4 ms·

How Bad Are Things? (2015)

239 points by barry-cotter 7y ago

drngdds 7y ago
It's frustrating that the author acknowledges that most bad things are probably heavily correlated, but just soldiers on with his point as though they're independent random variables. Poverty in particular is heavily correlated with, well, most bad things that can happen to a person.
- m463 7y ago
  I know someone who was abused as a child, and was treated for drug addiction. When he went to drug rehab, every single person he talked to had been abused as a child.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Obviously I wouldn't know for sure since I'm not the author. That said, I think the author is saying that bad things can happen to a person, even if the heavily correlated thing has not happened to a person? Again, just taking a stab at what the author meant. Not claiming that I know or anything.
tmaly 7y ago
I always try to remind myself that everyone is fighting their own battles. If someone cuts me off while I am driving, I come up with alternate explanations. Maybe that person really has to use the bathroom etc. Rather than think a person is just being evil. Something I have noticed before, the physical demeanor of people you see walking around you has a psychological effect on yourself. Many years ago this came up in a conversation I was having with a retired Math professor.
- yuy910616 7y ago
  this is water huh?
- psweber 7y ago
  I started using that approach in late adolescence as I was discovering that everyone has an internal world that I can't understand. I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and operate under the assumption that there is an underlying reason for hostile behavior. Over the years, I got seriously burned personally and professionally by malicious people that I made excuses for in my head. It hardened my heart and caused me to be less understanding and forgiving of people. Now I've come full circle. I'm back to your approach, but I play more defensively. People likely have a reason for being malicious that is out of their control. I don't need to judge them, but I do need to protect myself and my loved ones.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    > Now I've come full circle. I'm back to your approach, but I play more defensively. People likely have a reason for being malicious that is out of their control. I don't need to judge them, but I do need to protect myself and my loved ones. Yeah, if I get killed by someone who was not malicious, I'm just as dead as if I get killed by someone who was. To use the aggressive driver example: I don't need to be angered or insulted by someone cutting me off, but if I end up near them down the road, I'm going to try to change lanes or otherwise try to not end up near them. I think the main thing is to not be angered by the (assumed) maliciousness. I've seen people generate a lot of anger because they assume every slight is intentionally aimed at them: they cut me off just to piss me off; they didn't wave back because they hate me &c.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd make a great therapist), but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. When I come across people who are willing to dismiss others' concerns, either by dismissing them as oversensitive, or dismissing them as evil, I wonder if they've internalized this logic too. And if they have, what their experiences are to cause them to conclude that dismissal is the reasonable choice.
- gbuk2013 7y ago
  > less than what they hoped their life would be Now this, to me, would have made a much more interesting subject of investigation.
- DisruptiveDave 7y ago
  > but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. There's a downside to this logic, one of the enabling sort. I consider myself fairly empathetic, but with a very pragmatic tint. I find many, many people take on complaining and a victim/underdog status with an almost hobby-like approach. And I watch how others react, which is exactly as expected: sympathy, attention, allowing those complainers a way out of personal responsibility or true introspection (specifically into their role in managing reactions to external events). It's a never ending cycle. And it hardly ever promotes growth. And almost never results in true happiness (happiness is probably the wrong word...maybe contentedness is better, tho maybe not). So, the same way you wonder about those people who "dismiss others' concerns," I wonder about those who kowtow to others' words and fail to consider the reality (perceived, of course) behind them. It often feels lazy to me. And short-term thinking. Truly caring about another person sometimes means forsaking short-term "feel goods" for long term growth.
gbuk2013 7y ago
> The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. Ethnicity and wealth are physical things. Happiness is an emotion you feel. They are related only insofar as one depends on physical things for happiness. This is a spiritual issue really (not to be confused with religion or any sort of belief) and this is something that our (otherwise very successful) modern way of life is very much neglecting.
- shaki-dora 7y ago
  Scott wasn't trying to make an incredibly racist point that being white is intrinsically linked to happiness, but merely that being white in the US is considered privileged, a.k.a. "playing life on easy".
  - newswriter99 7y ago
    Try being white trash in a poor part of the south and get back to me how "easy" things are.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - g_sch 7y ago
      I think that if you read GP more generously, you'll see that they weren't implying that being white guarantees success. Rather, the point of privilege is that, all things being equal, people who appear white will on average face less conscious/unconscious discrimination and thus fewer obstacles over the course of their lives.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    When the game has heavy RNG, even those playing on an easier difficulty will lose often.
joenot443 7y ago
For those new to Scott Alexander's (SSC) writing, definitely check out his About/Top Posts page (https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ https://slatestarcodex.com/about/) and check out whatever you find interesting.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
burrows 7y ago
Pop-psychology on the frontpage? We're hackers and founders.
- qntty 7y ago
  Pop-psychology actually seems pretty common among hackers and founders.
- SeanAppleby 7y ago
  Understanding problems in society is relevant in deciding what to hack and how to build a company that fits into that society.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I appreciated the article - being I'm a coder with a psych minor, and like the article points out - there's lots of way for people to be different, and there's good odds that a lot of types will be in any particular circle.
- whatever_dude 7y ago
  This is more about data than half the top posts on HN.
- jerf 7y ago
  There's no psychology in that post, pop or otherwise.
- ehvatum 7y ago
  This article is a reminder of why I hack and found: existing to be happy does not result in happiness. We're evolved to be happiest when we carve it out from a hostile world, I think.
hpoe 7y ago
I might disagree with his conclusion which seems to be that things are just as bad now, or worse than they were say 70 years ago. I would argue the problems we face have changed, and that some of the big problems we dealt with 40 or 70 years ago are substantially smaller now then they were then. That being said that doesn't mean our problems are any less real now but for example, lynching is much less of a problem in the US then it was 100 years ago, and the risk of someone losing a limb during a blogging accident is substantially smaller than the risk of someone losing a limb whilst working with heavy manufacturing equipment. Over course I don't mean this in every case, but across the board many of these conditions have improved. Now it seems that many of the problems we face are much more mental and emotional than physical, That doesn't make the suffering they present any less real for those experiencing it but it does mean in some ways things have gotten better, even if we now face different problems.
- whatever_dude 7y ago
  > I might disagree with his conclusion which seems to be that things are just as bad now, or worse than they were say 70 years ago. I'm not sure it's his conclusion. From the article: > This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so now most people have it pretty good” I think his point is that things might be better, subjectively, but they're still not that good, objectively.
throwayEngineer 7y ago
What should humanity do? The big hitters are Drug addiction and Chronic Pain. I don't have a solution for drug addiction, but I can't blame our generation for not finding a solution. No generation has, and given caffeine addiction, it's extremely hard for others to help with. Chronic Pain needs to end. Between Doctors of Physical Therapy and medications, there are little reason for people to be experiencing chronic pain. Take note that the author was very generic about their meaning on that. The rest of the stuff are significantly smaller and usually involved a traumatic event. What can we do?
- asdf21 7y ago
  Yeah, honestly this article is more of an indictment of the medical fields complete inability to solve most issues, even fairly common ones.
- alecmg 7y ago
  > given caffeine addiction Caffeine is not addictive. Physiological effect of constant coffee drinking go away without side effects after two weeks. It has no (known) negative effects on health or sociological function as actual drugs have. I can't figure out why you mentioned caffeine at all
  - f02a 7y ago
    I think I'm a caffeine addict. If I try to quit caffeine, I'll have flu-like symptoms and migraines for at least a week or two. I can see how that's less bad than a heroin addiction, but isn't addiction somewhat of a spectrum?
