21 Years, 21 Reflections

(Take notes those of you who are single!)

I turned 21 today. I’m now legally allowed to drink in the United States, which most twenty-one-year-olds regard as much more important than the “rights” they get at 18. But I’m in the United Kingdom, so though my total rights are the same, my marginal rights are diminished.

If you’re feeling particularly generous, I’m having a birthday fundraiser for the shrimp welfare project. Other money given to effective charities is also appreciated. Short of that, um, I wouldn’t exactly mind if you got a paid subscription :), but of course fundraising for the shrimp is priority numero uno.

So, as a newly minted adult of 21-years, I thought I’d share 21 things I’ve learned over the course of these years.

1. Doing huge amounts of good is surprisingly easy. It costs only a few thousand dollars to save a life and a dollar to prevent multiple animals from painfully languishing.

2. Figuring out the right answers to political topics is usually very difficult. There are rarely easy answers. If you think that the right view on some econ topic is obvious, probably you’ve gone wrong somewhere.

3. There are, however, some contentious issues where the right answer is very obvious. For instance, it’s quite obvious that eating meat in normal circumstances is wrong and that one has an obligation to give to effective charities. Mostly these are cases where people don’t believe the obvious thing because they’re biased.

4. Lots of things can be optimized. This is true of charity, of course, but it’s also true of more banal things like memorizing facts. Using Anki, for instance, is just a much better way of memorizing things than anything else.

5. God probably exists! Many of the standard arguments for this are quite lame, but there are a bunch of good ones. Often, unfortunately, these arguments require doing complicated philosophy.

6. Exercising and regularly meditating are both probably good ideas! I mostly don’t do these because I’m lazy, but when I do, I’m generally happier.

7. Intentional gratitude is also a good practice. I’m noticeably happier on days when I reflect on the awesome things in life.

8. Nature is quite beautiful, even in pretty boring places. If you take a moment to appreciate the beauty of passing trees, your day will be better.

9. People too often abandon views because of a single serious objection that’s immediately obvious. I suspect this is the primary reason why people underrate utilitarianism and the self-indication assumption—both have obvious costs but hidden benefits.

10. It’s surprisingly easy to get relatively up to speed on contentious topics. For instance, it only took ~10 hours to read about the main experimental results that relevantly bear on fish consciousness. If you want to learn some subject that people significantly dispute, generally doing so isn’t that hard.

11. Analytic philosophy is awesome, and analytic philosophers tend to be much clearer in their thought than everyone else.

12. Wild animal suffering is the worst thing in the world. Given the sheer, mindboggling amount of suffering in nature that goes on every second, every other problem pales in comparison.

13. Social factors shape our views more than we realize. You should expect to massively underrate the plausibility of judgments if they sound bad or ridiculous when you utter them.

14. Consciousness is non-physical and OJ definitely is guilty.

15. The self-indication assumption is right.

16. Logical fallacies are only very rarely committed. If you think someone is rampantly committing logical fallacies, you’re almost definitely wrong.

17. If you find yourself unable to precisely articulate your thoughts, most of the time, your thoughts are confused. There are rarely huge truthbombs that are inarticulable.

18. You shouldn’t be that confident in your political views. The world is filled with people much smarter than you who’d crush you in a debate, who have views you regard as insane.

19. You’ll be happier if you make jokes a lot and try to find the humor in situations. If you find Norm Macdonald funny, for instance, probably you should listen to more of his comedy at the margins. I’ve endlessly amused myself by misreading street signs. For example:

(Yeah, how would a narrow lane overtake a cyclist).

(Poor door—there’s no need to be alarmed).

20. You should read and engage with the ideas of people you disagree with. Democrats should spend more time reading Republicans and vice versa.

21. The world is filled with bad things—wars, diseases, and much more. But however bad these things are, they will never be as bad as the book The Good It Promises The Harm It Does.