Reality is absolutely merciless

[kag101]

20 hours ago, Zeroguy said:

Reality is one big party. It's quite fun. It's amazing. 

Keep pretending you are victim. 

Thank you. 

Oscar reward worthy play. 

Dude, OP is going through a very hard time, and you come here with this arrogant positivity.

 

22 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

Yes, they don't help me.

How many have you tried?

Did you like the psychiatrist?

[Blackhawk]

1 hour ago, kag101 said:

How many have you tried?

Did you like the psychiatrist?

I don't remember.

I don't like any psychiatrist.

I'm not going to waste more time and energy on those things.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Blackhawk

[Windappreciator]

2 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

 not going to waste more time and energy on those things.

*nods*

[4201]

11 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

I don't think I would become happy if I would believe in the same fairy tales. It wouldn't give me any special powers, so it wouldn't change anything.

How are we happy then? Are we just pretending? Why does it work for us but wouldn't work for you?

11 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

I value truth more than happiness.

Why? What's the value in being correct but unhappy? What is so important about this truth that you are perfectly willing to suffer 99% of the time for it?

 

[Blackhawk]

1 hour ago, 4201 said:

How are we happy then? Are we just pretending? Why does it work for us but wouldn't work for you?

Why? What's the value in being correct but unhappy? What is so important about this truth that you are perfectly willing to suffer 99% of the time for it?

Probably because there are more factors other than your beliefs. I can't force myself into believing in bs anyway, even if I wanted to.

In that case there is no value. Why must there be value? I don't give a damn about truth giving me happiness or some other value, I just want to know the truth. Why do I want to know the truth? I don't know.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Blackhawk

[mandyjw]

10 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

Probably because there are more factors other than your beliefs. I can't force myself into believing in bs anyway, even if I wanted to.

In that case there is no value. Why must there be value? I don't give a damn about truth giving me happiness or some other value, I just want to know the truth. Why do I want to know the truth? I don't know.

If you love the truth but don't know what it is or why, is it the truth or just love? 

[Blackhawk]

21 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

If you love the truth but don't know what it is or why, is it the truth or just love? 

I don't know.

[4201]

2 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

Probably because there are more factors other than your beliefs. I can't force myself into believing in bs anyway, even if I wanted to.

What are the other factors? What do you need to be happy?

2 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

In that case there is no value. Why must there be value? I don't give a damn about truth giving me happiness or some other value, I just want to know the truth. Why do I want to know the truth? I don't know.

Therefore you don't know the truth. You can't "want to know the truth" and "know the truth" at the same time. Let's say we want to know the truth but not believe any BS anyone says. How do you know anything is true? You have this concept of truth you absolutely want, but what it is? What is this "truth" you want you keep referring to?

Wouldn't it feel good if you had the truth? If having the truth would feel terrible, why would you even want it? What if what feels good/being happy = what is true? What if your feelings are just a function of your body detecting honesty?

If truth isn't defined by what makes you feel good/happy, then what is it defined by? What your parents said? What Leo says? What you said previously? What scientists say? All of this might be true but it can also be false, so that can't be it.

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by 4201

[Blackhawk]

4 hours ago, 4201 said:

What are the other factors? What do you need to be happy?

Genes and upbringing. Mostly genes. The physical nature of the brain.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Blackhawk

[4201]

2 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

Genes and upbringing. Mostly genes. The physical nature of the brain.

And how do you know different genes would make you happy? What is your source? Do you have a proof?

 

Of course if you believe stories like that you'll be in hell. If I believed that I was limited by my genes, I'd be unhappy too. Notice however that this is not the only way to be unhappy. There is infinitely many bullshit stories to believe that can make you unhappy. You can identify with this very specific one if you want, but it doesn't make it true, it only make it your current experience, and thus your experience is painful.

But OK, you don't care about your experience being painful, you only love truth. But how do you know that happiness is defined by genetics? Again, who said that? Your biology teacher? Leo with his bullshit rants about genetics? No matter what you come up with, it definitely did not come from the heart, otherwise it would feel great.