- AQuantized 7y ago
  Decriminalization of all drugs. Almost all evidence from history and practical implementation points to it massively reducing the many negative impacts of criminalized drug addiction. Sadly, the influence of the war on drugs continues to kill and cause suffering to many thousands.
- nradov 7y ago
  There is very little that doctors and physical therapists can do to treat certain types of chronic pain. Sometimes root causes are impossible to determine, or we just aren't capable of fixing the damage. Powerful analgesics come with serious risks and side effects. Part of the problem is that we don't even fully understand how pain works.
asdf21 7y ago
Isn't that just entropy in action... There are a zillion ways for any system to be disordered, and only a handful that we would consider "ordered". Life is constantly fighting entropy, and always eventually fails. It makes sense for disorder and even misery to be fairly common. I do tend to dismiss the concerns of others, simply because I've come to the conclusion that I cannot fix the vast majority of the problems of other people. I can't fix any of the issues mentioned in this article, for instance. I'd rather work on my own problems, and the issues of people closest to me, because then I have some chance.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  "I do tend to dismiss the concerns of others, simply because I've come to the conclusion that I cannot fix the vast majority of the problems of other people." Sorry, I don't understand this logic. I cannot solve world hunger but I recognize that poor food distribution is a problem. Similarly, I cannot solve someone's traumas but I can recognize they've been traumatized. Are we operating on different concepts of dismissing someone's experiences or concerns?
  - asdf21 7y ago
    What good does recognizing someone's traumas do, exactly? The leading therapeutic modality, CBT, specifically says not to do this -- to basically ignore and try to get past trauma by attempting to live a better life moving forward, rather than rehashing the past and perpetually opening old wounds.
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      From what I understand, your interpretation of CBT is not correct. I understand that the first step of CBT is to analyze a patient as a whole to decide what behaviors need to be adjusted. This requires recognizing that trauma happened and its effect on the behavior of the person. Is this incorrect?
      - asdf21 7y ago
qntty 7y ago
> This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” One of these is not like the other. You can have it good by being white and still have real problems.
- gedy 7y ago
  I read that as in response to someone white/Group X being told "What are _you_ complaining about?"
  - qntty 7y ago
    Right, but he seems resistant to recognizing the valid point that some people really do have it better because they're white or whatever.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      What's there to "recognize" about the statement that "some people really have it better because they fall on the right side of a normal distribution"? To a good degree of approximation, the talk about one group having it better than other is a discussion about one group's mean and/or right tail being greater than the other's. The statement you want the author to recognize is equivalent to that in a probability distribution, some samples really do fall on the right side of the mean.
      - ryanbrunner 7y ago
        When talking about groups, that makes sense. I think one of the points that the author is making is that it doesn't make sense to apply this to individuals within this group. "White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it. "You have it better than me because you're a white male" doesn't, because there's a significant amount of overlap in the bell curves of "better off" (regardless of how you define it) between white males, and black women (to give an example). It's more-or-less the same argument as assuming that any given man is physically stronger than any given woman because on average men are stronger.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
The author probably knows this, but I think a lot of these bad things are dependent one one another. Probably all of them. Poverty (food stamps) probably correlates strongly with all of abuse, especially physical, pain, prison, cognitive disability, other disability, schizophrenia, and old age. Dementia is heavily associated with old age as well. Which is not to say that things are great, but I think the badness is fairly concentrated on a relatively smaller set of people than the script's results indicate.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Agreed. Problems like this compound like there's no tomorrow. As someone who lives somewhere that's very blue collar and works somewhere very rich and white collar the difference is incredibly stark. Where I live you see the signs that some people have problems, people living out of cars, the occasional mobility scooter avoiding the potholes on the sidewalk, houses will go unrepaired for long periods of time you stand in line to check out at some store and there's fat people, the cashier sounds like she smokes a pack a day and you can't tell if she's 30 or 50, the police don't blink twice when someone's smoking weed in public or rolling a stop in a rusted out 30yo shitbox, people bitch about not having enough money for all the shit you have to do in life, Walmart is just another place to shop. Then I go to work and there's not a single car over 15yo sitting in the gridlock, there's women carrying brand name shopping bags and out jogging on the sidewalk, ever lawn is meticulously maintained and every window and door is cleaned daily, nobody smokes, nobody is overweight, nobody has regrettable tattoos, nobody is carrying beer while riding a bike, bored cops feel the need to check out anyone who dare drive something that's economically out of place through the wrong neighborhood on a weekend (the help don't come on Sunday), people bitch about other people using plastic straws and bags, Walmart is regarded as someone you don't go if you can avoid it, etc. What bothers me isn't that the urban wealthy (definition of wealthy to include upper middle) don't understand the problems the urban and rural poor (no, I don't live in the boondocks, I commute in from a small rust-belt-esque city) but that they act like they do and that they have all the solutions.
  - cheerlessbog 7y ago
    Do the people in that second group consider themselves happy and fortunate? In some poor areas people have particularly strong social ties - in part because they haven't moved to the area. That can have real value.
apo 7y ago
> I work in a wealthy, mostly-white college town consistently ranked one of the best places to live in the country. I wonder to what extent the setting in which the author works selects for people who will feel isolated/regretful and therefore develop the kinds of problems s/he encounters. > The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. The underlying assumption is that white and wealthy must not be worse off than the alternative. But what if the environment itself creates problems that less affluent environments don't? - Children can afford to move out of the house and so they do - Couples can afford to get divorced, and so they do - Individuals can afford to experiment with behaviors that lead to addiction, and so they do - Families don't need their children economically, so they spend their time in the care of others or alone There can be no regret without choice. The more money you have, the more real choices you get to make. And the more ways you can come to regret those choices.
- dack 7y ago
  It seemed like the author was just refuting the idea that particular groups "have it good", and using the classic "has it best" group as an example. So I think they'd agree that wealth sometimes creates new unique problems that make them unhappy, but that certainly doesn't mean that it counteracts all the positives. I mean, which is worse - you get divorced and then are alone (but have money), or you can't afford to get divorced, so you live in an abusive relationship your whole adult life?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > The underlying assumption is that white and wealthy must not be worse off than the alternative. It's less an assumption and more a nod towards the meme of white male privilege - the most popular case of “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” on Tumblr, and on the Internet in general. > But what if the environment itself creates problems that less affluent environments don't? It probably does. Scott touches this in the paragraph that starts with: "This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old days.", but he doesn't expand on it. However, it reminds me of another of his articles, "Burdens"[0], which expands on this more in context of people suffering from depression. > There can be no regret without choice. The more money you have, the more real choices you get to make. And the more ways you can come to regret those choices. Caveat: not all (or even most) misery comes from regret; moreover, this line of thinking applies more to society at large than individuals. For instance, if you're born in a developed world, into a family that embraced urbanization, it's quite likely that through no fault of your own, you won't get much care from the family in your old age and end up in care of strangers or alone. -- [0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/
mberning 7y ago
