What I’m saying is that decompartmentalization is dangerous to many instrumental goals, since epistemic knowledge of uncertainty can rob you of necessary clarity during the preparation and execution of your actual action and performance.
Compartmentalization only seems necessary when actually doing things; actually hitting golf balls or acting in a play or whatever. But during down time epistemic rationality does not seem to be harmed. Saying ‘optimists’ indicates that optimism is a near-constantly activated trait, which does sound like it would harm epistemic rationality. Perhaps realists could do as well as or better than optimists if they learned to emulate optimists only when actually doing things like golfing or acting, but switching to ‘realist’ mode as much as possible to ensure that the decompartmenalization algorithms are running at max capacity. This seems like plausible human behavior; at any rate, if realism as a trait doesn’t allow one to periodically be optimistic when necessary, then I worry that optimism as a trait wouldn’t allow one to periodically be realistic when necessary. The latter sounds more harmful, but I optimistically expect that such tradeoffs aren’t necessary.
Saying ‘optimists’ indicates that optimism is a near-constantly activated trait, which does sound like it would harm epistemic rationality. Perhaps realists could do as well as or better than optimists if they learned to emulate optimists only when actually doing things like golfing or acting,
I rather doubt that, since one of the big differences between the optimists and pessimists is the motivation to practice and improve, which needs to be active a lot more of the time than just while “doing something”.
If the choice is between, say, reading LessWrong and doing something difficult, my guess is the optimist will be more likely to work on the difficult thing, while the purely epistemic rationalist will get busy finding a way to justify reading LessWrong as being on task. ;-)
Don’t get me wrong, I never said I liked this characteristic of evolved brains. But it’s better not to fool ourselves about whether it’s better not to fool ourselves. ;-)
Compartmentalization only seems necessary when actually doing things; actually hitting golf balls or acting in a play or whatever. But during down time epistemic rationality does not seem to be harmed. Saying ‘optimists’ indicates that optimism is a near-constantly activated trait, which does sound like it would harm epistemic rationality. Perhaps realists could do as well as or better than optimists if they learned to emulate optimists only when actually doing things like golfing or acting, but switching to ‘realist’ mode as much as possible to ensure that the decompartmenalization algorithms are running at max capacity. This seems like plausible human behavior; at any rate, if realism as a trait doesn’t allow one to periodically be optimistic when necessary, then I worry that optimism as a trait wouldn’t allow one to periodically be realistic when necessary. The latter sounds more harmful, but I optimistically expect that such tradeoffs aren’t necessary.
I rather doubt that, since one of the big differences between the optimists and pessimists is the motivation to practice and improve, which needs to be active a lot more of the time than just while “doing something”.
If the choice is between, say, reading LessWrong and doing something difficult, my guess is the optimist will be more likely to work on the difficult thing, while the purely epistemic rationalist will get busy finding a way to justify reading LessWrong as being on task. ;-)
Don’t get me wrong, I never said I liked this characteristic of evolved brains. But it’s better not to fool ourselves about whether it’s better not to fool ourselves. ;-)