Readit NewsImagine being paid generational wealth, and then the house of cards comes crashing down a couple of months later.
Dead Comment
However, the premise seems a bit wrong (or at least the narrator is wrong). If your brain actually degenerates from usage of the ring (and is no longer used in daily life, acting only reflexively), the premise that you are the happiest from following the ring might be flat out wrong. I think happiness (I tend to think in terms of well-being, which let's say ranks every good thing you can feel, by definition -- and assume the "good" is something philosophically infinitely wise) is probably something like a whole-brain or at least a-lot-of-brain phenomenon. It's not just a result of what you see or what you have in life. In fact I'm sure two persons can have very similar external conditions and wildly different internal lives (for an obvious example compare the bed-ridden man who spends his day on beautiful dreams, and the other who is depressed or in despair).
What the ring seems to do is to put you in situations where you would be the happiest, if only you were not wearing the earring.
The earring that actually guides you toward a better inner life perhaps offers only very minimal and strategic advice. Perhaps that's what the 'Lotus octohedral earring' does :)
> There are no recorded cases of a wearer regretting following the earring’s advice, and there are no recorded cases of a wearer not regretting disobeying the earring. The earring is always right.
> ...The wearer lives an abnormally successful life, usually ending out as a rich and much-beloved pillar of the community with a large and happy family.
> Niderion-nomai’s commentary: It is well that we are so foolish, or what little freedom we have would be wasted on us. It is for this that Book of Cold Rain says one must never take the shortest path between two points.
The piece implies that
1. at least occasionally one should choose to do something one will regret.
2. not knowing what will make one happy is part of what makes one free.
I'm not sure I agree with these (it seems that 1. is a paradox) but it is an interesting thought experiment.
I think the paradox is here, and it comes from cheeky use of misleading language:
> ...The wearer lives an abnormally successful life, usually ending out as a rich and much-beloved pillar of the community with a large and happy family.
The wearer doesn't really live any sort of life. Once it fully integrates with you your brain is mush, you're no longer experiencing anything. At some fuzzy point in there you've basically died and been replaced by the earring.
Maybe they shouldn't be? And I think honest people can have that debate.
But you can't really argue against the effectiveness of government subsidy as a path to prosperity for the guy getting the money.
My autosteer will gladly drive through red lights, stop signs, etc.
And the fact that we have telemetry at all is pretty amazing. Most car crashes there's zero telemetry. Tesla is the exception, even though they did the wrong thing here.
Finally, the c-suite is getting it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41462545