january 18, 2020
Most logic, especially economic logic, breaks down when you realize everyone’s utility curves are just different. They just are. Utility is not an objective concept, and therefore while you can make logical jumps once you just assume the utility curves as they are, does that have any validity?
Rationality is so contextual. I come to India and I wonder why everyone is honking - doesn’t that dilute the value of that signal? Sure, on streets where there is an enforced social order. In Kolkata that is not the case. In a place where everyone struggles for survival, announcing your presence to create millisecond advantages feels urgent, feels rational. At the end of your life, when you know you will die and any day you choose to die will be painful, it may suddenly become worth it to hold a loved ones hand for another day, even though you swore you’d never be put on a ventilator (link here).
Relatedly, this is why being judgmental is generally a useless exercise. Most coping mechanisms (and maybe all actions are coping mechanisms for some other emotion) are just that - methods by which to not collapse under the weight of your present world. Those methods are a choice, and that is what maximizes utility in the moment. We discount the future - but this is a feature of human nature. Therefore the choices made in the moment are still rational and maximizing even if not over someone’s whole life. However it is impossible to know the counterfactuals, and that even more heavily discounts our possible paths we calculate to future utility.
Do these backpackers really think they’re enlightened because they’ve found peace in doing nothing in this capitalist society, or are they really just privileged stoned idiots? They’re probably running from some fucked shit too, but that doesn’t make it mutually exclusive with being privileged stoned idiots. I just find it hard to sympathize with people who feel no responsibility to contribute to anything besides themselves. Au contraire to my previous point about judgment and everyone just having different utility curves, I know.
Loneliness is really the feeling of not being able to commiserate and lift the burden of the small things. The big feelings, no one can help you do anything with except a therapist. But those events feel significant and close friends will always make time for that that feel significant. But when you’re truly not alone is when you have people who are willing to share the most irrelevant of things which make up the human experience. And more than those big feelings, life is really made of the small things.
This is just my favorite new author. Everything she writes hits different. There is so much room for nuance and indecision and it perfectly captures the levels I need. https://askmolly.substack.com
I especially recommend “Obsession”: https://askmolly.substack.com/p/obsession
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