Some healthy questions to ponder

[jon-nyc]

h/t, Morgan Housel.

Which of my strongest beliefs were formed on second-hand information vs. first-hand experience?

If I could not compare myself to anyone else, how would I define a good life?

Whose views do I criticize that I would actually agree with if I lived in their shoes?

Who do I envy that is actually less happy than I am?

[xenon]

Great questions - I think about something like 2 and 3 often, but have never considered 1 and 4.

[Horace]

Good dorm room philosophizing fodder. I think the person who wrote the questions has struggled with being overly inclined towards envy and comparing himself to others. Seems the common theme.

1 is a false dichotomy, which could begin an interesting if ultimately meaningless exploration of the ideas. It's a false dichotomy because you interpret "first hand experience" through a context of all of the received second-hand ideas that reside in your head. Confirmation bias is a known fault of the human mind, and yet it can easily be based on a first-hand experience with the thing being confirmed. That confirmation of the received ideas might wildly overrate the prevalence or importance of the experience.

2. It's a little interesting that the author feels the need to exclude what is apparently his default for the definition of a good life: comparing oneself to others. Or maybe this author intends to speak to young people who haven't gotten over such things. (Dorm room fodder.) I guess the default correct answer here is to leave the world a better place than you found it, or something along those lines.

3. An easy example would be that a human born in Palestine will have different heartfelt beliefs than one born in Israel, generally speaking. That says nothing about how intelligent or good either person is. It only speaks to the different cultures produce humans with different software running in their brains. The meat computer in our skulls can be the same, but the software can be wildly different, because the code we absorb is wildly different, at least when it comes to a few core issues.

4. I don't know, but this person should find a way to get over their issues with envy.

[Axtremus]

Oftentimes #1 takes more up-front effort than I want to bother with. It's not easy to attribute a particular belief to "second-hand information" vs. "first-hand experience" to begin with.

[Doctor Phibes]

Dude, it's Friday afternoon. The only question I'm asking at this stage of the week is whether to get the expensive IPA in a four-pack or the cheaper one in a 12.

And I have to say, it's a pretty challenging question.