Edited May 20, 2021 by 4201

[Blackhawk]

@4201 Science.

[4201]

7 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

@4201 Science.

Is there a documented scientific experiment which proves that you can't be unhappy because of genetics? What's the evidence? Anyone can try to use "science" to justify their claims. But doing so is totally unscientific. 

[Blackhawk]

2 hours ago, 4201 said:

Is there a documented scientific experiment which proves that you can't be unhappy because of genetics? What's the evidence? Anyone can try to use "science" to justify their claims. But doing so is totally unscientific. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/11/a-scientist-has-discovered-why-happiness-might-very-well-be-genetic.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/discovered-the-genetic-secret-of-a-happy-life-2279858.html?amp

[4201]

1 hour ago, Blackhawk said:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/11/a-scientist-has-discovered-why-happiness-might-very-well-be-genetic.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/discovered-the-genetic-secret-of-a-happy-life-2279858.html?amp

Those are interesting news article but there's actual studies behind them. The first news article is based off of this paper

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-human-genetics/article/heritability-and-genomewide-linkage-scan-of-subjective-happiness/71536537CBD1619EA68A6E98919532B6#article

Which is a meta analysis of a bunch of subjective papers with only one of them talking about actual genetics (instead of heritability):

https://core.ac.uk/reader/15455804?utm_source=linkout

They conclude from this study that for men, your "tendency to be happy" is 22% determined by genetics and 78% determined by environmental factors. Your other link just pulls out some number from nowhere but even lower: 17%

All of this are mere interpretations from very weak correlations. It sure is good research to make news article (and thus get funded) but none of these scientists actually understand what happiness is (they rely on surveys to determine it) nor understand the effect genetics have on happiness (they just link the 2 together with statistics). Judging your own ability from these "data trends" is as ridiculous as concluding you cannot bake a cake because there's a study stating 18% of people do not know how to bake a cake. You could as well try to link people's ability to bake cakes with genetics, and you'd probably get a weak stupid number like 30%.

But even if you want to believe this total misinterpretation of evidence and even if you want to believe you are in this 22% even though you have absolutely no evidence that you are in this 22%, then, how does these genetics even manifest in your life? Are you able to move your arms and legs? Is it you that is moving them or is it genetics? Are you able to think freely or is this too under genetics' control?  

Still the data points to a weak correlation of about 22% and this cannot be overlooked. It's silly to think that anyone is actually "inside" the 22%, it's more of a general population trend. Yet the scientists offer absolutely no explanation on what this 22% could be from. Yes there's a weak correlation but no explanation making sense of it. I'm not criticizing them because any explanation wouldn't be science or based off of evidence. This idea that you cannot be happy because of those stats is not evidence, it is your personal explanation of a weak correlation found in 2-3 studies. You could say all there actually is is the evidence and this evidence doesn't make any prescriptive statements about who can or can't be happy.

What way is the most true way to look at evidence? There isn't a true way, the only thing that is true is the evidence (of a weak correlation). Now you can interpret it in any way you want and how good it feels depends on how good your interpretation is. You feel terrible, because your interpretation is terrible.

You might be tempted to justify this interpretation as "better" because that's what the scientists thinks (or rather, the POV she takes in the news articles to attract clicks and eventually funding). But what the scientist think is absolutely irrelevant, they are there to get evidence not opinions. If I measure the length of your table with my measuring tape, does that make my opinion of what to do with the table any better?

There is a way to look at the evidence that actually feels amazing. The only way to get there though is to drop the way to look at it that feels terrible. It's never going to change the facts but don't confuse the interpretation for facts.

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by 4201

[Blackhawk]

@4201 No it's not 22%, it's 50%.

[4201]

21 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

@4201 No it's not 22%, it's 50%.

According to who? I gave you the evidence, everything is linked.

You might be mistaking heritability and genetics. Heritability =/= Genetics. If your parents have beliefs (low self esteem) you may inherit those beliefs but this isn't genetics. I gave you the numbers for the studies on genetics. If you have more evidence you want analyzed feel free to send it.

