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Comment by discojesus | Hacker News Reader

"Arrange your life around what you like. That’s it! You’re done. You’ll be happy forever."

Who would have thought that heroin addicts had the secret of life?

Not everything is pleasurable - sometimes you just have to suck it up and take out the f*cking trash. :P

I like taking out the trash because it makes my place less smelly. Like, there's a logic to doing some of those things beyond just "somebody told me." But in other situations you find yourself doing things maybe you don't have to do.

Taking out the trash is not intrinsically pleasurable, like playing Call of Duty, or masturbating. Or masturbating while playing Call of Duty. You take out the trash, study instead of playing games, or save your money for the longer-term effects, which is precisely my point. Saving money sucks in the short term, which by "Hedonistic GTD" would disqualify it for almost everyone.

The article is pretty much contentless fluff, and would be made 100x better if it was just replaced with the quote "do what you love and the money will follow." Still debatable, but at least it has brevity going for it.

Understandably I disagree. Specifically: I'd like you to point out where I say delayed gratification is a bad thing. If you want a house, you save money until you can buy a house. Otherwise you're not getting what you want. But if you have a house, and you have comfortable money, and still you find you're working long hours for the sake of making money and nothing else, then there's a problem because you're not really doing the things you'd like to be doing.

But it's not about money. It's specifically not about money. It's about being happy with your life. And it's less about doing what you love than it is about not doing what you hate. There's an important distinction.

However, I do know people who have reduced their lives to maximize alcohol, pot, and/or video games, and minimize everything else. It wouldn't be fulfilling to me, but it seems to work for them.

Even if they still have a job.

I remember someone on Reddit/IAmA who hated working for others so much that they figured out how to live on 2,000 dollars a year, and worked 1-2 months a year as a laborer. It happens.

I often find getting organized and clean to be intrinsically pleasurable, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The larger problem is the rigid work/play dichotomy that many people feel obligated to stick to.

One of the reasons I wish to amass currency is so that I can wirehead myself if the world still sucks when I reach retirement age (and the surgery is available).

Wireheading's great and all, but really what you're talking about is an IV drip of heroin. Why wait? It's cheap, it's available, and the world sucks now!

In all seriousness, I have a certain grudging respect for the directness of the addict's solution to the Happiness Problem. My indoctrination was thorough enough as a child that I've no interest in it for myself, though.

If I thought that by taking heroin I wouldn't be missing out on anything else in life, I'd have no problem with it. Problem is, I think life is pretty awesome.

I feel bad for people who think that life sucks. It takes a certain willingness to hunt down the flaw in everything, to ignore all the incredible pieces.

it's usually self inflicted.

it bugs me when parents inflict worldviews on their children without grasping the gravity of the fact that could very well be holding it for life. I don't want to be a parent because I take parenting extremely seriously.

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