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Comment by bheadmaster | Hacker News Reader

I don't really "believe" in regret.

At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind. Every mistake I've made has brought some information in my mind that wouldn't have been brought otherwise. Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.

The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.

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> At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind.

This. You play the hand you're dealt — and the hand you're dealt includes your "wiring" (brain anatomy, brain chemistry, etc.) and your "programming" (past experiences, etc.). And you try to learn what you can.

(Warning — tangent:) It all contributes to what I've come to think of as The Great Project [0] of helping to build a universe — where our Conway Game of Life moves (or our Boyd OODA Loop moves, if you prefer) are something like the following:

1. Aspire: Imagine some way in which the world could and should be different than (our mental model of) what it currently is.

2. Act — and while doing so: (A) remain open to new evidence and insights; and (B) for purely pragmatic reasons, seek the best for others as we do for ourselves (in part, because to a certain extent we all operate behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance).

3. Learn: Update the mental model of what the world is, and also the mental model of what the world "should" be.

4. Repeat.

[0] https://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_...

sometimes you know you're doing something dumb before you do it, but you do it anyway.

Regret, like everything else, is an evolutionary corollary built out of destiny optimization that allows for counterfactual consideration of painful paths to avoid similar outcomes in the future. In the end, what physics decrees shall occur shall occur and the only thing we can do in those times of war is burn down the ships behind us and continue charging forward in this strange yet charming universe we find ourselves shackled within.

In the end, we must imagine Sisyphus—the final mirror—happy.

Phaedrus, is that you?

On the lighter end I certainly have situation where I'd like to know how it would have played out had I made different choices. It's minor things like I would what would have happened had I asked that girl out 15 years ago, but I was to stupid to notice that she liked me, or maybe I should have applied for that job six years earlier, because they clearly wanted to hire me back then already.

The thing is, every choice I've made, even "the wrong ones", have put me in a better position overall. Perhaps I could be richer, but I don't really care about that. Maybe I just view everything in a positive light and ignore all the good things that could have been, who knows.

I wish I didn't believe in regret but I feel it. I do my best to ignore it and face forward but I still often feel very strong regret for moments daily.

Since high school I wanted a spouse and kids (obviously I imagined a good relationship and good kids)

Now I'm in my late 50s and it's not going to happen. I was always hopeful today I'm going to meet someone. That hope has mostly disappeared.

I regret not trying harder in various ways.

I feel regret too, there are many experiences that, when I remember them, make my heart sink and make me think "I really fucking wish I didn't do it that way".

However, the perspective I've explained keeps me from dwelling on it for too long. What's done is done, I did the only thing I could do with the information that was available. There is no point in punishing myself (unless it's to remind myself of the lesson). That's what I meant by not "believing" in regret.

That perspective often helps me get out of the self-pitying mood.

Let's say you have two advisors constantly giving you advice about what action to take next, and all you ever do is choose between them. Over time you might learn that one of them gives better advice in some situations and the other gives better advice in others. In this weird hypothetical, regret is noticing that you followed the advice of the wrong advisor for the situation, and it turned out especially poorly.

What's going on in your brain is a lot more complicated than this, but I think it's still a meaningful concept?

In that particular example, regret would be justified, as it would be a remainder not to listen to the bad advisor.

However, if, at some point, both advisors decided to leave and never come back, and you started thinking about how one of them always gave you wrong advice, and regretting listening to him, then that regret is pointless.

I also don’t believe in regret. For me, I’ve always listened to my gut and I’ve always made the right choice. I believe in the power of listening to your conscience. Since I’m so attuned to my conscience, if I make a mistake I catch it and take the next chance to rectify it before life moves on. I never allowed myself to feel regret even if it meant pushing myself way out of my comfort zone or disregarding the advice of someone who has a lot of influence on me. It helps that I’m highly disagreeable (in terms of the Big 5 personality traits).

It seems you define regret as: if I went back in time I would do <Y> instead of <X> and of course this is a pointless exercise if you choose to define it this way.

Most people I think define regret more abstractly: back in time, <X> was a _mistake_, it shouldn't have happened, _I_ shouldn't have done it that way and consequences came from it either for myself or those I love.

It seems from your response that you're ok with admitting your mistakes which - by the above definition - sounds like you feel regret.

I don’t think that first statement is pointless, it just shows you have the ability to learn and to admit you’re not perfect. And regret just means you made a choice in the past, that you’d done differently being the person you are today, and you feel it would have made your life better had you choosen differently. But we all make mistakes, nobody’s perfect, I’d expect everyone to have some regrets.

A mistake is something that shouldn't have happened, regret is the same thing, with the addendum of wanting to change it or not wanting it to happen.

Time travel doesn't exist, ergo regret shouldn't exist. I think what op is saying is they don't ruminate on it and I agree, nobody should. unless you have an established pattern, then rumination is self invoked torture.

I think for most people rumination is involuntary

I get what you’re going for but I’ve found that attitude in other people distasteful. First it’s a normal emotion and simply refusing to experience an emotion probably isn’t healthy. It also means you are never really sorry even if you might say it. How can you truly be sorry for something without regretting having done it? It ends up translating to “I’m sorry for the outcome and that it hurt you but if I had to do it all over again I would still do it knowing that it hurt you” and that isn’t really an apology.

A regret is a mistake that you don’t want to make in the future only it’s projected into the past. “I regret having done that because if I went back to the past, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done that”

You’re also inviting other people not to regret their choices even when those decisions negatively affect you.

>I don't really "believe" in regret.

I don't believe in the past. It's much the same if you think about it.

>Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.

If you were to jump in a tardis and were to go to the event that you want to change. 100% of the time you will discover the entire thing was a story in your mind. Something you didn't understand at the time and if you were to 'fix' it. You would end up only harming yourself of today.

>The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.

Regrets of current day are legitimate. Perhaps it's substance abuse, social media. You know in your mind these things are not good. Nobody brags about these things. You know if you were to quit things would be better, but you have current day regrets of not doing so.

Furthermore, perhaps you're a superhuman with no faults. You can also have regrets having not done more. PErhaps you could have started that business or try to get that book published.

>> Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.

As are ones about making an unlikely future come to be. When I find myself sidetracked by those thoughts I now say to myself "Get out of fantasy land where unicorns fart rainbows" and it seems to stop.

Hm... Regret is an emotion, not a logical destination. People don't rationally analyze a situation and deploy the appropriate, justifiable emotion; reacting emotionally is an involuntary step in processing things. You might be able to control your outward response, but that's not the same thing. Someone can experience regret for decisions that they wouldn't change in hindsight.

No Ragrets

The ability to make good decisions comes from wisdom.

Wisdom is gained from making bad decisions.

Agreed. Also sometimes regret comes out naturally and this is a swift and effective way to deal with it.

Same here. I have screw ups, definitely some big ones, but I don’t understand regret as a concept.

I regret regretting!

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