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> You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc. Indeed. And the more of these you can che
by exergy 8y ago
> You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc.
Indeed. And the more of these you can check, the happier and more satisfying your life is likely to get. Why maintain an unused mansion when a small, cozy place will do? Why follow the latest fashion trends when your four year old OCBD is in fighting form? Why eat lobsters all the time when beans are so nutrient-dense and cheap?! Why sit on your ass wasting away at the behest of a mediocre film when you could read a book instead?
The other major difference, of course, is that there are few irrational decisions quite as expensive as buying an idiot pickup truck to show off. Maybe a boat or an aircraft, but not much more.
- mikeash 8y agoWhy have a small, cozy place when you could live in a van down by the river? Why buy clothes when you can drape yourselves in discarded blankets? Why eat beans when you can haunt the dumpsters behind the local restaurants?
- exergy 8y agoReductio ad absurdum
- mikeash 8y agoYes, exactly. Calling it "irrational" to spend resources on pleasure leads to absurd conclusions. Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy.
- exergy 8y agoOf course it's a fallacy. One has to draw a line at some point. To me that line would be a way, way cheaper expense than a big, polluting truck. But it seems that to you, if I can't own a truck, I must go all the way to living in shanties/favelas and dumpster diving.
- mikeash 8y agoHow do you decide where to draw the line? What’s the rational way to put some pleasures under the “rational” category and others under the “irrational” category?
- Noumenon72 8y agoYou calibrate on what people were satisfied with thirty or a hundred years ago, eliminating modern status-seeking. You ask yourself "Would I be horrified to live like that, or do I just think I'm too good for it?" Like there's no way I am going to live as a boarder with another family, but I can definitely make my own lunch.
- mikeash 8y agoWhy thirty or a hundred? Why not two, or ten thousand?