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July 15, 2005
The Economics of Woody Allen
If you read Woody Allen very charitably, he seems have a perfectly reasonable desire to live longer. But his real complaint is that the time he has is meaningless because he only has a finite amount. And his conclusion resonates with a lot of people, and has for a long time.I've never understood the appeal of this argument. If a finite quantity of life is worthless, how can an infinite quantity be desirable? Sure, you could trot out mathematical structures with this property, but come on. If an infinite span of days is so great, what's stopping you from enjoying today? In fact, by the law of diminishing marginal utility, the average value of a year in a finite lifespan should be more valuable than the average value of a year in an infinite lifespan.
It would be exceedingly interesting to see how Woody Allen would react to immortality. Frankly, I suspect he'd be complaining about it in a week. Well, actually, I don't have to just suspect. He tells us:
Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again. God - I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.This illustrates one of the main lessons of personality psychology: Contrary to appearances, perennially unhappy people aren't unhappy about anything. They are just unhappy, and project their feelings onto the world.
"The Economics of Woody Allen," by Bryan Caplan, EconLog, June 29, 2005
Other Resources
Nihilsm - from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy"You're Really Nothing at All," - from the American Nihilism Association
Posted at July 15, 2005 02:27 PM | Categories: Nihilism
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