Lifestyle design from first principles
I really believe this type of thinking and the philosophies spawned by it are harmful. It&#x27;s easy to find flaws even with premise #1, that &quot;suffering is bad&quot;.<p>We choose to suffer for things we deem worth suffering for even if they don&#x27;t bring us &quot;joy&quot;. In an extreme example of this, we might even choose to jump in front of a car if it means saving a child.<p>I think a lot of things in this philosophical vein are a symptom of disconnection from society. I truly believe that if you are socially enmeshed with others around you and deeply care about their well being (friends, family, maybe even a partner and&#x2F;or pets and&#x2F;or children), or have other things in the world that you deeply care about, (e.g. nature, art, etc.), it would seem odd to try and deduce life from first principles, since these &quot;worldly attachments&quot; are an immediate and obvious source of meaning, value, and direction.<p>Regarding section 3 - what even is &quot;true happiness&quot;, anyway? I&#x27;d say (without evidence) that among those who are financially secure, the happiest people are probably those who are content and don&#x27;t spend all their time wondering about how happy they are; the more you think about this topic the more you&#x27;ll focus how you can be happier and just end up dissatisfied as a result. A mindset of optimizing for happiness will accidentally make you unhappy.<p>With all that said, I do like the author&#x27;s section about trying to align yourself with reality as much as possible.