Two ways we avoid obligations

With the idea of obligation in mind I recently echoed a thought of Mark Twain's on the difference between work and play; here Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying has a few vaguely similar thoughts regarding the nature of laziness:

“There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications for our energy.”

stages, game theory's homo economicus, and time orientation

Right now I'm thinking of Kubler-Ross and her set of responses to loss. I'm wondering: do you think that given an awareness and understanding of these states, being aware of any given state you happen to be in diminishes it's importance? What I'm trying to get at applies to anything that progresses in stages, and in the case of Kubler-Ross it's the following question: if you're actively aware of being in the anger phase, is your anger less important knowing that it will eventually subside to acceptance?

In a strange way, I'm reminded of the Free Rider Dilemma that appears in game theory. Here the individual must decide whether or not to contribute a donation to the development of a shared resource, where if the sum of everyone's contributions reaches a certain threshold then everyone benefits from the resource (say, for example, that a community center can be built with the pooled money), but if the sum of everyone's contributions fails to meet that threshold then no one benefits from the resource because it fails to manifest (and individual contributions are lost). Where perfect knowledge exists, the only case where it rationally makes sense to donate is when your donation will tip the scale (see Len Fisher's example matrix here from his book Rock, Paper, Scissors). In other words, the only donation that makes sense is the last one.

When it comes to things that progress in stages, I'm wondering if the same idea applies: the only stage that matters is the last one. Note that in the reality of the Free Rider Dilemma, perfect knowledge almost never exists (every participant knows that their contribution only make sense if theirs is the one that tips the scale, but everyone makes their contribution at the same time, or at least w/o the knowledge of others), but in the case of development in known stages, perfect knowledge is in fact the very problem.

A couple of thoughts come to mind that address the question. First, this analysis is very close to the idea of backward induction that makes rational and logical sense, and is consistently proven mathematically as the best strategy in a number of decision-making games. Backward induction essentially operates with perfect knowledge of the final stage of a process, and works in reverse to determine an optimal strategy. It leads to counterintuitive but mathematically and logically sound strategy of defecting on the first round of the Centipede game (where a pot of money to be split equally is passed back and forth between two players, increasing in value each time passed, but at any point any player with the pot in hand may defect and take a 60% majority) and the similarly sound strategy of asking for the least amount of reimbursement for lost goods in the Traveler's Dilemma.

But these strategies are highly counterintuitive, and not surprisingly are rarely replicated in actual simulations. So the second thing comes to mind is Phillip Zimbardo's thoughts on time-orientation:

In short, he compares the happiness and success of people with varying focuses on the past, present, and future, concluding that there's some optimal blend of sacrificing the rewards of one for the rewards of the others (think: instant vs delayed gratification). And I think that ties a lot of these problems together. Were we all perfectly future orientated, yeah the homo economicus strategies rational game theory predicts would manifest themselves in real life. And knowing that acceptance is inevitable would make things like anger and fear meaningless and even more irrational (read: in more than just the sense that they are emotions, in the even greater sense that they ultimately wouldn't matter).

But clearly that's not really the best path to success/happiness. That path lies in a blend of future, present and past orientations, where things in the present ultimately do matter and should be appreciated, indulged in, loved, hated, and experienced. Focusing solely on the future, simply enough, means overlooking the meaningfulness of the present. 

(interestingly problem: it means overlooking the past, too. In fact, this might also be the solution to another problem I've been thinking on: the similarly "sound/rational" strategy of ignoring sunk costs. Another time; too much for one post.)

What's your time-orientation strategy??

free will, decision making, and happiness

My philosopher friend over at metaphysical.musings has been doing some thinking on free will and decision-making, which got me thinking about the idea of things we (truly) want. Definitely one of the messiest things about free will is that idea of happiness - happiness in that truest 'life satisfaction' sense we often point to but never really get at. On the foundation that 1) happiness is the aim of free will, and 2) free will is a function of desire, the key question here is kind of in the direction of "what is happiness?' but really it's 'what is it that we truly want (desire)?'. A lot of smart people have certainly done a lot more thinking on it than me, but we're so far from getting at a true comprehension of it that it devastatingly belittles the amount of time humanity has been trying.

One example that describes this is the question from college professor to student: "what do you want from this class?". Naturally the response is "I want an A," to which the professor appeals to the virtue of knowledge for it's own sake, as opposed to the more socially-driven "knowledge for the sake of accomplishing goals in life." One is right to conclude that the answer is driven by a set of social desires, but is it right to conclude that this kind of 'want' is less meaningful, correct, true, than other 'wants'? Well, as the example describes, traditional thinkers like Aristotle say yes: ultimately, happiness is in the direction of holding knowledge for the sake of holding it.

