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Comment by cainxinth | Hacker News Reader

It's paradoxical, but a certain amount of irrational behavior can be optimal. Consider the balance between depressive realism (seeing the world so accurately that it eats away at your hope for a better future) and positive illusions, the small lies people convince themselves of that they are better, stronger, smarter, and luckier than they are.

In small amounts, self-deception and avoidance of discomfort are necessary coping mechanisms. Reality is daunting, mysterious, and random; staring into the abyss can cause despair. It's a better strategy to be slightly optimistic, even if there isn't a strong rational basis for that outlook. Taken too far, you get total self delusion, the people who live in their own reality distortion fields, but there are benefits to a modicum of irrational self confidence.

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I would suggest that awareness-related depression is itself irrational. Seeing the world for what it is may expose a lot of net suffering, but to be weighed down by that reality, for which you have little personal culpability, doesn't make sense. We should be able to acknowledge that the world is full of suffering without reflexively experiencing it.

There are ways to be optimistic without being irrational, as well. Simply looking at the world and deciding that there is something minor that you can do is both true and an act of optimism.

I don't know how to remain aware of the general state of things without being depressed by it. Stoicism seems to be the path to take if I can make my way there.

Do people really see the world so 'accurately' that they become depressed? I suspect it's a matter of perspective rather than being a realist.

There was a psych study where each participant was supposed to press a button to make a light flash. The flashes were random. Depressed people were more likely to recognize this while non-depressed people were more likely to believe they had control.

The vast extrapolation of this into "depressive realism" has always struck me as misguided. The test favors depressed people's instincts because they tend to have less belief in self-agency in general. If the light was influenced by the button you might have seen the opposite gap, with the non-depressed being more accurate.

I sometimes wonder if that perspective is largely about what you should be able to influence or control, too.

If you desire control or influence then the world can become a daunting and depressing place. You learn to feel trapped and impotent. If you let it be and learn to focus your energy on your own realm of control, it’s much easier to be at peace (though still challenging at times). If there’s nothing you can do and you aren’t responsible for the awful things you see in the world, should it really consume you? Shouldn’t you focus more on what’s good, and the limited good you can do? Perhaps we should save most of our energy for exactly that.

Fundamentally the act of being disturbed by bad things in the world seems to indicate or require that it should be some other way, or that one should be able to change it. If both aren’t true, it seems futile to be so deeply bothered by it. If both are true, we should devote as much as we can to resolving it. As individuals it seems this is rarely the case, though.

I don’t eat animals. I don’t think other people should, generally speaking, and I think the systems turning them into food are beyond deplorable. If I focus on that I can become pretty upset. If I dwelled on I could easily become depressed. But for what? What can I do but not eat the animals? Encourage my family to eat more vegetables without annoying them? Beyond these small acts, I’m virtually powerless to make a difference. I have to accept that.

There are countless examples like that. The wars ongoing today are make some of the best examples. Fears that global recession will cause mass starvation while I experience what could be summarized as financial inconvenience. Existential questions about meaning and purpose. Personal problems caused by external forces (arguably most of them?). The list is endless and each item, if examined in depth, can make someone extremely sad.

Certainly don’t ignore these things, but don’t become obsessed and engrossed. Don’t feel personally responsible to make substantial changes. Just do the best within your means, and be glad you did.

Without that, I would be so miserable. Before I learned this I was. The world seemed impossibly dark and sad. Today I hold on to the belief that to overcome these things, my perspective needs to be one of positive action and intent. Anything else seems to amount mostly to self-harm, and no one wins.

I generally agree, and want to add that you are not powerless. You can band together with others and then create political wind for the change(s) you desire. Many (most? all?) important changes in society were the direct result of people organizing and campaigning. It is an uphill battle which can be rewarding, interesting, very social, and: successful. :-)

Great point. That’s definitely something in our power to exercise. Even if it doesn’t succeed, the act of working together to strive to make the world better is a signal to others which I’d argue is worth communicating and encouraging.

I am trying to make it easier for us to work together with datalisp.is

In some sense yes. Buddhists talk about the difficulty of acknowledging this “ocean of tears”.

Rather than trying to find bliss in ignorance or aversion, there are practices for holding all of it in your head in a way that doesn’t destroy you.

Many people who see a lot of death find it useful, I find I need it just for everyday life :).

I agree with you, and also with the GP.

Given this is HN, I read that comment as assuming an entrepreneurial disposition, one wants to "change the world". It's easy to imagine how one might want things to be, imagine steps to achieve that, and then crash hard into reality. Regardless of intelligence or diligence, the future is fundamentally unpredictable. I take the GPs point to be that you'll do better in your goals if you are able to pursue them with a measure of naivete versus dwelling on your best expected probabilistic outcomes which are likely to become more pessimistic as you gain experience. This is reflected in the common story from successful entrepreneurs: "if we knew how hard it was going to be we never would have started".

That said, I also appreciate your point about perspective. The ideal is to be able to leverage all your knowledge, instinct and willful drive, but without an emotional attachment to an outcome. Walking the tightrope between apathy and frustration as it were.

It's basically the argument that poets like Keats had, that science was destroying beauty because it "unweaved the rainbow" -- that is the rainbow is less beautiful if we understand why it occurs rather than being magical. I personally can't understand this argument at all -- but then I always enjoyed figuring out how magic tricks worked as well.

Keats made a strawman argument. Take an artist and show them the science. Take an artist and show them some history. Take an artist and show them a different view of something. Does adding different facets of knowledge to something reduce the value of the existing facets?

