The proper use of regret?

He's failing to distinguish between (1) "I love my children and am very glad to have them and would be very upset if they were replaced by different children" and (2) "My children are in some absolute sense the best children there could possibly be, and if they'd been different I wouldn't love them and be so glad to have them". #1 is normal and reasonable and sensible and nice. #2 is batshit insane.

I think a similar error is behind some people's alarm at the idea that the existence of physical disabilities is a bad thing that people might try to do away with ("do you want to do away with my sister, who has this disability?").

And I think a slightly less similar error is behind the repugnance of Derek Parfit's "repugnant conclusion" (you can start with some natural assumptions about what makes the world a better place, and end up with the conclusion that our world is less good than an alternative with vastly more people, all of whom have lives that are just barely worth living -- but what "just barely worth living" means is not "if they were slightly worse the people whose lives they are would prefer to be dead" but "the world is better for their existence, but only just").

None of the above has anything much to do with regret, but I do also think there's something wrong with how Caplan is thinking about regret. But I think the mistake described above is the really big one.

It seems to me that Caplan is making approximately the same mistake as the guy who says "I'm glad I don't like spinach, because if I did then I would eat it, and I can't stand the stuff". But that's just a vague feeling and I don't have any general principle to rule out such mistakes. Anyone?

If you thought your kids were about a hundred times better than you had any right to expect, this attitude might make sense. Bryan Caplan offers no evidence for any such thing, though. It seems likely that he is just being silly.

It may be that most regret has an element of "I wish the universe was different. If only I had been a better person, it would be different", and is psychologically poisonous.

Giving up regret because there's something about the the universe that one doesn't want to change might be the psychologically wiser choice, while giving learning from past mistakes should have a different name-- possibly "learning from past mistakes".

I think he was making a joke, or at least an intentionally overblown statement.

(on the general topic of regret)

I can't recall any instance of extreme, wincing regret at some moment in my life, that doesn't have a flavor of regret for what it signals about me. That is, if regret has a use, it's to spur me to avoid damaging my reputation and relationships. For this to cover all cases, though, it would have to be the case that the mechanism is too dumb to realize that nobody knows except me - just that it would be damaging if it were known.

I do feel like I want to suppress regret (not by doing fewer things to regret), so that only the worries I find useful are implanted in my mind.

In the category of non-signaling regret, which upon consideration isn't empty (just less painful, in my experience), I suppose losses of resource, opportunity, or health are felt roughly twice as severe as a gain (according to various research I won't search for).

I've yet to lose my wallet. But I feel potential regret every time I realize I'm insufficiently aware of its whereabouts. I don't think actual regret is needed; imagined regret is just fine (and potentially unwanted). I've known other (well-off) people who have stronger or less discriminate tendencies toward regret and worry than I do, and they seem less happy.

I think it's Caplan with a C.

Related: Should We Be Sorry That We Exist?

I thought Bryan was being silly there because it violates his own assertions that children aren't nearly as parameter sensitive as assumed.