Clearly this is in contrast to the idea of seeking knowledge for the sake of seeking it (read: curiosity), and definitely in contrast to social happiness (BTW when I think of social wants, I'm thinking of many other kinds of social drives besides just 'being able to present yourself in a certain way to others'). Which in some sense, Aristotle and other traditional thinkers point to as meaningful and true, but I think that's my problem with these kinds of frameworks for happiness: there's so many conflicting kinds of desires - epistemological, social, moral, and others - and Aristotle's answer is something vague like 'balance in all things (oh and also BTW this true happiness is only attainable in the right circumstances, of which only 5% of the population has had the fortune of being brought into).' I mean, I very much appreciate the idea of 'what we want is a virtuous, balanced life because this leads to true happiness' but ultimately is what we want 1) what we're driven to do, or 2) what we must strive to do? Underlying questions: is what we want specifically to strive for things? Or do we not want to strive for things?

The problem is that it's a healthy dose of both but we (both humanity and individuals) have no way of grasping what 'both' looks like or even how to reconcile both existing at the same time. I go through a lot of this thinking in the commentary by referencing the examples described in original post, but suffice to say: I don't think we know what we want, but I definitely think happiness and the ideal self has a lot more to do with structures outside our internal sense of virtue, reason, and 'independence.' I think that's why you end up with questions like "if the ideal self is a function of free will, why do we have social systems of rewards and punishments? Why give children rules and boundaries and advantages if the goal is to help the child grow?"

My short answer: it's all (mostly) social.

Aristotle isn't the only one who's put some thought into it and there are a lot more modern ideas on happiness; the 72-yr longitudinal study that came into the public eye earlier this year curated by George Vaillant comes to mind (despite it's limitations: all male subjects, all Harvard educated). Other more traditionally philosophical thoughts too, since in retrospect I've essentially discussed happiness here as deeply as an entry-level freshman. I'm just at a loss to think of any immediately, maybe you have some in mind?

time, perspective, and decision-making

There's a lot of profound thinking packed into these 6 minutes. Phillip Zimbardo of the 1971 Stanford Prison experiments has some very wise things to say about happiness and decision-making in relation to our perspective on the past, present, and future, all solidified in years of behavioral research.

Interestingly enough, he also briefly alludes to the idea I've be taken by lately, that our decision-making is far more outside of our conscious control than we ever care to believe.

And I of course love the key idea that perspective determines our reality, particularly as applied here to forming habits and having the discipline to achieve goals.

the progression of humanity, science, and euhermerism

The video I posted yesterday was created by a wise man who goes by the name QualiaSoup; he and his brother TheraminTrees have been getting some attention over the last few months on Buzzfeed, Neatorama et al thanks to their solid demonstrations of logic and rationality.

It reminded me that I'm quite a strong believer that as humanity progresses, we are only accumulating more and more information about ourselves and our world, and that this is only a natural and good thing. Something of a simple statement, but it has implications on the way we perceive the world and the nature of belief and reality itself. And I don't think it's something quite everyone holds to be true right away, as evidenced by opponents of scientific progress (stem cell research), civil rights (gay marriage) or anything of the sort.

I think there's this idea out there that humanity could somehow be "doing it wrong." This seems to be the basic argument behind "social decay" or "losing our morals" or anything of that nature: everything was much better _____ years ago. As a quick side note, this is one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by nostalgia. It's logical fallacy/fooling ourselves in pure form; a true testament to the integrity of the quote I've used on http://www.projectnostalgia.com: "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson. You find the present tense and the past perfect."

But as the history and reality of the world has shown time and time again, there is only one direction we're going in: more information, and more rights for more people.

What got me thinking on it was a new term I ran into today while listening to the How Stuff Works podcast describing the conditions in Cameroon and other similar climates that allow for huge clouds of CO2 to erupt suddenly from lakes, killing up to thousands of nearby villagers on any given occurrence. For ages these seemingly unexplainable events were thought by villagers to be evil spirits exacting vengeance, or any number of other supernatural phenomena; it's only in the last couple of decades that researchers actually started investigating and understanding what's really going on.

The term is euhemerism, describing the rational/scientific understanding of previously mythical/supernatural phenomena. Euhemerus, circa late 4th century B.C., believed that much of Greek mythology could be interpreted as natural events subsequently given supernatural characteristics. And I think humanity will continue to explain the world around us in similar fashion, indefinitely.

Lots of more thoughts on this, and a similar dynamic with respect to social norms/how we "should" be doing things. Still need to get to that "implications on the nature of belief and reality" part. Soon.

In the meantime, another great video: