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Author here!

> What about the very important case where I accept some suffering in the short term to reduce suffering in the long term?

Great point.

Any recommendations on how to think about expected value when minimizing suffering?

Also, I think pain and suffering are very different, and I completely failed to communicate that in the essay.

> These questions (What do we do about time? What do we do about society?) are just two examples of the hard questions where all the work gets done. The post doesn't explore them. In fact it seems to assume as a premise that hard questions don't really exist.

I purposefully avoided hard questions in this post. I'm much more interested in systems that reliably lead to good questions and good-enough answers.

But I should've addressed more about how to think outside of yourself. Lately, I've been reconsidering my beliefs around "changing the world" and trying to focus more on my family and community. Still searching for the right balance

> (All that said I don't think we should go too hard on the poster - at least they are trying, which is more than most people do!)

Thanks :)

But based on this comments section, it looks like I should've tried a little harder haha

2 comments

> Any recommendations on how to think about expected value when minimizing suffering?

I don't think it's about "minimizing suffering". There is things to suffer for, and there are things which you shouldn.t

I like to prefix my questions with "When should"

Therefore:

> When should I suffer?

and

> When should I not suffer?

I built a platform where I record questions I ask myself

Here is for the keyword "suffering"

https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/en/keywords/suffering

To me, pain differs from suffering. Pain is of the body and suffering is of the mind.

But I think your point still stands. There are plenty of reasons to purposefully subject yourself to pain (e.g. exercise).

I'm not sure about suffering. Suffering is an unavoidable side-effect of love and other delights of life, but it doesn't seem like something to ever be sought after. I'll need to think on that some more.

Also, your "when should" trick is clever! Good strategy for keeping things concrete.

> Suffering is an unavoidable side-effect of love and other delights of life

It's not a side-effect. It's an intrinsic part.

This is expressed in ancient philosophy like Taoism and embedded in its symbol , but since you poo poo philosophy, give a listen to some old pop music: The Rose by Amanda McBroom and sung by Bette Midler, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSTzSEiZ2c

Idk about “sought after” but it often is useful to embrace and fully experience suffering when it comes for you. Grief is the obvious example.

> I'm much more interested in systems that reliably lead to good questions and good-enough answers.

There's no such thing, less so in the extremely simplified form that you attempted. If your goal was to create some content to attract customers (which I suspect) then it's OK I guess. If it's to explore ideas about life... Every idea you wrote can be turned 180 degrees and be just as valid.

"prevent yourself from immediate suffering" - what about when it's productive in that it generates a valuable life lesson at a moderate cost?

"prevent yourself from future suffering" - at what cost? Paying now for futures is a risk that involves chance. There's plenty of occasions when it does not make sense to invest for an uncertain future.

"maximize attention" - Downsides: burnout, narrow focus, etc.