A scientist looking at a rainbow can enjoy the thought that their eye is at the apex of a cone of light - looking parallel along the side of the cone - and that the projected cone looks like an arc. A field of rays which your eyes only see a fraction of. A scientist can wonder about the infrared and ultraviolet colours that are not visible. A scientist can appreciate that there is no colour magenta in the rainbow - a rainbow does not contain "all" colours. A scientist can wonder about how discrete drops dashing through the air can create a continuous looking rainbow - Monet or Esher would appreciate that. A scientist can delight in creating a rainbow by construction, not only by discovery. A scientist can search for rainbows in unobvious places that they might expect one.

Adding those facets to an artist doesn't take anything away from an artistic appreciation. It is additive to the wonder.

I also try to find out how and why things work, I suppose that's why I became an engineer. Thinking about the subject further, the beauty is not the rainbow, the beauty is the fantasy around it. For an engineer, fantasising can be a means to enhance creativity and out of the box thinking, which can lead to a solution, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, in the end the effect can be explained logically. The journey to come to the conclusion is like a game, and is fun and satisfying. Once the solution is known, their interest will sheft to other effects, rendering the former less interesting.

It’s certainly been observed: “With much wisdom comes much sorrow”.

Regarding the abyss and reality (I’m taking liberties):

- “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do.”

- “I myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”

What you do when “enlightened” is personal, but I don’t think everyone is prepared to handle it in a healthy fashion.

Curiosity and discovery, even when reality is difficult? Or fall into despair?

"Ignorance is bliss" is rather cliched but fairly profound and truthful.

Well if we step aside from scientific conjectures on what makes people depressed, which as far as I know is inconclusive...

We can ask ourselves what makes people depressed and postulate:

I would point at a lack of realized agency as the main culprit. Now if one capable of operating via a realistic fictional narrative it's probable they could simply narrate that whatever happens was intended (internal), or perhaps is for the best (external), or is a challenge for the best (combined). And these modalities can be divided, perhaps unnecessarily, into various different subcategories... I think I could find this comfortable, and I think history has a lot of elements to reinforce this reasoning, one obvious and predominate one being religion, but I would suggest that some biographical works would equally point towards internal and combined narratives.

But what if we imagine someone who can not or does not subscribe to these narratives? There's a huge degree of reduction in their agency automatically. For instance, it's pretty easy to brazenly rationalize some success as a gut feeling, an instinct, an unconscious will - but what if it's just... Luck? As for external: from my perspective it would be fairly comforting to think that some predestiny has been concocted for me, this is just some experiential ride for some greater purpose and I'm an element affecting a much greater end. Or a combined version wherein I am both an agent, and a choice one, being pressed into ascension of spirit by some greater force, again for some greater end...

Or we're a mortal meatsocks who will live some relatively short life and have a very limited effect on the outcomes of the greater picture (except by extremely limited and fixed chance), highly constrained by innumerable forces impeding our ability to enact our wishes regardless of their actual magnitudes.

Personally I feel obliged to exist in the lattermost space, because I hope to seek truth - but I don't discount the other approaches either. But as TFA indicates, and I will corroborate, there is a balance to be struck.

Depressive realism isn’t actually “realistic”, it’s called realism because you think it’s real when you have it.

Similarly “realists” in foreign policy aren’t actually realistic, “effective altruists” aren’t necessarily either, “fast” programs aren’t necessarily fast.

That’s why you should name your identities with more humility.

> depressive realism (seeing the world so accurately that it eats away at your hope [...])

This seems like a lovecraftian argument that humans aren't capable of rational thought without succumbing to the depths of the void, but it doesn't suggest that rationality is suboptimal but rather that too much information is. Like if the world is mostly horrible, perhaps don't read all the news of the horrible stuff - only enough to reduce the potential error in your priors to an acceptable level.

The title (limits of rationality) suggests that perhaps we should give irrationality a try. That's not going to be right though, disordered thinking is never called for. If you reach diminishing returns on time spent thinking, stop thinking and pick. If you need unpredictability, roll a die. There are places where more rationality is not the winning move, but none where irrationality is.

If the results are tangible, is the behaviour leading to them irrational?

Usually, results of behavior produce multiple effects.

One example is short term gain vs long term gain.

Yes I can steal a candy from this baby, resulting in me having a candy I didn't have. Longer term thinking? Maybe not such a good tradeoff.

Criminals are often ridiculed for making bad behavioral tradeoffs.

When opportunists are held accountable for behavior that has given them some long term benefit (like the "breakup" of Microsoft or Amazon federal fines) there is a cultural tendency to celebrate. This is despite the tradeoff having benefitted the opportunist greatly in comparison to the penalty.

I feel like these imbalanced punishment valuations are being depressed by a fear of injustice or economic disaster.

That's the paradox

I completely agree, but this can be supplemented with the observation that in any particular situation there is often still a rational strategy that can be used.

For example, the Buddhists have developed an effectively rationalist response to your example. But a rationalist may still often find that learning the rationalist response to a given situation is too time consuming and it is more effective to do something irrational. Eg, very high risk tolerance in young males as a strategy - if they survive they'll learn to do things the sensible way later on.

It doesn't escape my notice that a large amount of extremely successful people basically live in their reality distortion field.

Obviously some Bias here, where I am sure most of the people that live like this are just complete losers and that makes them even more of a jerk, but there does seem to be something to it, it certainly seems to multiply your success if you can actually get some.

Seeing the world objectively accurately doesn't imply that you should be depressed. Whatever values and emotions you've then applied to that perception after the fact is subjective.

This is the insight of Stoics and Bhuddists.

Easier said than done, though. So in practice you could be right.

> seeing the world so accurately that it eats away at your hope for a better future

Uh? That's a totally irrational behaviour. Whatever the state of the world is, everybody has a finite life, so the rational behaviour is to make the best of it.

Pretty much every direction is a local improvement given _some_ starting point, but if you broaden your overall search, the "more self-deception" direction is gonna be worse.

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