Saturday, November 27, 2010

Would women want kids if there was no age limit?

Imagine that age 45 (hence 40 and stress starts at 32) would not be there, and kids could be made at any age. 
How much of the want for children comes from the fear that the time will be too late. 
When talking to women, i hear this theme again and again
Then there is the fear of later regret. "i will sure regret it later", and horror stories about women who later regretted it. (there is a little bit of research claiming that this is not so). What a point is theree to decide according to the fear that may e later it will be regretted. Clearly any decision can be regretted, but the only consideration should be those pertinent to the issue. Do i think children will be good for me? Etc. Not whether I will regret etc.

Another fear drive is the imagination that those without children are lonely and sad at old age. A fear factor. There is research showing that are not entirely lonely do not earn much from the contact of the children at old age. It is mainly those who are entirely lonely who earn much from weekly visits of their children (let alone the fact that many children do it visit their aging parents.....)

A strong missing point here is the stupidity of how we think about decisions. At age thirty one considers having or not having kids. Assume that for the next twenty years it is wish not to have children, but for age 60-70 it has some use, but much lower than the cost imposed in age 30-50.
Our guy decides logically to avoid the disadvantageous deal. Times moves and he is now 60, and now he misses having kids. Should he regret it? Not if he has some common sense. He did exactly what reasons says, he won many years of no interruptions etc. Yet now he does get what he would. Have got for a supreme inflated price of many years. 
It is very human pain this. But this is stupid.
Calculating is later stupidity when deciding and going therefore for a bad deal is doubly stupid.  

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Never allow miserable mentality

Pain and trouble is common to humans,

Yet the full blown miserability personality is problematic on many sides.

It means in a sense giving up on life.

It means exploitation of others.
It means reduce of self

It means bad relationships with others, as good relationships are those where each side is contributing. Being "useful for nothing" is a poor thing for productive relationships



This is the rational approach for life, i always tried to adopt. But i cannot judge poor and miserable people. My advice however, is never allow yourself take this role, it brings bad outcomes.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Having an impulse to what we do not enjoy

This is puzzling. You find yourself ding something very much, without a good reason. And without enjoying it. You saY it is an impulse. Maybe you are right, but it is strange. If you love yorlf you act out of loving a did and out of enjoyment, not out of an impulse that you do not enjoy.

This is true. This is what taught me a happy and smart person, whose first advice for life was " do nkt take life seriously"
Yet, I do not advice fighting ferociously one's impulses. Fighting nature can be worse than accepting it, and it's sometimes stupid. Also, sometimes our impulses are smarter than our logic.

All these distorted and contrived logics for impulses etc. Do not hide the fact that I started with. Remember this! 

Friday, November 19, 2010

Success of courses and tricks unrelated to stated cause

Principles of. Most interventions
You can learn everything
Optimization of a single parameter (inflation of it's effect relative to average)
Supreme skilled teachers,  convinces and recruiters
Placebo
The bunch Of effects
Selection who Goes to course


Seeing a course, an experiment, a teach that practically helps people to improve life!

Does it say there is something in the method etc? (assume there'd are tangible real effects)

Following reasons play central role, making it hard to infer about an interesting effect of the putative method.


1) you can learn many things. Proper training. Enouge effort etc. Can make us master very many things. It is no surprise that teaching and training work. 

2) optimization of a single parameter can influence the whole disproportionally. (relative to it's effect in the regular case) 
Jokes maybe a negligible part of most operations, yet some managers will find jokes to be a central cause of their success and ability to motivate. Some people (I.e. Mark twain) make humor their central way to handle life. Some people manage sleep and rest to have their tanks of energy full most of the time, thereby giving sleep a relatively stronger role than usual (maybe sleep is central for all but this is another story). others use positive thinking. Exercise, timing, etc. As well as many seminar effects taken to an. Unusuall strength by making them central optimized etc. Etc. 
Yet that something can artificially under certain conditions have a huge effect does not mean it is easily, generally central. Even that it has the potential for having huge effect maybe very limited to specific people and under very strict conditions.

3) supreme teachers skills, recruiters, sale mans etc. 
Much of the effect of a course etc. Is about the teachers psonalty etc. It may say nothing about the putative method etc. 
In psychotherapy research shows that it is mostly about the counselor and almost nothing comes out of the method (the difference between most methods of therapy is around zero, it is the effect of the meetings and talking)

4) placebo effect. If taking pills can heal many illnesses (most clinical trials show strong placebo effects, it is our moronic culture that somehow disdains using placebo for healing. I cannot find a more pronounced stupidity)
Having a course is clearly stronger in effect psychologically than a pill.

5) the bunch of effects. Most courses u multiple effects to get the results. It is not the central idea but the combination of many tricks etc. Go figure what is making it work?

5) selection effects. The fact that someone came to a course etc. Is itself meaning a lot. Until you take to the course half of the registrants and commpare to the other registrants you know little.


Skepticism is stupid. If something works who Cares about the reason? 
The whole list of logical troubles prevent easy conclusions about the source of successes. But using the tricks etc. May be a good idea. 

Judging yesterday actions and decisions

What a heavy and sorry baggage it is to stay accountable to justify our yesterday's actions!

I am getting caught up at times with decisions made a year or even twenty years ago.
My mind feels obligated to justify these actions and decisions. So stupid is it. And so deteriorating one's thinking.

