice things. Volunteer somewhere. Be of service. And stop
| worrying so much
| jimt1234 wrote:
| 100% ... In my life, I accepted a while back that I don't have
| to solve world hunger or cure cancer in order to be a good
| person - just be as courteous to others as I can; focus on the
| little things. For example, I always park my car in the back of
| parking lots (or otherwise far away) because I'm perfectly
| capable of walking, while others might struggle. Is that gonna
| get me a Nobel prize? Certainly not. But I like to think that,
| sometimes, maybe once per year, a person who struggles with
| mobility, like an elderly person or someone with an injury, is
| gonna struggle just a little bit less because I parked out
| back. No one's gonna build a statue of me for this, but if it
| helps just one person, that's a good thing. And it's really not
| that difficult for me to walk an extra 50 yards. LOL
|
| (Edit to correct spelling: Nobel, not Noble. LOL)
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I selfishly park in the back because I hate circling the lot
| looking for a spot. It may/nor be more time efficient on
| average, but I do not have to deal with that frustration just
| to save a few steps.
| seanhunter wrote:
| In "Meditations", his personal journal, Marcus Aurelius wrote
| "Stop wasting time thinking what it means to be a good man. Be
| one."
| layer8 wrote:
| That sounds like "step 2: draw the rest of the owl".
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I could not disagree more. There are 1000s of examples of people
| becoming better people after forgetting. See "Regarding Henry"
| and Heidegger "Being and time."
| pxeger1 wrote:
| How does forgetting relate to the article?
| MrMcCall wrote:
| The Great(est) Command(ment) is to love God with all our being,
| and then to love our neighbors _as_ ourself, not more, not less.
|
| Being kind, generous, forgiving, helpful, and compassionate are
| some of the ways we can love people, and should, in order to be a
| good person who reaps happiness in their life. God does not force
| us to do this, and freely allows us to choose each virtue's
| corresponding vice, if we wish, instead.
|
| God would, however, prefer us to treat each other well and form
| loving societies, but our ignorance of what good even _is_ , as
| well as or selfishnesses that rebel against lovingly curious
| attitudes and behaviors, are preventing our moving towards such
| positive self-evolution.
|
| We all have the choice to embark on becoming filled with love
| towards each other; a person does not need God's help to choose
| to be good by embracing a more virtuous life that cares for
| others, but the Creator just might be essential for our becoming
| actually transformed into a really, really good person. In fact,
| connecting with the Ultimate Loner just might be an integral part
| of what is possible in the human experience.
|
| And I'm using "just might" as a big ol' hint that that is
| actually the truth of our reality, which is exactly what it is,
| my friends.
|
| The choice to seek, learn, and believe the truth is everyone's
| human right. We each exercise that right every moment of every
| day, for good or ill, in loving care or selfish callousness.
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