28/01/2013

You Have Exactly the Life You Want

By Free Northerner1

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 00:00 and tagged with , and posted in Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

8 responses to “You Have Exactly the Life You Want”

  • ivanovich76
    January 28th, 2013 at 00:35

    I disagree because humans are not automatically strategic (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/)

    It is often the case that there are significant improvements to be made with little or even negative expenditure of energy (that is you start saving energy on some task right away)

  • Chevalier de Johnstone
    January 28th, 2013 at 02:38

    Oh good freaking popsicles, the damn Bayesians have found your blog.

    Dear Bayesian nerdbot,
    1) Nobody freaking cares;
    2) quoting a blog post is not “evidence”;
    3) the post you quoted doesn’t even present any evidence – somebody needs to teach you jackholes that saying “clearly” a bunch of times is not “science” and it’s not even Bayesian;
    4) it wasn’t even a Yudkowsky post you masturbatory solipsistic simpleton.
    5) Before “disagreeing”, you ought to re-assess your priors, as you have managed to screw up and misinterpret a cartoon. Good job!

    This was a great post. STFU and stop arguing with cartoon characters.

  • dannyfrom504
    January 28th, 2013 at 04:52

    this post. YUP. pretty much.

  • zhai2nan2
    January 28th, 2013 at 08:19

    http://disaffectedpurveyor.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/myths-of-hyper-agency/

  • M3
    January 28th, 2013 at 09:21

    Cosign the comic. With the exception of 1st try lotto winners getting rich of course hehe.

  • ivanovich76
    January 28th, 2013 at 12:48

    Johnstone you seem to have had some sort of traumatic incident with LW people. Sometimes an interesting blog post is just an interesting blog post.

  • Free Northerner
    January 29th, 2013 at 17:53

    @ ivanovich & zhai – You miss the point. The point is not that humans are perfectly rational and know exactly how to achieve everything. The point is that most people will pursue what they truly desire. If you say you want to be rich, but spend 4 hours a day playing video games instead of working on your business, you really want to play video games. What a person spends their time is what a person truly wants.

    @ Chevalier: Not too familiar with Bayesians. Why so much dislike?

  • zhai2nan2
    January 29th, 2013 at 20:43

    “What a person spends their time is what a person truly wants.”

    Are we responsible for choosing to spend our time in some goal-oriented way? Yes, I’ll agree to that.

    However, I claim that forces outside my control can take my best-laid plans and lay them to waste.

    The comic author dismisses all discussion of factors beyond control – and I think that’s bad advice for responsible, goal-oriented people who actually take action to make dreams into reality.

    I draw a line between “positive thinking” and “wacky solipsism.” Saying, “take the dream and make it happen” is positive thinking. Saying “everyone gets exactly the life he wants” is wacky solipsism.

    I’ve already beaten this horse a bit too much, and I should close with a positive note: IMHO plenty of positive thinking writers and self-help gurus can help change dreamers into doers. Tony Robbins and Steve Pavlina seem to get some decent results – your mileage may vary.

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