Even if it was 50% or even 99%, none of this explains what those numbers actually mean in your direct experience. It's all statistical data that can be interpreted in any number of way. If you want to cling to your way of interpreting it, it's up to you. But then it's not reality that is merciless, but your interpretation of it.

[Blackhawk]

@4201 It's 70-80% about genetics https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10902-016-9781-6

[4201]

7 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

@4201 It's 70-80% about genetics https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10902-016-9781-6

It's a good read! You won't get much out of the abstract though, here's the full paper:

http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1882.pdf

I highly recommend you to read it as it goes quite in depth in the misconceptions people can have interpreting this result. This black and white interpretation you are trying to make out of this percentage is flat out wrong and called out directly in the paper:

First point (by the author) is that those numbers only hold true for people who do not try to improve their situation. (No therapy, no meditation, nothing).
Second point (by the author) is that those numbers imply the twins have no genetic differences, which is not true.
Third point (explained in the paper), they take the liberty of judging MANY environmental factors as genetic because they say your environment is partly defined by genetics. This is quite a loose claim from them IMO but I'm not in the field so I won't complain. They basically explain that your life situation is partly defined by genetics, so if you are unhappy right now because of your life situation, it's also counted in "genetics". (Although you can just change your life situation anyway!)
 

My personal criticism of this paper:

THEY DON'T EVEN SAMPLE DNA lol This is quantitative genetics, not molecular genetics. They use statistical models to assume people's genetics based on if they are twins or not (they call it Variance and their Heritability is just a composite metric of many variance with many factors, it's very far from raw data). IMO this is highly unreliable for humans since there's not only DNA shared between individuals but tradition, cultures, beliefs etc. The paper clearly states they are doing quantitative genetics and their sampling size is just too giant to even consider sampling everyone's DNA. Your DNA stores 215 petabytes per gram of DNA and they don't even know which genes exactly so they can't check it specifically. 

Here's a quick breakdown on quantitative vs molecular genetics https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/quantitative-genetics#:~:text=Quantitative genetics is the study,phenotypic state of each individual.

All of that being said, if you really want to believe the author, feel free to email her. Ask her what she think of the conclusions you draw about her paper and what it means for your life. She's a lovely lady trying to do her best to help people get out of their unhappiness and she's selling a book about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB1xMsyP71Q (I can't recommend her personally but if you like her paper and want to know how she interprets the results, feel free).

 

At the end of the day this is a lot of work hahaha (but it was fun)! You can quickly see how not practical it would be for you to find every possible piece of evidence, misinterpret it and send it to me for me to debunk it. Read the papers you find, don't just jump to conclusions after reading a number. When studying statistical models about large populations and a ton of varying factor, the truth isn't so black and white. There sure is lots of thing to learn in this field both for me and you, but this idea that you can't be happy because of genetics is utter bullshit. 

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by 4201

[Rajneeshpuram]

On 19/5/2021 at 6:23 AM, kag101 said:

Dude, OP is going through a very hard time, and you come here with this arrogant positivity.

 

How many have you tried?

Did you like the psychiatrist?

Let me complete the sentence.

Op is going through a very hard time... because he hasnt done his homework and the winter has come. its like the video where Leo talks about the squirrel who didnt stored foods for the winter and then he is cold and hungry.

I once was a depressed mfuker like the OP and I did the effort to change my psychology.

Reality is merciless when things dont happen the way your EGO wanted to happen. The whole universe is cruel because is against me! im gonna go with mum crying or I'm gonna behave like an adult?

[Blackhawk]

@4201 It's well known that some people are naturally happy, and some people are naturally unhappy and they can never become happy no matter what. For example in the same way as someone is hardwired to be introvert or extrovert. It's because of the physical structure of the brain.

There's no doubt about this.

There's no point in talking to you since you twist everything to fit your wishful thinking fairy tale.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Blackhawk