I think it paints an unnecessarily bleak picture due to many of those circumstances not necessarily being life long afflictions, although some could be. I think you also need to account for the severity of the impairment. For example, I had a fairly traumatic experience and definitely had some issues for maybe 6-12 months, but I completely got over it. That is very different than somebody with severe PTSD that never subsides.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
I loved the 20 person simulation the author used. His point about universal suffering reminds me of another point by Sam Harris: "Everyone you know is practically drowning in suffering" SH brings up this point to contextualize our own suffering. It's hard for us to socialize with others and make connections, but if we consider other peoples' plights and struggles, it gives us more perspective and may aid us to talk, converse, and collaborate with them. I tried to apply this in driving. If I am honked at, I usually feel it's not justified and it slightly harms my mood. Therefore, when I see other drivers doing something unsafe or unskillful, I try to spare the horn and simply slow down myself. This is likely another suffering, late person with back pain, bills weighing on them, possibly phone addiction or something urgent going on, and the least I can do is slow down and give them space. Looking around us and appreciating the suffering of others is a very useful exercise.
- Allower 7y ago
  That would make sense if other people's suffering was equal to my own. But its not, their problems are dramatically easier to solve, ameliorate, w.e. Not to mention, being aware of someone elses problems does absolutely nothing to help them, it might make you more depressed, but it sure as fuck wont HELP you.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  I do the same! If someone gets angry with me I (try to) feel compassionate - they must be late for a job interview, their partner yelled at them at breakfast etc. It completely changes my perspective - the worst thing that happened to me that morning is someone cut me off. I've taken this further and I try to harvest waves in my commute. I consciously let people merge, etc and I'm always glad if I get a wave. I aim to get one on every trip. I hand them out too. Its increased my mental wellbeing by the time I get to work.
- equalarrow 7y ago
  Driving, for me, is a massive exercise in being mindful. My goal, however, is not to mind the suffering of others but instead, to take those inputs, not associate with them, and let them go. For instance, some driver doesn't want to get in the queue at the back, so they drive up and cut over in front of me or a car or two up. There are a lot of thoughts on that that could go through your mind. These range from "no fair" to "jerk" to other things. But, I've come to realize the best way to deal with that is to detach. You can either not let the person in and then go down that range of thoughts/emotions (primarily negative) or just let them in and not dwell on it. Observe it (assuming it's not jeopardizing anyone's safety) and let it go. This is a very simple exercise, but it has the potential to be carried on to larger experiences in life. I'm not here to judge if you don't think it is, I just know what makes sense to me. And this is not something I have come up with on my own. This and similar techniques have been highlighted in quite a few books I've read, people I've listened to at various events. This for me is a much deeper discussion and I think completely personal to the experiencer. I tend to fall on the side of being mindful of yourself and the struggles/suffering of existence are of your own doing and choices (obviously, this is a simplistic statement, but to me true on a high level). I've been listening/watching quite a bit of Naval Ravikant podcasts/videos. I think he has a lot of good wisdom to digest and he definitely covers this subject. I highly recommend anything of his you come across. https://nav.al https://nav.al
jackmaney 7y ago
The author is assuming independence in each of these events, and I highly doubt that, eg, P(depressed | on food stamps) == P(depressed)
hirundo 7y ago
If people wore an accurate net misery score on their foreheads, I wonder if it would reduce or increase identity based conflict? Would we look at the scores of people at the intersection of disadvantaged groups, see that they were suffering a lot more, and increase our support for them? Or would we see that putatively privileged classes suffer about as much as others, and conclude that people are people, and our sympathy and support for each other shouldn't focus on demographics? I wonder if an objective misery score is possible, maybe with a portable continuous brain scanning device. I'd think that the data is in there, if only we had the tech to extract it.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  I dont think this article has any reading which says that privileged classes suffer the same as others. They still suffer, but the ways and chance of people in non white non affluent groups suffering is higher. The point was just to not be black and white about privilege as the only source of suffering.
- mistermann 7y ago
  An interesting variation of this idea: a crowdsourced website that performs an incredibly vigorous and intellectually honest evaluations of discrete situations, encompassing as many possible perspectives as possible. Resulting in something like: "From perspective <x>, this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity X>." "From perspective <y> this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity Y>." "Unfairly", and all other terms, would require very strict definitions. The crowd sourcing part would come in by people pointing out logical flaws or missing perspectives. I wonder if this might improve people's ability to more "correctly" evaluate reality, as well as make the boundary between matters of fact and matters of opinion more obvious, rather than all opinions being little more than a mishmash of subconscious heuristics based on personal experiences and a partial understanding (likely unbalanced) of the relevant facts. I would consider this an attempt at finally applying the same academic rigor (that has yielded such success) in the hard sciences to the far more complicated soft sciences. Does anyone know of any undertaking that does this in any way?
owenversteeg 7y ago
So, the author basically draws the conclusion that Things are Very Bad, (primarily) backed by a number of statistics, as well as his own perspective seeing people in bad situations as a psychiatrist. I - strongly - disagree. First of all, like the author says, these statistics are most likely inflated, "since I took them from groups working on these problems and those groups have every incentive to make them sound as bad as possible". Secondly, even if you take the numbers given as fact, this is incredibly bad statistics (like most statistics not done by actual statisticians.) Specifically: Most of these problems go hand in hand. If you were physically abused as a child, there's a higher chance you were also sexually abused as a child. If you were abused at all, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you have chronic pain, there's a higher chance you'll become a heroin addict. If you're a heroin addict, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you went to prison, there's a higher chance you'll be unemployed after. I have made it one of my main life goals to meet all kinds of people. Really _all_ kinds: homeless people, extremely rich people, devout Muslims, devotees of all religions (Bahá'í, Hare Krishna, you name it), "normal people" around the world, farmers, writers, surrealists, artists, drug dealers, geniuses, idiots, assholes, extremely kind people... One thing I've found is that the good (and the bad) seems to clump. If you get lucky and end up with some of (good friends|good family|good partner|good financial situation|good career|good health|happy) you will often end up acquiring some of the others. The reverse also works. If you had a terrible childhood, that often leads to crime/drug use, which can lead to prison, which most always leads to further problems in life. So, in a room of 100 people, maybe: - 9% were abused as a child - 1% were in prison - 7% were depressed - 2% were addicted to heroin/meth/prescription pills - 10% were very unhappy with their life - 7% had chronic pain ...but 90/100 had none of the above, because most of those overlapped. I'm not saying that the world is perfect, but rather that many negative things clump. TL;DR: If one person in 10 is sad, one is poor, one is sick, one is a heroin addict and one is in prison, that doesn't mean 6/10 people have one of these issues... perhaps 9/10 are fine, and it's just one person who's got all of those issues. Which of those 10 do you think is going to a psychiatrist? Further note: In America, the cycle of poverty/jail/addiction can trap entire families for generations. In other countries, government assistance can take the worry of housing or medical care off your back either permanently or long enough to work on other problems.
rawTruthHurts 7y ago
>This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, Imagine that 70 year old lady he describes lacking access to proper health care or shelter. Not that I am unsympathetic, but first world problems are first world problems, get enraged at your own peril.
rofo1 7y ago
> This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting > about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old > days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But > people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so > now most people have it pretty good”. I don’t think we > have any idea how many people do or don’t have it pretty good. We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century? We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy. At least 90% of all problems I've seen between people are unnecessary and result mostly of lack of compassion and selfishness. There are problems that are truly unsolvable and tragic - where death or significant health issues are involved - but other than that, people create problems themselves either by being selfish or being the victim of someone else's selfishness. What would it take to say "I am satisfied with what I have; with the friend near me; with the family near me; with the material possessions that I have; with the values that I own; and I don't need anything else" ? Everything else being finite, why would our appetites be infinite? I know some rich people - they are unbelievably unhappy people. You probably can't tell due to their lavish lifestyle, but if you are close to them - you'd know. And they have it all for god knows how many generations henceforth. Really amazing, once you think about it.
