The vast majority of people would rather suffer invisibly.

But I think it depends on what utility you are getting from other peoples' perception of you. Is it rational to care what others think? Is the fact that other people don't know you're suffering helping you?

Let us take two men in the same situation, Person A and Person B.

The situation is, the man has lost his girlfriend for very embarrassing reasons such as losing his job, being a slob, and cheating on her. 100 people are gathered together for a public speech competition and he sees her in the crowd. He is deeply in love with her and if he publicly begs on his knees for her to come back, there's a 10% chance she'll accept, but an 90% chance she'll tell scream back at him all the shit he did and embarrass him in front of 100 people. This is his last chance as she is leaving the country tomorrow.

Now let us take two tweaks to this situation.

In the first version, the man is a member of the speech club and is scheduled to give a speech, which will turn out to be brilliant and be one of the proudest moments of his life. Person A handles the situation by ignoring his ex and giving an the speech, winning best speaker and having one of the proudest moments of his life. Person B does the same with the same results. In both cases the ex leaves and he never talks to her again. But the reason for Person A's action was different than Person B's action. Person A weighed both possible courses of action in his head and decided that surely giving a brilliant speech was better than a 10% chance of winning back his ex. Person B was so terrified of humiliating himself that he never considered begging his ex to come back to him.

In the second version, the man is not scheduled to speak, is not even a member of the club and just happened on the competition by accident. In this case Person A gets down on his knees and begs and pleads, and his ex screams at how he cheated on her, and is a broke unemployed loser in front of 100 people. He goes home crying, and a member of the audience goes home and writes a highly upvoted post on TheRedPill about how this beta loser was humiliated. Person B is terrified of what happened to Person A, so he sits silently through the speeches, leaves, and cried because he knows he's lost her forever.

Are Person A and Person B equal, or is one better off, and if so, which one?

My position is that Person A is better off. The reason is that he walked away from both scenarios with something that's more valuable than his ex girlfriend, the experience of giving a brilliant speech, or avoiding the pain of humiliation in front of 100 people. The invisible factor in the whole situation which is: His freedom.

Because he made decisions based on rational cost-benefit analysis, he is free. Because Person B made decisions based on primal fear, he is not free. The fact that Person B avoided humiliation and otherwise had the same outcomes as Person A is misleading. Person A's ability to act based on reason instead of fear will make him far more successful in the long run. But most people will act like Person B.

Agree or disagree?