The lyrics to Sarah McLachlan’s song, “Oridinary Miracle” are not what I’m talking about when I say that the world is strange and mysterious:
Sun comes up and shines so bright
And disappears again at night.
It’s just another ordinary miracle today.
What’s strange and really inspiring? What if I told I had personally been in a place where the sun didn’t set? And it just happened to be near the foot of 23000+ ft high mountain?
Eliezer Yudkowsky writes “If You Demand Magic, Magic Won’t Help” on Overcoming Bias:
Born into a world of science, they [fantasy fiction readers] did not become scientists. What makes them think that, in a world of magic, they would act any differently?
If they don’t have the scientific attitude, that nothing is “mere” - the capacity to be interested in merely real things - how will magic help them? If they actually had magic, it would be merely real, and lose the charm of unattainability. They might be excited at first, but (like the lottery winners who, six months later, aren’t nearly as happy as they expected to be), the excitement would soon wear off. Probably as soon as they had to actually study spells.
This is not exactly the same as my “the world is strange” principle, but it is very similar. Alas, I can’t remember where I read that a sense of wonder about the world makes someone more likely to be successful.
This tentative guideline to life is actually based on the title of one of the first blogs I encountered, The Skeptical Optimist. People think that there’s a contradiction between being skeptical and being an optimist, but it’s not true. I don’t think this actually goes far enough — I think it’s a good idea to be both cynical and optimistic.
Quite a long time ago, I was an avowed pessimist, and proud of it, thank you very much. I believed things were always getting worse, and virtually everyone who didn’t agree with me had an agenda of some sort.
I now believe that most people mean what they say. This isn’t because people are especially virtuous; it’s simply easier than lying. As economist Bryan Caplan puts it: “The legions of people who imagine that their opponents secretly agree with them are utterly deluded…. Sincerity is greatly overrated.” Also, on the subject of legions, there’s a legion of cognitive biases available to prop up your beliefs no matter what they are. So, people aren’t usually intentionally villainous, they’re just mostly self-interested and terribly biased.
But, none of that should get in the way of optimism. Often enough, people do the right thing, just because. Even if they didn’t, the result of the actions of greedy, myopic people can be something better than a dog-eat-dog train wreck, just because that’s the way society works.
Additionally, although you can’t change your personal circumstances, there is flexibility to your own choices which allows you to make the best of your own environment — if things are bad, make them better.
Inspired by running across my old (pen and paper) journal last night, and by this post at the Happiness Project, I decided to create a list of things I’ve learned (draft version):
I’ll be going through each of these and evaluating and explaining them as I get time.