tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post115335636928068510..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Happiness, the dataUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153698555372683312006-07-23T19:49:00.000-04:002006-07-23T19:49:00.000-04:00Since there are people who satisficy and optimize,...Since there are people who satisficy and optimize, there must be an evolutionary basis for both strategies. Maybe the optimizers were always going a little bit farther to find new hunting grounds, while the satisfied guys were quite content to wait till things improved nearer to home.<BR/>I'm not really sure it's possible for a person to act contrary to his own "happiness" -- if a person doesn't think an action would ultimately have a positive result, they won't act that way in the first place. That so many people struggle to be happy, makes me wonder if the world is biased in favor of unhappiness! But at least the unhappy state of the world leads to progress.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153425809781127252006-07-20T16:03:00.000-04:002006-07-20T16:03:00.000-04:00An excellent post, M. P! Lots of food for thought....An excellent post, M. P! Lots of food for thought. Having suffered myself from being a rootless optimizer for many years- well into my thirties- I can testify to the virtues of the other approach. And I don't believe it is necessarily an extreme, it is more like Moderation or the Golden Mean, because it ties satisfaction to the real world and its possibilities, rather than a simplistically imagined ideal world.<BR/><BR/>A sidenote: much of the meat of your standard recovery program consists of participants comparing notes on this sort of thing, regardless of the religious tinge that these programs may exhibit.<BR/><BR/>Second sidenote: I wonder if you are familiar with the writings of Walter Kaufmann, the Princeton philosopher & translator of Nietzsche, in particular his personal rubric of virtues consisting of love, courage, honesty and <I> humbition</I>, where humbition is ambition tempered with an appreciation of reality, and a preference for choice and action over romantic feeling.<BR/><BR/>Of course in this, as in all things, one has to be able to execute the precepts in question. But it is never to late to start.lily palmerstonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12781464070656607284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153408751470561482006-07-20T11:19:00.000-04:002006-07-20T11:19:00.000-04:00Happiness must come from knowing to a ceratin exte...Happiness must come from knowing to a ceratin extent when it is wiser to be the optimizer and when to be the satisficer. That would be being the ultimate "optimizer", no? Or it could be said that, the river of truth (I don't know who originally said this) runs between the banks of the two extremes.<BR/>calAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153406590199640462006-07-20T10:43:00.000-04:002006-07-20T10:43:00.000-04:00I have personally always looked at happiness from ...I have personally always looked at happiness from the yin yang prespective. That is, reguardless of how miserable one may seem. It is all relative. Making someone else miserable may give them some degree of happiness, or something else most may consider offbeat, but in a typical sense of measuring happiness, those things won't show up. Like the old saying you can't have good without bad. So I guess my own philosophy is that we are all equally as happy. Its just that happiness means different things to different people. So trying to set some type of guideline for what happiness is will obviously make some people seem more happy than others. What is happines? Not Websters version, but what does happiness really mean?Jim Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16928807367473160898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153403711798440242006-07-20T09:55:00.000-04:002006-07-20T09:55:00.000-04:00Hi there - I just wanted to let as many people kno...Hi there - I just wanted to let as many people know as I can that the new Skeptic's Circle (#39!) is posted and has the best of the web's skeptical writing of the last two weeks. I can be found <A HREF="http://mikesweeklyskepticrant.blogspot.com/2006/07/circle-of-sleuthing-skeptics-39.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>. Hope you enjoy it!Heathen Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01725771056948808724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1153363649951244402006-07-19T22:47:00.000-04:002006-07-19T22:47:00.000-04:00I think something noteworthy is associated with sa...I think something noteworthy is associated with satisficing which isn't directly mentioned, and that is these people (where I would categorize myself) just seem to be able to let shit go. Optimizers seem to look back at the past with regret, while satisficers have a healthy dose of apathy. That may not be included in the strict definitions of the two, but it is a trait I've noticed from the two kinds of people. <BR/><BR/>Furthermore optimizers seem to be very closely related to perfectionists who also are hard to make happy a lot of the time.<BR/><BR/>FlemmingAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com