> ... and don’t quite make it to the NFL, then quitting early isn’t a great idea.
aren't we cursed by our power of hindsight in which we play both judge and jury with how we define success. Making poor/bad/terrible choices and then go on living without obsessing about them seems simply a way of coping.
We're cursed because it matters how we see ourselves but also how others view us affects our perception. And we constantly have to reintegrate societies view with our own. Adding insult to injury: the yardstick used by society is also shifting over time so actions are not future proof. (think about reality vs. myth in characters like Nero or Machiavelli and how long it takes to correct some of the believes previously held by society against new evidence)
Problem with judging ourselves is our vantage point to do so correctly is even worse than society. Because a) we're still alive, b) we're biased, c) we don't have the distance of time d) observers-effect.
If we're unhappy but alive we are able to try harder and hope for a better future, or even doing nothing and sitting it out. We can defer our judgement until our position has improved enough to yield a better outcome.
Then time itself is a problem when applying the yardstick to ourselves because we're unable to make a final and ultimate statement until we have no more capacity to improve our odds (are dead, but even after our death our choices might have affected the lives of our offsprings so they became an ultimate hero or a villain).
> If someone loves getting a PhD, get’s the stipend, enjoys the process
It's actually survivorship bias because the person we could've been if had gotten our shot never existed. The mediocre risk-averse choice has killed that possible universe in which this person could have thrived. They became a casualty of the mediocre.
If that person instead of taking the mediocre, and least risky path dropped out, and as a result struggled with their environment, formed toxic habits, then recovered, reformed, bettered themselves, wrote an influential book to puzzle and better humanity for the next 500 years ... How would that (successful) person judge how mediocre they could have turned out instead? And would they still say it would have been better not to suffer?
Personally I think none of this matters. If a tree falls in a forest ...
aren't we cursed by our power of hindsight in which we play both judge and jury with how we define success. Making poor/bad/terrible choices and then go on living without obsessing about them seems simply a way of coping.
We're cursed because it matters how we see ourselves but also how others view us affects our perception. And we constantly have to reintegrate societies view with our own. Adding insult to injury: the yardstick used by society is also shifting over time so actions are not future proof. (think about reality vs. myth in characters like Nero or Machiavelli and how long it takes to correct some of the believes previously held by society against new evidence)
Problem with judging ourselves is our vantage point to do so correctly is even worse than society. Because a) we're still alive, b) we're biased, c) we don't have the distance of time d) observers-effect.
If we're unhappy but alive we are able to try harder and hope for a better future, or even doing nothing and sitting it out. We can defer our judgement until our position has improved enough to yield a better outcome.
Then time itself is a problem when applying the yardstick to ourselves because we're unable to make a final and ultimate statement until we have no more capacity to improve our odds (are dead, but even after our death our choices might have affected the lives of our offsprings so they became an ultimate hero or a villain).
> If someone loves getting a PhD, get’s the stipend, enjoys the process
It's actually survivorship bias because the person we could've been if had gotten our shot never existed. The mediocre risk-averse choice has killed that possible universe in which this person could have thrived. They became a casualty of the mediocre.
If that person instead of taking the mediocre, and least risky path dropped out, and as a result struggled with their environment, formed toxic habits, then recovered, reformed, bettered themselves, wrote an influential book to puzzle and better humanity for the next 500 years ... How would that (successful) person judge how mediocre they could have turned out instead? And would they still say it would have been better not to suffer?
Personally I think none of this matters. If a tree falls in a forest ...