Moral Decision Making and Happiness

Video about how we value ill-gotten gains.

People are more willing to shock themselves for the same amount of money than to shock someone else. In fact, you have to pay them twice as much to shock someone else. People are nice.

Now tell them that the money won't go to them but to a charity. Suddenly, they want to shock themselves more. And they're also even more willing to shock others! Shocking: People can be extra mean if they think they're doing good.

Molly Crockett, your breadth of knowledge in the area of behavioral economics, if I may stretch the term a little, is wide. The humility through which you approach the study of how humans try, fail, and succeed to be good makes me trust your work more, knowing you are observant for more and better information. This is an important topic that could use rational minds to help clarify so we can find a more effective path to happiness for all.

Byron Katie vs Abraham-Hicks

Byron Katie's inquiry holds beliefs in a quarantined mental space so that one may determine the effects the belief has on emotion, thinking, behavior, and general well-being. It isolates beliefs and deals with them one at a time so as not to overwhelm the subject with the spiral of rationalizations that may occur in free-association.

The inquiry is an experiment in which the subject creates a model of himself with the belief and then without the belief. The way the questions are phrased invite the subject to actually feel the feelings generated by the belief rather than hold them in an indifferent, cerebral way. This is in contrast to the way most of us feel feelings: we generally latch on to the feeling first and then activate cerebral thinking to manufacture reasons as to why we should feel that way. We thus amplify and prolong the feeling:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

The questions of the inquiry, e.g. "How do you react when you believe that thought?" frames the belief as the creator of the feeling. We focus on the prior part of the cycle:

Thought - belief - feeling - supporting thought ("reasons") - belief - feeling - repeat.

Because belief is actually more a choice and feeling is more an automatic reaction, this line of questioning empowers us to choose how we feel indirectly by believing differently. The pivotal point in the inquiry is the reframing. If the subject jumps to the "feeling - supporting thought" phase too soon, he will reject the question and derail the inquiry. His mind will be so flooded with reasons as to why he feels that way that there is no room to catch the more useful reason, the one he can change, i.e. his belief in a thought.

Abraham-Hicks' philosophy mainly focuses on adjusting the feeling part of the cycle (though there are techniques such as the focus wheel which direct attention to the beliefs that take one in or out of a desired feeling). Their idea is that one can directly imagine a better feeling state and generate that better feeling immediately. Automatically, cerebral thinking will manufacture reasons why one should feel that way, and then the spiral flows upward.

Hence the two methodologies are complementary means to a better feeling life. Byron Katie's inquiry draws on curiosity while Abraham-Hicks asks for imagination. The inquiry is better suited for more severe emotional downturns, but requires at least a modicum of curiosity for the truth. Abraham-Hicks' focusing on positive aspects is better for brighter times as good feelings can snowball more quickly.

What is the pain telling you?

I am willing to learn how to love the pain. I am willing to see the value in my suffering.

Your suffering tells you what you do not want. It tells you the thoughts that you do not want. When you hold on to a thought that isn't in vibrational alignment with the joyful version of you, the discordant feelings you feel are a direct experience of the discord between that thought's vibration and the joyful version's vibration.

Learn to sing in the key of the best rendition of your song. It's easy because it's instinctual, and mistakes are part of the process. Suffering is just a helpful nudge. Do not get caught up in the fact that you are nudged, but instead follow its beckoning so that you may become more in tune with your joyous song.

Congestion tells you you don't want to be near someone or some situation. You feel crowded, suffocated. To alleviate congestion, either get out of the situation or love it. There is no benefit or growth in strength in enduring the congestion. In this case, more pain, less gain.

Let go of each thought that makes you suffer one by one. Do it by first holding the thought in a quarantined area which you observe carefully. Observe how the thought makes you feel and act. See how it makes you suffer to hold it. Then open the door, and let it go.

Dialogue with Addiction

C'mon. You need to test out your will. If you don't test it, how do you know how strong it is?

You're lying. I know that the flesh is weak when it comes close to the addiction. That's when you want to creep in and hijack the mind.

Well, yes. But I'm doing it for your own good. This is the only way you can get pleasure.

No. There are many other ways to get pleasure. I can learn something new. I can write a program.

All that stuff is hard. They don’t guarantee pleasure like I do.

Yea, but they also don’t guarantee self-hate like you do.

Self-hate is natural and familiar. You know how to deal with it. You’ve dealt with it for years already. You don’t have to learn something new to cope with it. It's comfortable. Besides, doesn’t it feel kinda good?

I don’t really trust you. Maybe it does feel comfortable, but that comfort could be killing me.

Look, you’re going to die anyway. Might as well go out with a lot of pleasure rather than risk failed attempts at greatness. It’s better to die comfortably.

I don’t imagine being so happy on my deathbed considering that my life had been wasted away in comfort rather than accomplishment.

Where do my desires lead me?

Where do my desires lead me?
Lust leads me to faking myself.
Jealousy leads me to hating myself.
Fear leads me to stress and worry.
Desire for freedom leads me to feel stuck.
It may be premature to say all desires are bad, but so far it seems like it.

Motivated by Shame

I envy computers. They don't stress over false beliefs and processes. Sure, bugs in software will make a computer produce results that are not very useful, but they don't suffer from self-criticism in the face of useless results. When we humans make a mistake, it is worse than a useless result; it can be experienced as shameful failure.

On the other hand, without shame or guilt, a computer has no impetus to change itself and no criterion to judge whether a change is in the right direction. But who judges the judge? How do we know shame is an appropriate motivator?

How to overcome stubbornness

1. Set a timer or watch to countdown for 15 minutes.
2. Do something for those 15 minutes, e.g. write a thank you card for a friend.
   
3. Write down the activity or product of your activity, e.g. "Thank you card".

Repeat steps 1-3 for the rest of the day, doing something different every 15 minutes. If something takes longer than 15 minutes to complete, come back to it after you do something else. You may notice the following:

• You can let go of emotions more easily. Letting go of activities trains you to let go in general, and that includes emotions.
  
• You learn to break activities down into manageable (15 minute or so) chunks.
• Hence, fewer projects will seem overwhelming.
• You wake up to an alarm more easily as you let go of the stubbornness of sleepiness.

Though we tend to think they happen to us or we just have them, emotions are activities we perform. So are the beliefs that lead to the emotions. By practicing letting go of behaviors, we indirectly practice letting go of emotions. (It is advisable to practice letting go of emotions directly, too.)

Display Affirmations on Your Screen

"Conscience" is an application I made to display affirmations on my computer. It's sort of like a screen saver except you run it manually.

Make a text file with affirmations, quotes, or whatever you want displayed. Separate the messages with a return (newline). Save it as "messages.txt" in the working directory (usually the same folder the program resides in).

Run the program. Right-click the cat to minimize or set the interval, the time to wait between messages. Drag the cat to move it around.

>> Download Conscience <<

Ayahuasca

This guy takes his family to the Amazon jungles and drinks ayahuasca. Great documentary. Touches on environmental issues as well as drug legalization.