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Comment by skaevola | Hacker News Reader

Is it? I much prefer the interpretation about rugged individualism. It's not surprising to me that that's the interpretation that caught on in America.

This other interpretation seems so cynical. "Yeah, choices in life don't really matter because you always end up at the same place, but I tell people I picked the less obvious choice anyways!"

Sometimes it's actually good to believe in something, you know?

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But that's not at all the message "and that has made all the difference"... It's not that your choices don't make any difference, but that you make them without knowledge of where they really lead, and that you can't go back if you discover that you've made an error.

Even believing in a lie?

Not saying our choices don't matter, but we often attribute too much of our own success to our choices, and not our circumstance. Gives off a distorted view of reality. Coming to terms with the truth would be easier.

I'm not convinced that believing in something false is always bad. For example, there's a concept in psychology called an "internal locus of control", which basically means believing that you have control over aspects of your life. It turns out that having an internal locus of control is very negatively correlated with depression, so it might be that holding these beliefs actually help people's mental states. Another example would be people turning to religious beliefs to cope with tragedy.

Anyways, I'd like to believe that the belief isn't false. I do believe we do exert some substantial control over our own destinies.

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