- D-Coder 7y ago
  > We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century? > > We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy. I completely agree with your first point. I think your second point may be wrong; rather, people have very little knowledge of how things used to be, so every stubbed toe feels cosmic. (Remember your history class that mentioned the Hundred Years War? WTF does the name of that war tell you???)
  - g_sch 7y ago
    I understand what you're driving at, but I think war is actually a pretty good example of something that's become significantly worse over time. It used to be fought on a small scale. The biggest battles had just a few thousand casualties. Today, war is total, nothing is off-limits, and global conflicts reach levels of destruction unimaginable in the 15th century. And a few nations possess enough firepower, in nuclear and conventional form, to essentially end human existence on earth if they choose.
QuadrupleA 7y ago
There does seem to be a certain "external things are the reason for my misery" thread through all these stories that bugs me, even though it's an interesting and well-written piece. These patients, with the exact same circumstances, could have found some peace by accepting and working within their constraints - the 70-year old woman could accept the situation with the granddaughter and find other outlets for caretaking or being with children, or tried a legal way to address the situation, accepting the outcome whether it works or not ("I took my best shot, the rest is up to fate"). The man with PTSD could learn techniques, CBT perhaps, to cope with the anxiety triggers and expand his comfort zone in the world again, found ways to deal with his anger so it didn't turn into violence, etc. Not saying these circumstances are easy, but everyone's life has particular challenges and avenues of growth, and in the grand scheme that's often a good thing. Everyone's life has constraints, without exception - I can't teleport instantly anywhere I want on the planet by snapping my fingers; if I spend my days lamenting that and thinking that I should, I'll be miserable. On the one hand yes we should help each other better our external circumstances; but on the other hand I believe most external things aren't truly necessary for contentment, and indeed the belief that they are causes more misery than the circumstances.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Ideally she would tell the son he can go to rehab or get turned in to the authorities.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Getting turned into the authorities often doesn't really accomplish anything. Here's a typical case: Meth addicted neglectful mother has dozens of reports from several sources of varying credibility (e.g. reports from an ex-boyfriend are immediately discounted as likely retribution). Each time, Child Welfare Services shows up checks that there are no bruises on kid, food in the cabinet ,and a bed for the kid and then leaves. In the good cases, CWS gets lucky and shows up while the mother is using and the child is removed. In the medium case, someone (e.g. a drug dealer or boyfriend) will hit the kid and leave a mark, which will cause a more thorough investigation that may turn up evidence of drug use. In the bad cases the kid manages to put together enough self-sufficiency to not die and will end up addicted/pregnant/dead/homeless/in jail by the time they are 18. [edit] Don't let the above discourage you from reporting this! The best case happens only because of reports from multiple sources force CWS to keep showing up. Almost all kids that get removed from bad situations before kindergarten happen because people care and report.
foobar_ 7y ago
Happiness is like the shadow that always evades.
- ambicapter 7y ago
  "Le bonheur est la plus grandes des conquêtes, celle qu'on fait contre le destin qui nous est imposé" ~Albert Camus (Happiness is the greatest of conquests, one which we achieve in spite of the fate which is imposed on us)
Maxbunny 7y ago
Love the blog, but this is one of the weaker pieces. There is ABUNDANT data on this topic, which all point to the large majority of people being mostly content with their life. This result holds true even for low income countries, but not for the poorest countries. Even without looking at data, the author should consider that his patients come to him to specifically talk about their problems, and not what is going well in their life. It gives him a skewed perspective.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  Can you link to that abundant data and provide evidence for your claim?
  - 3minus1 7y ago
    In Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman talks about an experiment where they had people answer a quick questionaire about their immediate emotional state throughout the day, kind of like sampling. Something like are you stressed, angry, happy, etc. at this very moment. If I remember correctly, the results showed that most people are fine most of the time, but a small number of people are in constant emotional distress.
  - Maxbunny 7y ago
    Sure, have a look here: https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction The second chart of the page shows the share of people who say they are either very happy or mostly happy, click on "Map" in the bottom right corner to see all the countries for which data is available. Sample: US: 90 percent say they are happy China: 85 % Ethiopia: 63 %
- mnu 7y ago
  He did consider this: >I have three non-mutually exclusive theories for this: > 1. The people who come to a psychiatrist are disproportionately the unhappiest and most disturbed. This is obviously true to some degree. But I got the same sort of people when I worked in general medicine and primary care. Even the people who come to a primary care doctor are going to be a little biased towards the sorts of conditions that produce or result from sickness, but people were still much worse off than I thought. Later on he runs a sample of twenty people to get an idea of the type of issues others around us might be facing using the statistics he provides earlier on.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 7y ago
3. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact this unhappy, but they never tell anyone except their psychiatrist all of the pieces necessary to put their life story together. When I moved back home during my divorce and lived with relatives, I got to see all kinds of stuff going on that I had no knowledge of when I used to visit, keep in touch by phone, etc. I moved out, to an apartment a mile or two away, and went back to getting the whitewashed view of their lives. I don't think they were even trying to particularly hide things from me. It just didn't come up. It just wasn't possible to convey every bit of minutiae about their lives to me all the time when I wasn't there seeing it firsthand. You typically have far more limited information about the lives of people around you than you imagine. You don't really know what your neighbors are doing. You don't really know what your coworkers and boss do all day. Etc. Think of the endless news stories where the neighbors are simply shocked that their next door neighbor was a drug dealer for the Mafia, a serial killer, etc. We often know people a lot less well than we imagine we do.
nradov 7y ago
I have literally heard wealthy people complain at length about the difficulty of finding a reliable gardening service for their mansion. Should I listen to their concerns without judging? Or is it reasonable to dismiss their misery? (This is a rhetorical question.)
- munchbunny 7y ago
  I'll bite, just to answer the non-rhetorical part of your rhetorical question. There are four interesting aspects of what you wrote. 1. The implied belief that there is a cosmic measuring stick for how good someone has it, but, more importantly, that this measuring stick matters. The judging accomplishes nothing, other than to let the person judging feel internally superior for a moment. The more relevant issue is letting that judgement cloud any rational decisions you need to make later with respect to the people you're judging. 2. If you're making policy decisions, then this cosmic measuring stick of suffering would matter (like taxing gardening services, I guess?), but are you making policy decisions? 3. Do you need something from them, and does that inform how you'll behave towards them regardless of what you actually think of them? Startup founders who didn't come from rich backgrounds experience this all the time around VC's. But it's not really possible to keep the functional motivation and the desire to fit in entirely separate. 4. Are they just complaining because shared lightweight misery makes for fun socialization? People who aren't rich do that too. The content may just be a function of their environment.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Taking it 100% serious- why would you dismiss that they are literally expressing to you a problem they are experiencing? It's useful to know they have a problem, are willing to pay for someone to make the problem go away, and are wealthy and thus can pay a lot!
dang 7y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124

