Unironically: I am refusing to consider "what if"s when making decisions nowadays, and I think that the thinking pattern like the one in the quoted tweet was making me miserable before https://twitter.com/Elodes12/status/1312414258521681920

You can nerd-snipe yourself into anything by considering what-ifs

Or rather, you can nerd-snipe yourself into anything by deciding that doing something is wrong cuz somebody (maybe you) has a counterexample

And this "anything" is mostly indecision

And indecision is very bad for figuring out morality because at least for me, the best way to figure out X is bad is to do X and then notice "oh okay, it was bad"

I will clarify

I have thoughts on this

Oh boy do I have thoughts on this

Let's take this as an example https://twitter.com/Elodes12/status/1312414641910353920?s=20

This comes from an assumption of "being a conduit of universal morality"

- There's a right thing to do
- You and the other person are engaged in *figuring out what this right thing is*
- Then you both should be doing the right thing

From this point of view, the symmetry in the example above is very very bad

Because apart from [a few cases], the other person can always claim that the universal morality should actually favor their side, not yours

And yeah, they are biased (towards their side)

But you are also biased (towards your own side)

So neither of you can be trusted to have figured out the universal moral rule in this situation

Oh shit

What's worse, since you are a nice person, when both you and them have equally good arguments, you are actually tempted to favor their side — because it's the nice/right thing to do

(because always tie-breaking in your favor is *definitely* not the moral thing to do)

Which leads to a realization that as long as the other person is smart enough to spot the symmetry, they will always win and you will always lose

This is.. devastating

I have solved it, for myself, by looking at the guilt I had about being selfish, until being selfish became alright

Not "good" or "bad" but "not a sin"

Once being selfish stopped being a *cardinal sin*, it got easier to be good/kind

From "I will do a good thing for you because I'm a conduit of universal morality and I think the universal morality dictates so", to "I will do a good thing for you because I want to"

It turns out that I want to be good to people

And it turns out that it's easier to be good to people when I don't feel guilty

But to get there, I had to decide that being selfish was alright

And this is the most cursed thing ever. It comes up everywhere:

- To get laid, you need to stop feeling bad about not getting laid.
- To be kind, you need to be alright with selfishness.
- To become more consistent over time, you need to be alright with inconsistency.

- To become a good writer, you need to write more, and for that you need to stop feeling bad about writing like shit

- To be open with someone, you need to not feel bad about hiding things from them

I think it's the most wicked thing because you can't prove it to yourself

There's no legible reason why this is true

It just keeps being true over and over again

"the unreasonable effectiveness of achieving things by not feeling bad about not having them"

This said.. maybe it’s possible to give examples (at some point)

Yeah

And also

This won’t get fixed by convincing yourself that it should get fixed

This will get fixed by noticing guilt over and over and over, not trying to do anything with it, just staring at it

Then you will empathize with yourself automatically and everything else will follow