I found this post after publishing something of my own yesterday, and it’s wild how relevant this feels almost 2 decades later.
I’m not an expert on subjective probabilities, I come from analysing human behaviour and decision-making. What I find most fascinating is how you treat anticipation as a limited resource that has to be allocated among possible futures. In my world, people do something similar, but emotionally. We hoard permission the way the pundit hoards anticipation, waiting for perfect certainty before acting.
Recently, I watched someone spend months asking ChatGPT how to repair a friendship, crafting the perfect narrative, instead of just showing up. Therapists, astrologers and LLMs have all become proxies for “little numbers” that might make the risk of choosing feel safe. For so many of us.
I wonder if Bayesian reasoning is to belief what courage is to action? Because both are ways of updating before certainty arrives.
I found this post after publishing something of my own yesterday, and it’s wild how relevant this feels almost 2 decades later.
I’m not an expert on subjective probabilities, I come from analysing human behaviour and decision-making. What I find most fascinating is how you treat anticipation as a limited resource that has to be allocated among possible futures. In my world, people do something similar, but emotionally. We hoard permission the way the pundit hoards anticipation, waiting for perfect certainty before acting.
Recently, I watched someone spend months asking ChatGPT how to repair a friendship, crafting the perfect narrative, instead of just showing up. Therapists, astrologers and LLMs have all become proxies for “little numbers” that might make the risk of choosing feel safe. For so many of us.
I wonder if Bayesian reasoning is to belief what courage is to action? Because both are ways of updating before certainty arrives.
(If you’re curious, my essay exploring this from the emotional side is here: https://shapelygal.substack.com/p/youre-afraid-to-choose-now-arent)