239 points by barry-cotter 7y ago

It's frustrating that the author acknowledges that most bad things are probably heavily correlated, but just soldiers on with his point as though they're independent random variables. Poverty in particular is heavily correlated with, well, most bad things that can happen to a person.

m463 7y ago
I know someone who was abused as a child, and was treated for drug addiction. When he went to drug rehab, every single person he talked to had been abused as a child.
bilbo0s 7y ago
Obviously I wouldn't know for sure since I'm not the author. That said, I think the author is saying that bad things can happen to a person, even if the heavily correlated thing has not happened to a person? Again, just taking a stab at what the author meant. Not claiming that I know or anything.

tmaly 7y ago

I always try to remind myself that everyone is fighting their own battles. If someone cuts me off while I am driving, I come up with alternate explanations. Maybe that person really has to use the bathroom etc. Rather than think a person is just being evil. Something I have noticed before, the physical demeanor of people you see walking around you has a psychological effect on yourself. Many years ago this came up in a conversation I was having with a retired Math professor.

yuy910616 7y ago
this is water huh?
psweber 7y ago
I started using that approach in late adolescence as I was discovering that everyone has an internal world that I can't understand. I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and operate under the assumption that there is an underlying reason for hostile behavior. Over the years, I got seriously burned personally and professionally by malicious people that I made excuses for in my head. It hardened my heart and caused me to be less understanding and forgiving of people. Now I've come full circle. I'm back to your approach, but I play more defensively. People likely have a reason for being malicious that is out of their control. I don't need to judge them, but I do need to protect myself and my loved ones.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  > Now I've come full circle. I'm back to your approach, but I play more defensively. People likely have a reason for being malicious that is out of their control. I don't need to judge them, but I do need to protect myself and my loved ones. Yeah, if I get killed by someone who was not malicious, I'm just as dead as if I get killed by someone who was. To use the aggressive driver example: I don't need to be angered or insulted by someone cutting me off, but if I end up near them down the road, I'm going to try to change lanes or otherwise try to not end up near them. I think the main thing is to not be angered by the (assumed) maliciousness. I've seen people generate a lot of anger because they assume every slight is intentionally aimed at them: they cut me off just to piss me off; they didn't wave back because they hate me &c.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd make a great therapist), but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. When I come across people who are willing to dismiss others' concerns, either by dismissing them as oversensitive, or dismissing them as evil, I wonder if they've internalized this logic too. And if they have, what their experiences are to cause them to conclude that dismissal is the reasonable choice.

gbuk2013 7y ago
> less than what they hoped their life would be Now this, to me, would have made a much more interesting subject of investigation.
DisruptiveDave 7y ago
> but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. There's a downside to this logic, one of the enabling sort. I consider myself fairly empathetic, but with a very pragmatic tint. I find many, many people take on complaining and a victim/underdog status with an almost hobby-like approach. And I watch how others react, which is exactly as expected: sympathy, attention, allowing those complainers a way out of personal responsibility or true introspection (specifically into their role in managing reactions to external events). It's a never ending cycle. And it hardly ever promotes growth. And almost never results in true happiness (happiness is probably the wrong word...maybe contentedness is better, tho maybe not). So, the same way you wonder about those people who "dismiss others' concerns," I wonder about those who kowtow to others' words and fail to consider the reality (perceived, of course) behind them. It often feels lazy to me. And short-term thinking. Truly caring about another person sometimes means forsaking short-term "feel goods" for long term growth.

gbuk2013 7y ago

> The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. Ethnicity and wealth are physical things. Happiness is an emotion you feel. They are related only insofar as one depends on physical things for happiness. This is a spiritual issue really (not to be confused with religion or any sort of belief) and this is something that our (otherwise very successful) modern way of life is very much neglecting.

shaki-dora 7y ago
Scott wasn't trying to make an incredibly racist point that being white is intrinsically linked to happiness, but merely that being white in the US is considered privileged, a.k.a. "playing life on easy".
- newswriter99 7y ago
  Try being white trash in a poor part of the south and get back to me how "easy" things are.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - g_sch 7y ago
    I think that if you read GP more generously, you'll see that they weren't implying that being white guarantees success. Rather, the point of privilege is that, all things being equal, people who appear white will on average face less conscious/unconscious discrimination and thus fewer obstacles over the course of their lives.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  When the game has heavy RNG, even those playing on an easier difficulty will lose often.

joenot443 7y ago

For those new to Scott Alexander's (SSC) writing, definitely check out his About/Top Posts page (https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ https://slatestarcodex.com/about/) and check out whatever you find interesting.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

burrows 7y ago

Pop-psychology on the frontpage? We're hackers and founders.

qntty 7y ago
Pop-psychology actually seems pretty common among hackers and founders.
SeanAppleby 7y ago
Understanding problems in society is relevant in deciding what to hack and how to build a company that fits into that society.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I appreciated the article - being I'm a coder with a psych minor, and like the article points out - there's lots of way for people to be different, and there's good odds that a lot of types will be in any particular circle.
whatever_dude 7y ago
This is more about data than half the top posts on HN.
jerf 7y ago
There's no psychology in that post, pop or otherwise.
ehvatum 7y ago
This article is a reminder of why I hack and found: existing to be happy does not result in happiness. We're evolved to be happiest when we carve it out from a hostile world, I think.

hpoe 7y ago

I might disagree with his conclusion which seems to be that things are just as bad now, or worse than they were say 70 years ago. I would argue the problems we face have changed, and that some of the big problems we dealt with 40 or 70 years ago are substantially smaller now then they were then. That being said that doesn't mean our problems are any less real now but for example, lynching is much less of a problem in the US then it was 100 years ago, and the risk of someone losing a limb during a blogging accident is substantially smaller than the risk of someone losing a limb whilst working with heavy manufacturing equipment. Over course I don't mean this in every case, but across the board many of these conditions have improved. Now it seems that many of the problems we face are much more mental and emotional than physical, That doesn't make the suffering they present any less real for those experiencing it but it does mean in some ways things have gotten better, even if we now face different problems.

whatever_dude 7y ago
> I might disagree with his conclusion which seems to be that things are just as bad now, or worse than they were say 70 years ago. I'm not sure it's his conclusion. From the article: > This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so now most people have it pretty good” I think his point is that things might be better, subjectively, but they're still not that good, objectively.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

What should humanity do? The big hitters are Drug addiction and Chronic Pain. I don't have a solution for drug addiction, but I can't blame our generation for not finding a solution. No generation has, and given caffeine addiction, it's extremely hard for others to help with. Chronic Pain needs to end. Between Doctors of Physical Therapy and medications, there are little reason for people to be experiencing chronic pain. Take note that the author was very generic about their meaning on that. The rest of the stuff are significantly smaller and usually involved a traumatic event. What can we do?

