In philosophy, you learn that a lot of your basic assumptions about reality are depressingly incompatible or inherently meaningless. One of the clichés on which I rest many of my most meaningful decisions has been to live without regrets. Don’t do anything you’ll regret, and don’t avoid trying something you’ll regret having missed.

Well, Time is running an article, Can You Predict Happiness? (998 words), which basically overturns that. The idea may seem simple — people are far too distractable and moment-centered to predict how much they’ll enjoy something — but it has really fundamental consequences. I read this article a week ago, and yet I still keep thinking about it. Once you make a decision, even one you find important, and go with it, “the unchosen alternatives evaporate.” The good news about that is, when making a decision seems like a toss-up, you can be happy with either choice. That bad news is, if you take it to the extreme, it’ll render all of your decisions meaningless and arbitrary. You would have been fine going with that other career, that other spouse, that other life.

You know, maybe Hillary wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Update: John tipped me off to the fact that the experiment’s designer, Dan Gilbert, has done a talk on this very subject for TED. In twenty-one minutes, he clarifies it much better than either myself or the Times article does. ∞