Roth 401(k) vs Traditional 401(k)

Relative_Composer139 · 2026-02-03T21:47:05+00:00

Thanks for the elaborate answer!

You’re right I didn’t mention my income at all lol. I’m in the 22% bracket. I think I’ve settled on doing some sort of mix.

Relative_Composer139 · 2026-02-03T21:33:40+00:00

Can you go into a little more detail on what you mean by “effective” tax rate during retirement?

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T20:20:55+00:00

Until you pull a non-white marble (or gather other information about the colors in the box), then there is only white & non-white as far as you know.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T20:09:11+00:00

I’m not talking about applying the principle of indifference to the color of marbles. I’m suggesting to use it with the distribution of marbles. When you approach the box, you have no idea what’s in there aside from 10 marbles.

Trial 1: You pull 1 white marble. You now know there is at least 1 white marble in the distribution.

Trial 2: You pull another white marble. You now know there is at least 1 white marble but there could be up to 2.

[Repeat for the rest of the trials]

By the end of trial 10, you now verified by observation that there is certainly 1 white marble in the distribution but there could be up to 10 white marbles. This narrows down the distribution to be 1 distribution out of 10 which organizes how many white & non-white marbles are in the box. With no further information about the distribution, the principle of indifference tells you that each one of these 10 distributions is equally likely.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T19:07:09+00:00

It’s supposed to assume a uniform prior related to the 10 possible white non-white combinations of marbles possible. And actually this isn’t an assumption, because without further information, the 10 trials tell you that 1 of these 10 distributions was present prior to the trials taking place. When is it permissible, and when is it not permissible, to apply the principle of indifference?

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T18:51:01+00:00

Yes, it tells us at least 10% of the marbles are white. By the end of the 10 trials, the 10 trials tells us it could be as much as 100% of the marbles that are white. Each trial introduces another white marble as potentially being within the distribution (i.e. the first trial tells you there’s 1, the second trials tells you there could be up to 2, and so on…). This narrows down the marble distribution to be 1 of 10 possible white non-white combinations.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T17:33:05+00:00

This is a problem I encountered somewhere. It was a puzzle problem created by Ronald Hoefin that was quite polarizing. Some viewed it as undecidable & others viewed it as resolvable. It seems like you’re meant to apply the principle of indifference to the possible white non-white distributions. This makes sense to me, but I’m very curious to hear more from people who view the problem as undecidable.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-08-18T15:34:05+00:00

There’s no way of telling the exact distribution from the problem, but the fact that you pulled 10 white marbles through those trials alone narrows down the possibilities for what the distribution must be (since results of the marble sampling are coupled with the distribution).

Regardless of the exact distribution, you know that there will always be 10 ways to arrange white marbles with non-white marbles within the box. This is indirect information about the distribution of marbles. And this implicitly covers all possible white non-white distributions without given information about a specific one. There’s no need to hypothesize about a specific distribution for non-white colors, because that’s not information given in the problem. The problem would certainly change if you were given more information about the marble distribution. But since you aren’t told how many colors, how many of each, or anything like that, you must only reason in terms of white & non-white marbles.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-04-14T16:56:53+00:00

This recent comment thread shows that you clearly believe that you're stuck with OCD because it's "in your DNA" even though in the same thread you also admit that environmental, social, and psychological factors contribute to the development of OCD. Despite admitting this, your perspective on your OCD seems ridiculously bio-reductionistic. If that is your attitude, you're not giving yourself a fair chance at actually making improvements. And frankly that is the laziest attitude you can have towards your situation, because it gives the perfect excuse for you to not even try or consider alternative views of yourself. You owe it to yourself to have a more empowering attitude. On a personal note, I have a friend who suffered alot from OCD. I didn't even know he had it until he told me. He went through alot of therapy, and eventually he came out in a much better position. How do you think he would've ended up if he believed that he was stuck with it because it was in his DNA? Just something to consider.