asdf21 7y ago
Yeah, honestly this article is more of an indictment of the medical fields complete inability to solve most issues, even fairly common ones.
alecmg 7y ago
> given caffeine addiction Caffeine is not addictive. Physiological effect of constant coffee drinking go away without side effects after two weeks. It has no (known) negative effects on health or sociological function as actual drugs have. I can't figure out why you mentioned caffeine at all
- f02a 7y ago
  I think I'm a caffeine addict. If I try to quit caffeine, I'll have flu-like symptoms and migraines for at least a week or two. I can see how that's less bad than a heroin addiction, but isn't addiction somewhat of a spectrum?
AQuantized 7y ago
Decriminalization of all drugs. Almost all evidence from history and practical implementation points to it massively reducing the many negative impacts of criminalized drug addiction. Sadly, the influence of the war on drugs continues to kill and cause suffering to many thousands.
nradov 7y ago
There is very little that doctors and physical therapists can do to treat certain types of chronic pain. Sometimes root causes are impossible to determine, or we just aren't capable of fixing the damage. Powerful analgesics come with serious risks and side effects. Part of the problem is that we don't even fully understand how pain works.

asdf21 7y ago

Isn't that just entropy in action... There are a zillion ways for any system to be disordered, and only a handful that we would consider "ordered". Life is constantly fighting entropy, and always eventually fails. It makes sense for disorder and even misery to be fairly common. I do tend to dismiss the concerns of others, simply because I've come to the conclusion that I cannot fix the vast majority of the problems of other people. I can't fix any of the issues mentioned in this article, for instance. I'd rather work on my own problems, and the issues of people closest to me, because then I have some chance.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
"I do tend to dismiss the concerns of others, simply because I've come to the conclusion that I cannot fix the vast majority of the problems of other people." Sorry, I don't understand this logic. I cannot solve world hunger but I recognize that poor food distribution is a problem. Similarly, I cannot solve someone's traumas but I can recognize they've been traumatized. Are we operating on different concepts of dismissing someone's experiences or concerns?
- asdf21 7y ago
  What good does recognizing someone's traumas do, exactly? The leading therapeutic modality, CBT, specifically says not to do this -- to basically ignore and try to get past trauma by attempting to live a better life moving forward, rather than rehashing the past and perpetually opening old wounds.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    From what I understand, your interpretation of CBT is not correct. I understand that the first step of CBT is to analyze a patient as a whole to decide what behaviors need to be adjusted. This requires recognizing that trauma happened and its effect on the behavior of the person. Is this incorrect?
    - asdf21 7y ago

qntty 7y ago

> This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” One of these is not like the other. You can have it good by being white and still have real problems.

gedy 7y ago
I read that as in response to someone white/Group X being told "What are _you_ complaining about?"
- qntty 7y ago
  Right, but he seems resistant to recognizing the valid point that some people really do have it better because they're white or whatever.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    What's there to "recognize" about the statement that "some people really have it better because they fall on the right side of a normal distribution"? To a good degree of approximation, the talk about one group having it better than other is a discussion about one group's mean and/or right tail being greater than the other's. The statement you want the author to recognize is equivalent to that in a probability distribution, some samples really do fall on the right side of the mean.
    - ryanbrunner 7y ago
      When talking about groups, that makes sense. I think one of the points that the author is making is that it doesn't make sense to apply this to individuals within this group. "White males are privileged" is a reasonable statement to make with plenty of evidence to support it. "You have it better than me because you're a white male" doesn't, because there's a significant amount of overlap in the bell curves of "better off" (regardless of how you define it) between white males, and black women (to give an example). It's more-or-less the same argument as assuming that any given man is physically stronger than any given woman because on average men are stronger.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago

The author probably knows this, but I think a lot of these bad things are dependent one one another. Probably all of them. Poverty (food stamps) probably correlates strongly with all of abuse, especially physical, pain, prison, cognitive disability, other disability, schizophrenia, and old age. Dementia is heavily associated with old age as well. Which is not to say that things are great, but I think the badness is fairly concentrated on a relatively smaller set of people than the script's results indicate.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Agreed. Problems like this compound like there's no tomorrow. As someone who lives somewhere that's very blue collar and works somewhere very rich and white collar the difference is incredibly stark. Where I live you see the signs that some people have problems, people living out of cars, the occasional mobility scooter avoiding the potholes on the sidewalk, houses will go unrepaired for long periods of time you stand in line to check out at some store and there's fat people, the cashier sounds like she smokes a pack a day and you can't tell if she's 30 or 50, the police don't blink twice when someone's smoking weed in public or rolling a stop in a rusted out 30yo shitbox, people bitch about not having enough money for all the shit you have to do in life, Walmart is just another place to shop. Then I go to work and there's not a single car over 15yo sitting in the gridlock, there's women carrying brand name shopping bags and out jogging on the sidewalk, ever lawn is meticulously maintained and every window and door is cleaned daily, nobody smokes, nobody is overweight, nobody has regrettable tattoos, nobody is carrying beer while riding a bike, bored cops feel the need to check out anyone who dare drive something that's economically out of place through the wrong neighborhood on a weekend (the help don't come on Sunday), people bitch about other people using plastic straws and bags, Walmart is regarded as someone you don't go if you can avoid it, etc. What bothers me isn't that the urban wealthy (definition of wealthy to include upper middle) don't understand the problems the urban and rural poor (no, I don't live in the boondocks, I commute in from a small rust-belt-esque city) but that they act like they do and that they have all the solutions.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  Do the people in that second group consider themselves happy and fortunate? In some poor areas people have particularly strong social ties - in part because they haven't moved to the area. That can have real value.

apo 7y ago

> I work in a wealthy, mostly-white college town consistently ranked one of the best places to live in the country. I wonder to what extent the setting in which the author works selects for people who will feel isolated/regretful and therefore develop the kinds of problems s/he encounters. > The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. The underlying assumption is that white and wealthy must not be worse off than the alternative. But what if the environment itself creates problems that less affluent environments don't? - Children can afford to move out of the house and so they do - Couples can afford to get divorced, and so they do - Individuals can afford to experiment with behaviors that lead to addiction, and so they do - Families don't need their children economically, so they spend their time in the care of others or alone There can be no regret without choice. The more money you have, the more real choices you get to make. And the more ways you can come to regret those choices.

dack 7y ago
It seemed like the author was just refuting the idea that particular groups "have it good", and using the classic "has it best" group as an example. So I think they'd agree that wealth sometimes creates new unique problems that make them unhappy, but that certainly doesn't mean that it counteracts all the positives. I mean, which is worse - you get divorced and then are alone (but have money), or you can't afford to get divorced, so you live in an abusive relationship your whole adult life?
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> The underlying assumption is that white and wealthy must not be worse off than the alternative. It's less an assumption and more a nod towards the meme of white male privilege - the most popular case of “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” on Tumblr, and on the Internet in general. > But what if the environment itself creates problems that less affluent environments don't? It probably does. Scott touches this in the paragraph that starts with: "This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old days.", but he doesn't expand on it. However, it reminds me of another of his articles, "Burdens"[0], which expands on this more in context of people suffering from depression. > There can be no regret without choice. The more money you have, the more real choices you get to make. And the more ways you can come to regret those choices. Caveat: not all (or even most) misery comes from regret; moreover, this line of thinking applies more to society at large than individuals. For instance, if you're born in a developed world, into a family that embraced urbanization, it's quite likely that through no fault of your own, you won't get much care from the family in your old age and end up in care of strangers or alone. -- [0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/

mberning 7y ago

I think it paints an unnecessarily bleak picture due to many of those circumstances not necessarily being life long afflictions, although some could be. I think you also need to account for the severity of the impairment. For example, I had a fairly traumatic experience and definitely had some issues for maybe 6-12 months, but I completely got over it. That is very different than somebody with severe PTSD that never subsides.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

I loved the 20 person simulation the author used. His point about universal suffering reminds me of another point by Sam Harris: "Everyone you know is practically drowning in suffering" SH brings up this point to contextualize our own suffering. It's hard for us to socialize with others and make connections, but if we consider other peoples' plights and struggles, it gives us more perspective and may aid us to talk, converse, and collaborate with them. I tried to apply this in driving. If I am honked at, I usually feel it's not justified and it slightly harms my mood. Therefore, when I see other drivers doing something unsafe or unskillful, I try to spare the horn and simply slow down myself. This is likely another suffering, late person with back pain, bills weighing on them, possibly phone addiction or something urgent going on, and the least I can do is slow down and give them space. Looking around us and appreciating the suffering of others is a very useful exercise.

