Ask HN: Life as optimization problem

7 points by ecmendenhall 13 years ago | 6 comments

I asked this question a while ago on both Quora and Ask MetaFilter, but many of the answers were hung up on the metaphors. ("Don't think of your life as a decision tree" was one popular response). I think HN readers are more likely to appreciate the structure. I'm not trying to write a system of equations and solve for happiness. But I do find the following formulations a useful way to approach a set of very big questions:

  -How can I engineer my life to maximize happiness, financial security, and independence?
  -How can I reconstruct as much of my decision tree as possible before making big decisions?
  -What choices did you make that locked you into a suboptimal outcome in these areas, and how could you have avoided them? 
  -In your experience, what small actions or decisions offer the greatest marginal returns on these categories?
  -Of the decisions I face now (or soon), which will have the greatest impact on future branches of the tree (i.e. eliminate or open up future paths or options)?

I'd love to hear answers on all scales, from, e.g., "buy the best noise canceling headphones you can afford" to "ride a bike everywhere" to "don't have children."

argonz 13 years ago |

Psychological studies found that humans have a notorious tendency to think about their environment and feelings in static terms and underestimate how much they will change in the future.

I think part of your question is rooted in this false assumption and therefore not answarable. Life is chaotic and the biggest effects will come from rare, lucky, unforeseeable, "unkown unknown" type coincidences. These are positive/negative Black Swans in Taleb's terminology. Eg. a life-long-friend from a conference, your future wife in a party etc..

What you can do is maximize your surface to these positive Black Swans(eg. hoarding options, meet peoples) and minimize possible negative outcomes(leverage contracts, debts, anything that tides you down).

Reinterpreting your question these types of heuristics/practices are what worth doing, but they are usually not specific decisions.

Books listing similar heuristics are Reed's Suceeding, Munger's Almanach and of course Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan. Wonderful books, hope it helps.

shokwave 13 years ago |

If you do want to write a system of equations and solve for happiness...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/the_science_of_happiness/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/

001sky 13 years ago |

In general, with all variations of an 'optimization' approach, you will be constrained by considerations re: Acquisition of power. To simplify, its best treated as an exogenous factor. Expressing it and acquiring it, while inter-related, are distinct processes. When incorporated, the necessary feedback loops will (almost invariably) thwart a simple quantitative approach. But, consider Aristotle. He had a surprisingly sophisticated method (inter-subjective selection). And was a proponent of N-dimensional optimization, for critical life tasks. His frameworks remain surprisingly useful.

_pius 13 years ago |

You might enjoy Charlie Munger's writing and speeches. Here's an example: http://ycombinator.com/munger.html

20100thibault 13 years ago |

I would recommend reading ray dalio's principle as a complimentary to munger's writing

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

Both changed my life

Good luck

AlexOrtiz201 13 years ago |

Paretto's Principle is also something you can try. In theory 80 percent of everything your aiming for comes from 20 percent of your decisions/actions. Take a look at whats helped and what hasn't and repeat those that have helped more often.