If you follow the thesis “the way to be happy is to sacrifice your happiness for the happiness of other people” to its logical conclusion for everyone—nobody in the world is ever going to be happy.

Imagine happiness as a small box. Since I want to be a “good person”, and “good people are unselfish”, I will pass the box to my neighbor.

But my neighbor wants to be a good person, so he will sacrifice his happiness to his spouse and pass to her the happiness box.

But the spouse doesn’t want to be selfish either, and so the box is passed to her sick aunt for whom she has no feeling of affection whatsoever but she passes the box anyway for “it is not good to be selfish”.

So “in an ideal world”, where everyone has been taught the virtue of unselfishness, no one clings to the box because no one wants to be selfish, and therefore no one is happy.

The irony is in the purpose of your unselfishness. Who’s getting happier? Who are we all sacrificing for? It would inevitably be a selfish person who is benefitting from your sacrifice—an immoral person by your standards.

*Inspired by Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty.

The weekly roundup

1. Rereading

The Myth of the Framework by Karl Popper

(In particular, the essay in the book also titled “The Myth of the framework”)

2. Tim Ferris x David Deutsch x Naval Ravikant

3. Some novel thoughts on meditation and “the self” by Brett Hall

Fossils and First Person Science by Brett Hall Brett Hall

4. On a never-ending quest

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

— Seneca

New Podcast Episode

#15 – Naval Ravikant and Brett Hall: Knowledge, Constraints, and Truth-Seeking Mechanisms

We talk about the nature of knowledge, constraints of progress, free markets and nature as truth-seeking mechanisms, free-will, and much more!

Watch on YouTube:

Listen on Spotify:

#15 – Naval Ravikant and Brett Hall: Knowledge, Constraints, and Truth-Seeking Mechanisms Arjun Khemani Episode

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