Chris Williamson

Whereas previously you were just happy to have fucking done it.

And then, yeah, this tighter and tighter spiral, this ever increasing resolution that you look at the world with, I think to a lot of people feels like a personal curse.

I think it feels like an increase in self-awareness just equates to an increase in suffering.

What about regret?

I think one of the things that comes along as a side dish with quite a lot of self-awareness is people's increase in rumination, sort of whimsical, wistful remembering regret.

It's a weird one because I think the free will argument is in an interesting category.

It's something that might be literally true but figuratively useless.

We might be a deterministic set of dominoes all the way from the Big Bang until this conversation right here.

But it's functionally pointless to believe that as far as I can see.

You need to go so deep into non-attachment to, I couldn't have done any differently, but you need to not overshoot into nihilism and fatalism.

And it's just fucking, it's too hard.

But if we stay, if we shelve the discussion around determinism,

And you say, okay, you get to go back.

You didn't make a decision before you got to the point at which you made a decision.

Or you didn't do a thing or you did do a thing after or before you wish that you had.

and you want to do it differently.

As far as I can see, sort of reading your perspective, regret is kind of like a refusal to accept the limits of foresight.

Like you couldn't have chosen differently under the same conditions and an acceptance of necessity kind of helps to dissolve regret.

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