Would you rather be right or happy?

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I'd rather be happy cuz I'm usually not! I always have to be right no matter what it is! I'd rather just not have to worry about it and be so crazy all the time.

I sometimes think I'd rather be happy than right, but I often act as if I'd rather be right than happy.

I don't know how to answer the poll.

Happy

i can only be happy when i am sure i am right,

if i am not sure i am right, then i cannot relax.
if i can not relax then i can not be happy.

happiness for me is what i feel when i know there are no loose ends in the external world that i am obliged to tie together.

As an Exmormon who visits exmormon.org often, this question of insisting on expousing the truth vs a person being happy replays itself. It's a good question. Here's an answer someone wrote that I liked.

Buzz Lightyear the Wacky Space marine who fights Zergs, is content in believing he's a Space Jarhead, now say for instance, or Spanish Flamengo Jarhead.... (I like that one more better, more manners), anyways, if Buzz was armed with a REAL gun, (I don't know he discovered a stapler and somehow melted them into bullets and was shooting at his friend Woody, or discovered a lighter and is using it as a flamethrower as a Firebat, or somehow he decides to arrest the other toys out of a fit of parnoia thinking they're Enemies or something, or attacks them... then the truth must be told.

But if he's just marching around harmlessly, or actually uses his sense of responsibility and duty to help his friends, and cares about them etc, like a Super hero (and this trait came in very handy when he was set on Spanish mode).... Then it's good, it's helpful. And don't tell him he's just a toy.

In the case of Shutter Island, because Decaprio's character was harming people and himself, delusioning he was Federal agent, the doctors of the Shutter Island facility couldn't accept his delusion.. Delusions are healthy we all need dreams, but if it clouds our sense of reality and overrides our decision making skills (like Blache Dubor's fantasy of confusing a one night stand with a Millionare, and prefering "magic" over a harsh reality (being fired, homeless), she eventually was carted way.

So tell the truth only if serious hazard to sanity or saftey. If it's harmless trivial leave it alone.

If you go to a church, and want to believe that an all powerful God loves you, this is good. But, if say that church's faith demands you do weird stuff like live in a compound under armed guards (Scientologly, Davidians). It might be a good time to learn the truth then.

This right vs happy thing is really the wrong question.

"Right" means too many things. 1+1=3 is wrong. That's easy. But is it right to ignore the homeless person you just stepped over to get into the office building where you work?

Right isn't very easy to define even in the realms of science and engineering. In engineering, a right answer can be calculated for a particular problem, but there are where the right answer for one part of a complex system degrades the performance of another part of the system. Determining the correct balance between the two parts can be a subjective evaluation that has no right answer.

Life issues are even further removed from any right answers. Even something as concrete as a bus schedule is uncertain. The schedule says the bus arrives at First and Main at 7:30 PM. But the bus actually arrives at 7:29 one day and 7:31 the next. Take right and wrong into the realm of human relationships and the entire enterprise collapses. Right and wrong are demoted to fuzzy concepts, the meaning of which is highly dependent on circumstance and context.

What does this mean for Aspies? I personally think that Aspies are more sensitive to the states of mind resulting from contradictory information. There is an almost palpable sense of unease when an unresolved idea is floating about in the mind. Without offering any real evidence, I suspect that NTs are better at compartmentalizing competing ideas and conflicting data. So Aspies have a need to be "right" in the sense that there is a stronger compulsion to resolve weakly compartmentalized thoughts. But this is not so much about being right or wrong as being internally consistent.

Aspies cannot be happy when "wrong" because they cannot easily endure the the cognitive dissonance of competing and contradictory ideas and thoughts.


Of course, this entire post could be wrong, right?

i would rather be happy, even when i am right most of the time the person who is wrong wont admit it.

Happy, no contest.

I would rather be right - that is, I would rather know and live out the truth. Truth is an absolute and external, something that can be shared in common; and happiness is at best conditional and interior. In any case, I don't look for happiness; I'm not sure that I've ever experienced it (vs. simple contentment), but to have it because of a delusion or lie is not something I would ever want.

What an interesting thing to ask - I admit I find the results surprising.