Allower 7y ago
That would make sense if other people's suffering was equal to my own. But its not, their problems are dramatically easier to solve, ameliorate, w.e. Not to mention, being aware of someone elses problems does absolutely nothing to help them, it might make you more depressed, but it sure as fuck wont HELP you.
cheerlessbog 7y ago
I do the same! If someone gets angry with me I (try to) feel compassionate - they must be late for a job interview, their partner yelled at them at breakfast etc. It completely changes my perspective - the worst thing that happened to me that morning is someone cut me off. I've taken this further and I try to harvest waves in my commute. I consciously let people merge, etc and I'm always glad if I get a wave. I aim to get one on every trip. I hand them out too. Its increased my mental wellbeing by the time I get to work.
equalarrow 7y ago
Driving, for me, is a massive exercise in being mindful. My goal, however, is not to mind the suffering of others but instead, to take those inputs, not associate with them, and let them go. For instance, some driver doesn't want to get in the queue at the back, so they drive up and cut over in front of me or a car or two up. There are a lot of thoughts on that that could go through your mind. These range from "no fair" to "jerk" to other things. But, I've come to realize the best way to deal with that is to detach. You can either not let the person in and then go down that range of thoughts/emotions (primarily negative) or just let them in and not dwell on it. Observe it (assuming it's not jeopardizing anyone's safety) and let it go. This is a very simple exercise, but it has the potential to be carried on to larger experiences in life. I'm not here to judge if you don't think it is, I just know what makes sense to me. And this is not something I have come up with on my own. This and similar techniques have been highlighted in quite a few books I've read, people I've listened to at various events. This for me is a much deeper discussion and I think completely personal to the experiencer. I tend to fall on the side of being mindful of yourself and the struggles/suffering of existence are of your own doing and choices (obviously, this is a simplistic statement, but to me true on a high level). I've been listening/watching quite a bit of Naval Ravikant podcasts/videos. I think he has a lot of good wisdom to digest and he definitely covers this subject. I highly recommend anything of his you come across. https://nav.al https://nav.al

jackmaney 7y ago

The author is assuming independence in each of these events, and I highly doubt that, eg, P(depressed | on food stamps) == P(depressed)

hirundo 7y ago

If people wore an accurate net misery score on their foreheads, I wonder if it would reduce or increase identity based conflict? Would we look at the scores of people at the intersection of disadvantaged groups, see that they were suffering a lot more, and increase our support for them? Or would we see that putatively privileged classes suffer about as much as others, and conclude that people are people, and our sympathy and support for each other shouldn't focus on demographics? I wonder if an objective misery score is possible, maybe with a portable continuous brain scanning device. I'd think that the data is in there, if only we had the tech to extract it.

kazagistar 7y ago
I dont think this article has any reading which says that privileged classes suffer the same as others. They still suffer, but the ways and chance of people in non white non affluent groups suffering is higher. The point was just to not be black and white about privilege as the only source of suffering.
mistermann 7y ago
An interesting variation of this idea: a crowdsourced website that performs an incredibly vigorous and intellectually honest evaluations of discrete situations, encompassing as many possible perspectives as possible. Resulting in something like: "From perspective <x>, this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity X>." "From perspective <y> this group could be considered unfairly disadvantaged by <quantity Y>." "Unfairly", and all other terms, would require very strict definitions. The crowd sourcing part would come in by people pointing out logical flaws or missing perspectives. I wonder if this might improve people's ability to more "correctly" evaluate reality, as well as make the boundary between matters of fact and matters of opinion more obvious, rather than all opinions being little more than a mishmash of subconscious heuristics based on personal experiences and a partial understanding (likely unbalanced) of the relevant facts. I would consider this an attempt at finally applying the same academic rigor (that has yielded such success) in the hard sciences to the far more complicated soft sciences. Does anyone know of any undertaking that does this in any way?

owenversteeg 7y ago

So, the author basically draws the conclusion that Things are Very Bad, (primarily) backed by a number of statistics, as well as his own perspective seeing people in bad situations as a psychiatrist. I - strongly - disagree. First of all, like the author says, these statistics are most likely inflated, "since I took them from groups working on these problems and those groups have every incentive to make them sound as bad as possible". Secondly, even if you take the numbers given as fact, this is incredibly bad statistics (like most statistics not done by actual statisticians.) Specifically: Most of these problems go hand in hand. If you were physically abused as a child, there's a higher chance you were also sexually abused as a child. If you were abused at all, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you have chronic pain, there's a higher chance you'll become a heroin addict. If you're a heroin addict, there's a higher chance you'll go to prison. If you went to prison, there's a higher chance you'll be unemployed after. I have made it one of my main life goals to meet all kinds of people. Really _all_ kinds: homeless people, extremely rich people, devout Muslims, devotees of all religions (Bahá'í, Hare Krishna, you name it), "normal people" around the world, farmers, writers, surrealists, artists, drug dealers, geniuses, idiots, assholes, extremely kind people... One thing I've found is that the good (and the bad) seems to clump. If you get lucky and end up with some of (good friends|good family|good partner|good financial situation|good career|good health|happy) you will often end up acquiring some of the others. The reverse also works. If you had a terrible childhood, that often leads to crime/drug use, which can lead to prison, which most always leads to further problems in life. So, in a room of 100 people, maybe: - 9% were abused as a child - 1% were in prison - 7% were depressed - 2% were addicted to heroin/meth/prescription pills - 10% were very unhappy with their life - 7% had chronic pain ...but 90/100 had none of the above, because most of those overlapped. I'm not saying that the world is perfect, but rather that many negative things clump. TL;DR: If one person in 10 is sad, one is poor, one is sick, one is a heroin addict and one is in prison, that doesn't mean 6/10 people have one of these issues... perhaps 9/10 are fine, and it's just one person who's got all of those issues. Which of those 10 do you think is going to a psychiatrist? Further note: In America, the cycle of poverty/jail/addiction can trap entire families for generations. In other countries, government assistance can take the worry of housing or medical care off your back either permanently or long enough to work on other problems.

rawTruthHurts 7y ago

>This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, Imagine that 70 year old lady he describes lacking access to proper health care or shelter. Not that I am unsympathetic, but first world problems are first world problems, get enraged at your own peril.

rofo1 7y ago

> This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting > about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old > days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But > people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so > now most people have it pretty good”. I don’t think we > have any idea how many people do or don’t have it pretty good. We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century? We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy. At least 90% of all problems I've seen between people are unnecessary and result mostly of lack of compassion and selfishness. There are problems that are truly unsolvable and tragic - where death or significant health issues are involved - but other than that, people create problems themselves either by being selfish or being the victim of someone else's selfishness. What would it take to say "I am satisfied with what I have; with the friend near me; with the family near me; with the material possessions that I have; with the values that I own; and I don't need anything else" ? Everything else being finite, why would our appetites be infinite? I know some rich people - they are unbelievably unhappy people. You probably can't tell due to their lavish lifestyle, but if you are close to them - you'd know. And they have it all for god knows how many generations henceforth. Really amazing, once you think about it.

