Philosophies

here I put things that I wanna write down but that are too small to have their own blog post

Making choices

Whenever you make a choice such as preferring one brand over another, opting to spend the evening with one friend instead of with a friend group, or more broadly choosing between one person and another, like deciding to practice a sport versus reading you are engaging in two significant actions:

A) Allocating resources to a specific brand, relationship, skill, or activity, and

B) Punishing and rewarding certain behaviors or traits that influenced your decision.

For instance, if I choose to spend time with person A rather than person B because I find A’s company more enjoyable, it implicitly suggests a comparison against B. The reasons for not choosing B might include not finding B as amusing, lacking sufficient interest, having recently engaged in conversation with B, their living too far away, among other considerations.

The complex web of factors that guides our decisions essentially acts as a form of reward or punishment for the current person, brand, or object we’re deciding about.

It’s important to note that the impact of these rewards and punishments, whether they lead to reinforcement or discouragement, and thus any subsequent change in behavior or preference, is a completely separate consideration.

Now because humans do not have free-will, through genetics, brain chemicals, environment and billions of tiny processes that started millions of years ago the concept of rewarding or punishing assumes agency, that we simply do not have, and is fundamentally paradoxical.

I do want to live forever

I don’t want to die today, I don’t want to die tomorrow, therefore I will never want to die. ¬(I don’t want to die today) ∧ ¬(I don’t want to die tomorrow) → (I want to live forever (as long as p))