Re: Living a good life

From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 19 2000 - 18:22:39 MDT


Jason Joel Thompson wrote:

> I don't think you're really choosing between happiness and productivity
> here, since ostensibly, what you hope to buy with your productivity is long
> term happiness.
>
> If the question is, do you think one should trade short term happiness for
> long term happiness? The answer is yes.

I should have qualified the claim: the tradeoff is between happiness
today and productivity today. Productivity today yields happiness
tomorrow, of course.

Unfortunately, I KNEW that; knowing that doesn't settle the matter.

If my chances of survival are independent of what I do, then it seems I
should focus on happiness today.

But if my chances of survival depend a lot on my productivity today,
as it well might, since very few people seem to be working on
technology that will keep me alive, then it seems I should focus on
productivity today, even at a trade off for happiness today.

> I'm curious to hear how you're evaluating each career's ability to
> substantially increase your survivability.

Well, of the career choices I can think of that are available to me,
I'd say that the most likely to increase my survival (and, perhaps,
long term happiness,) is work in biomedical engineering; either by
doing actual research or going into biomedical engineering patent law
and reinvesting much of my earnings. Next is probably computer
science/programming. Philosophy ranks dead last. :)

What to do... what to do...

Disclaimer: I'm only making a claim about what seems likely to
increase MY OWN survivability and ultimate happiness; your preferences
and skill set may vary substantially from mine and yield an entirely
different list. Your mileage may vary.

-Dan

      -unless you love someone-
    -nothing else makes any sense-
           e.e. cummings



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:34 MDT