I love the kid that I was. I understand reasons for whatever miserable decisions I made when, say twelve years of age. I love this little sorry kid, along with his misaken and terrible decisions.

Yet, should I continue to think along the lines of these old days?

Should i spend an iota of my energy on these histories?
These issues also are very prone to bias. There are such strong emotional incentives to so many directions, and wee are far away from giving a good opinion.
In retrospect we have such a different perspective that any opinion is distorted.


Suckerdom! Living the yesterday is pure irrationality, dream living, and stupidity.
Life is now. To experience, to enjoy, to get the best out of it.
Cassanova tells in his memoirs (fantastic read!) that after he lost all his money he started reflecting on the events of his life.
A living person does not reflect on the past. Present Life is simply too precious to spend it on living a yesterday. (if it is a sorry yesterday in particular)

Between well functioning and happiness

Soceity (and somewhat we...) want us to perform well. To be efficacious, our emotions to be in order etc.

 this is very different from the good life, and sometimes even opposes it.

The good life is about feeling good, about enjoying what we are doing, not about being an efficient soldier in the world.

Functioning well has clearly many advantages, and at times functioning well makes a happy experience. The mistake is when one mistakes functioning well to happiness. (or seeing hard work (Puritanism) or well functioning (normalcy etc.) as a goal in life or a reason to stay alive.)


I noticed the functioning happiness seperation clearly when seeing unhappy countries. you still see the full range of human experience in what feels like entirely healthy functioning. Yet the unhappiness is evident and saddening to look at.

In praise of sour grapes

Sour grapes (the fox who convinces himself that the grapes highe up he cannot reach are sour, the employee who beleives that working hard is a great idea erc.) is irrational,  but can be very useful psychologically. 

Beleiving in work ethics makes the lives of many people much happier. 
I believe very much is self delusion. Psychologists found that positive illusions ar good for mental health. And reality is not so important, yet psychological feelings about ones situation etc. Is crucial to his happiness and mental health. 
The one who successfully convinces himself that he is well off will be happier and healthier. 
only loss is that it leads to practical mistakes (he will not try to improve s objective situation). This loss can be much lower than the psychological and health value of believing he is in great shape. (beliefs have a strong effect on happiness and health. Satisfaction with some parts of life etc. Is more important to happiness than actual state)
    
If the psychological income is higher than the loss, it is very rational. Similar to self illusions that contribute to happiness. Talking about "being rational" here is nonsense and irrational.

No room for bad deals

Bad deals are bad deals. Losing is never a good decision.

But people many times consider it differently. As if a bad deal is not bad. As if it makes the smallest reason to allow oneself to lose. This is stupid.

There are many reasons where allowing to lose makes sense.

Not counting for the small. The general approach to focus on the big and be easy about the small makes sense. (it does not make losing on the small any reasonable, it only justified not paying attention to it)

Not taking life too seriously. And similar reasons.

My issue is with the unstated foolishness opinion that making a bad decision is a possibility. This is entirely stupid. (The only possibility for it to have place is not on its own, but as a false beleif that has psychological usefulness. Because believing in certain untruths can be good for their psychological effects. (see sour grapes post)

Ultimately, no earlier mistake of whatever, justifies taking losses as a reasonable thing. A mistake is a mistake is a mistake. A loss is a loss is a loss. And in a useful life one got to be a fool to think that losing is reasonable. Only eating oneself on losses, fearing them, or guarding too much against them is a mistake. Yet any claim that a loss is not a loss, is examplary foolishness.

the ugly advice of the rich

The rich have options. They can take a stop from work (?). They can do many things.
Same for rich in psychological resources (flexibility, adaptability, ability to convince oneself in stuff, ability to recover from pain, to handle certain emotions, to sleep well etc.)
Same for rich in thinking abilities

The rich tends to tell the poor what he would have done in their place. However, most of the time these ideas are entirely irelevant for the poor. He does not have the money, the job flexibility, the mind tools.

Even when technically able, the poor may not have the overal state of mind enabling him to do and take advantage of these options.



Besides, the rich wants to believe in the high value of his assets and strategies. It makes feel good to think that being rich is very good, even more than it actually is. Sending this message to the poor is doubly ugly. It is like buttressing your false joy with causing pain to the poor.
The poor will naturally. Resort to believing that after all his state is not so bad. Here again, shattering his illusion may not be useful for him (even though truth has value at times).





Ultimately we all want to convince ourselves of the value of what we have, and the lack of value of what we do not have. While it has problems, we also earn much from this as it wants to convince himself for the value of his richness, and the vlidity of the stories he tells hi8mself. Killing useful sour grapes of the poor is inhuman. Maintaining his own stories as to the value of his assets (its good for him to beleive in it but bad for the poor) is ugly


These kinds of advice may actually be inhuman in the sense that they are usually painful because they remind the advicee his general state of poverty aside from his local concern.




These are the folks who are happily (or want to beleive so) in love and terify every single about love. Those who have a stable life and somehow give the degrading message to those who are not so caged that there is a better life out there ( that is by having the delusional happiness of *their* presumed richness).


Ps. All this diatribe against the rich showering advice should not deviate us from the fact that the poor may learn a lot fro the rich. States of mind strategies etc. May actually be more available to. The poor than they feel to him in his contracted mind.
I am ultimately willing the rich to understand the full situation of the poor, yet the poor to understand the tngs he can realistically learn from the rich.