By Spencer Greenberg and Amber Dawn Ace
Image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2
This is the first of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism - here are the second, third, fourth, and fifth parts.
Many of us struggle at times to know what to do. We are surrounded by conflicting advice about how to live our lives - from our parents, peers, and communities, from ancient philosophers, and from modern gurus and intellectuals. Faced with these confl...
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habits
Is every action secretly selfish?
I often hear people claim that everything we do is "selfish" or ultimately aimed at our own pleasure (and avoidance of pain). The way the argument usually goes is that we wouldn't do something unless we "wanted" to do it - and that even for altruistic actions, we do them because they feel good. This view is sometimes called "psychological egoism:" the claim that every human action is motivated by self-interest. I think this claim is either seriously mistaken (if interpreted one way) or true but...
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Intersecting advice from highly successful people
It's popular to read interviews and books with advice from highly successful people. But is their advice good advice? Perhaps it works for their situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it generalizes to other circumstances. Maybe they are just overfitting to their personal life experience. Perhaps they are attributing too much of their success to the actions they happened to take rather than to factors outside of their control. And what should we make of the fact that advice often contradi...
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Subtle Introspection
Here are ten subtle things it's easy to miss about yourself that you may find it valuable to pay mindful attention to:
Your natural posture when sitting at your computer → this may affect how your body feels in 20 yearsWhere emotions manifest in your body (e.g., I feel anxiety in my chest and annoyance as a twinge in my face) → greater awareness here may help you more quickly and accurately identify your emotions.The clothing you feel your best and worst in → this may lead you to dress in a ...
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