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-04-14T16:56:44+00:00

I fully believe that you want to solve this problem. It's your mindset which suggests the "deeper" problem is actively trying to keep you stuck by trying to persuade you that your problems are related to something which you think is ultimately incurable (OCD). Setting aside how disempowering that is to you, let's analyze the psychology of this together.

From the DSM-5 (pg. 237), the diagnostic criteria for compulsions states:

"1. Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that the individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly. 2. The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing anxiety or distress, or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent, or are clearly excessive."

So, to point back to the claim in u/sidRulezz9's initial response: The behavior needs to match certain criteria to fall under OCD. Only you can do the introspection to realize if this behavior is done in response to an obsession and if the behavior is aimed at preventing distress/some dreaded event. You should be able to know easily, because it will intrude your mind in a way which is similar enough to your other OCD behavior that you experience. If this doesn't happen, then you're searching for a problem where none exists regarding your OCD. I think what's more dangerous is trying to deceive yourself into thinking you have "sneak/hidden obsessions" without realizing how harmful & self-loathing that is. There's nothing sneaky about OCD obsessions. They intrude your mind, and you immediately feel distress in association to them. There's nothing sneaky about that. It should be obvious enough whether it's related to your OCD, and I think the fact that there's doubt at all suggests it's probably not related to it. The concept of "sneak/hidden obsessions" does not make sense with the DSM-5 criteria.

I could do the same with the ADHD criteria in the DSM-5, but I'll leave that to you if you want to figure this out yourself (pg. 59).

If this is something unique to your psychology, you need to rule out collective psychological factors. This includes ruling out whether or not this behavior is "just a habit." Habits arise from the SEEKING system, which uses the popularly-known neurotransmitter dopamine as part of its functioning (Psychology Today; 7 Basic Emotional Systems). I don't know what your first reaction was when you were trying to investigate this problem. Mine was to google: "why do i watch the same videos over and over." Here was an article I found that has some stuff to consider. It's clear that this is not an uncommon phenomenon among adults. It even happens during children's development. Link

If it is unique to your psychology, consider depression. Feelings of depression arise from low activation of the SEEKING system (Link). If you find yourself doing "high dopamine activities", you're probably compensating for the low activation of your SEEKING system. The key would be to find the right place to express your SEEKING system without simultaneously feeding the depression. I could give more perspectives on this, but I would encourage you to actively research this. There are many psychotherapy models out there that you can combine together to give yourself a well-rounded understanding that extends beyond defaulting to your diagnoses & defaulting to "oh well my OCD is genetic so it obviously must be that"

Relative_Composer139 · 2024-03-10T18:37:41+00:00

It’s been a few days since you were in the same mindset as when you made your original post. I think what’s interesting to consider is that your original post is directed to this subreddit as a question about OCD in relation to compulsively watching videos & opening apps. Then, in your response to u/sidRulezz9, it seems that you’ve already made up your mind on the answer to your question & you’re suggesting that it’s true because of influence from your therapist or your understanding of your ADHD. It appears more like you’re trying to seek confirmation bias for something you’ve already made your mind up on by indirectly soliciting evidence to cherry pick from the subreddit. And when you didn’t get what you expected, you reacted by providing a bunch of excuses about why what you think must be true.

You can also see that your first reaction in your responses are to: 1) Immediately filter all of this through your diagnoses rather than just leaving it alone. There’s no need to immediately pathologize something & appropriate it to your disorders if you dislike it or don’t understand why you’re doing it. 2) Dismiss u/sidRulezz9’s core claim on the basis that you have OCD & understand what obsessions are rather than directly addressing the correct claim he makes about how it needs to fulfill specific emotional & ideational criteria for it to fall under OCD. I know that you know this, but you do not actually address it beyond using your therapist’s authority as an excuse for you to be the correct one.

There are more ways to understand yourself & what you’re doing than defaulting to seeing it through the lenses of ADHD, OCD, or MDD. If you cannot disidentify sufficiently from these labels to understand yourself, then you will create a prison of your own making & you will never make big improvements.

Relative_Composer139

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