D-Coder 7y ago
> We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century? > > We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy. I completely agree with your first point. I think your second point may be wrong; rather, people have very little knowledge of how things used to be, so every stubbed toe feels cosmic. (Remember your history class that mentioned the Hundred Years War? WTF does the name of that war tell you???)
- g_sch 7y ago
  I understand what you're driving at, but I think war is actually a pretty good example of something that's become significantly worse over time. It used to be fought on a small scale. The biggest battles had just a few thousand casualties. Today, war is total, nothing is off-limits, and global conflicts reach levels of destruction unimaginable in the 15th century. And a few nations possess enough firepower, in nuclear and conventional form, to essentially end human existence on earth if they choose.

QuadrupleA 7y ago

There does seem to be a certain "external things are the reason for my misery" thread through all these stories that bugs me, even though it's an interesting and well-written piece. These patients, with the exact same circumstances, could have found some peace by accepting and working within their constraints - the 70-year old woman could accept the situation with the granddaughter and find other outlets for caretaking or being with children, or tried a legal way to address the situation, accepting the outcome whether it works or not ("I took my best shot, the rest is up to fate"). The man with PTSD could learn techniques, CBT perhaps, to cope with the anxiety triggers and expand his comfort zone in the world again, found ways to deal with his anger so it didn't turn into violence, etc. Not saying these circumstances are easy, but everyone's life has particular challenges and avenues of growth, and in the grand scheme that's often a good thing. Everyone's life has constraints, without exception - I can't teleport instantly anywhere I want on the planet by snapping my fingers; if I spend my days lamenting that and thinking that I should, I'll be miserable. On the one hand yes we should help each other better our external circumstances; but on the other hand I believe most external things aren't truly necessary for contentment, and indeed the belief that they are causes more misery than the circumstances.

michaelmrose 7y ago
Ideally she would tell the son he can go to rehab or get turned in to the authorities.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Getting turned into the authorities often doesn't really accomplish anything. Here's a typical case: Meth addicted neglectful mother has dozens of reports from several sources of varying credibility (e.g. reports from an ex-boyfriend are immediately discounted as likely retribution). Each time, Child Welfare Services shows up checks that there are no bruises on kid, food in the cabinet ,and a bed for the kid and then leaves. In the good cases, CWS gets lucky and shows up while the mother is using and the child is removed. In the medium case, someone (e.g. a drug dealer or boyfriend) will hit the kid and leave a mark, which will cause a more thorough investigation that may turn up evidence of drug use. In the bad cases the kid manages to put together enough self-sufficiency to not die and will end up addicted/pregnant/dead/homeless/in jail by the time they are 18. [edit] Don't let the above discourage you from reporting this! The best case happens only because of reports from multiple sources force CWS to keep showing up. Almost all kids that get removed from bad situations before kindergarten happen because people care and report.

foobar_ 7y ago

Happiness is like the shadow that always evades.

ambicapter 7y ago
"Le bonheur est la plus grandes des conquêtes, celle qu'on fait contre le destin qui nous est imposé" ~Albert Camus (Happiness is the greatest of conquests, one which we achieve in spite of the fate which is imposed on us)

Maxbunny 7y ago

Love the blog, but this is one of the weaker pieces. There is ABUNDANT data on this topic, which all point to the large majority of people being mostly content with their life. This result holds true even for low income countries, but not for the poorest countries. Even without looking at data, the author should consider that his patients come to him to specifically talk about their problems, and not what is going well in their life. It gives him a skewed perspective.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
Can you link to that abundant data and provide evidence for your claim?
- 3minus1 7y ago
  In Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman talks about an experiment where they had people answer a quick questionaire about their immediate emotional state throughout the day, kind of like sampling. Something like are you stressed, angry, happy, etc. at this very moment. If I remember correctly, the results showed that most people are fine most of the time, but a small number of people are in constant emotional distress.
- Maxbunny 7y ago
  Sure, have a look here: https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction The second chart of the page shows the share of people who say they are either very happy or mostly happy, click on "Map" in the bottom right corner to see all the countries for which data is available. Sample: US: 90 percent say they are happy China: 85 % Ethiopia: 63 %
mnu 7y ago
He did consider this: >I have three non-mutually exclusive theories for this: > 1. The people who come to a psychiatrist are disproportionately the unhappiest and most disturbed. This is obviously true to some degree. But I got the same sort of people when I worked in general medicine and primary care. Even the people who come to a primary care doctor are going to be a little biased towards the sorts of conditions that produce or result from sickness, but people were still much worse off than I thought. Later on he runs a sample of twenty people to get an idea of the type of issues others around us might be facing using the statistics he provides earlier on.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DoreenMichele 7y ago

3. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact this unhappy, but they never tell anyone except their psychiatrist all of the pieces necessary to put their life story together. When I moved back home during my divorce and lived with relatives, I got to see all kinds of stuff going on that I had no knowledge of when I used to visit, keep in touch by phone, etc. I moved out, to an apartment a mile or two away, and went back to getting the whitewashed view of their lives. I don't think they were even trying to particularly hide things from me. It just didn't come up. It just wasn't possible to convey every bit of minutiae about their lives to me all the time when I wasn't there seeing it firsthand. You typically have far more limited information about the lives of people around you than you imagine. You don't really know what your neighbors are doing. You don't really know what your coworkers and boss do all day. Etc. Think of the endless news stories where the neighbors are simply shocked that their next door neighbor was a drug dealer for the Mafia, a serial killer, etc. We often know people a lot less well than we imagine we do.

nradov 7y ago

I have literally heard wealthy people complain at length about the difficulty of finding a reliable gardening service for their mansion. Should I listen to their concerns without judging? Or is it reasonable to dismiss their misery? (This is a rhetorical question.)

munchbunny 7y ago
I'll bite, just to answer the non-rhetorical part of your rhetorical question. There are four interesting aspects of what you wrote. 1. The implied belief that there is a cosmic measuring stick for how good someone has it, but, more importantly, that this measuring stick matters. The judging accomplishes nothing, other than to let the person judging feel internally superior for a moment. The more relevant issue is letting that judgement cloud any rational decisions you need to make later with respect to the people you're judging. 2. If you're making policy decisions, then this cosmic measuring stick of suffering would matter (like taxing gardening services, I guess?), but are you making policy decisions? 3. Do you need something from them, and does that inform how you'll behave towards them regardless of what you actually think of them? Startup founders who didn't come from rich backgrounds experience this all the time around VC's. But it's not really possible to keep the functional motivation and the desire to fit in entirely separate. 4. Are they just complaining because shared lightweight misery makes for fun socialization? People who aren't rich do that too. The content may just be a function of their environment.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
Taking it 100% serious- why would you dismiss that they are literally expressing to you a problem they are experiencing? It's useful to know they have a problem, are willing to pay for someone to make the problem go away, and are wealthy and thus can pay a lot!

dang 7y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124