Do you have a reference for The Fear, and/or advice for dealing with the truth behind it: there’s no guarantee that you’ll find a pleasant and fulfilling job that leads to a comfortable middle-class income where you struggle but succeed in sending your kids to college and expect to eat better than cat food for at least 2 decades of retirement. Let alone doing this and giving significantly to global X-Risk causes.
For me, this series resonates (mostly; some feels like worst-case exaggeration). But that’s mostly in retrospect, not in prospect. When I was much younger, I felt a lot less in control, and a lot more worried about my medium-term (say 8-20 years) future, and I wasn’t credentialed enough to get into a maze so I survived on (and learned from and grew with) smaller, edgier jobs for quite some time (4 small companies in 12 years, before getting an actual solid position in a medium-sized company). This wasn’t exactly a choice to avoid mazes, it was what I saw as highest-monetary-EV option. If someone had offered me 1.5x salary for a maze-like job, I’d likely have jumped at it.
I got incredibly lucky—my contrarian nature and lack of feeling of responsibility paid off, and I have found a good middle-ground—not paid as much as I probably could be, but able to do some interesting and worthwhile work, even in a large company. I am VERY aware of https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy , and I strongly suspect that the vast majority of other humans will be less lucky (and risk-accepting) than I have been. In fact, I recognize that much of my risk profile is probably based on the fact that I’ve been incredibly lucky on a number of dimensions. If I had less, I’d be more protective of it, and The Fear would easily dominate my choices.
When I wrote The Fear down, I was thinking about a specific past Magic: The Gathering article, but I was unable to find it; if someone else knows where it still exists that would be great. The Fear was when people built their plans for matches in terror of the one card/thing that they had no way to deal with reasonably, as opposed to accepting that such a thing was unlikely but would be extremely bad if it happened, and messing tons of other things up. There’s also a Lily Allen song of the same name which is related, and might be worth using if I can’t find the article.
I don’t know if I have much advice beyond what I already said above, but my basic response is that this isn’t how life works, at least not going forward. There is no safe path, and maze work does not make your future safer. The biggest problem with The Fear is that it leads one to look for the actions that tell a story that you are doing the thing that means that when you lose/fail it won’t be your fault, as opposed to the thing that actually makes you win/succeed.
The biggest problem with The Fear is that it leads one to look for the actions that tell a story that you are doing the thing that means that when you lose/fail it won’t be your fault, as opposed to the thing that actually makes you win/succeed.
Totally explains my observations. Giving up chances of the success, just to remove feelings of responsibility at prospect of failure. The thing is, many people would still make the trade if you present it as such.
Do you have a reference for The Fear, and/or advice for dealing with the truth behind it: there’s no guarantee that you’ll find a pleasant and fulfilling job that leads to a comfortable middle-class income where you struggle but succeed in sending your kids to college and expect to eat better than cat food for at least 2 decades of retirement. Let alone doing this and giving significantly to global X-Risk causes.
For me, this series resonates (mostly; some feels like worst-case exaggeration). But that’s mostly in retrospect, not in prospect. When I was much younger, I felt a lot less in control, and a lot more worried about my medium-term (say 8-20 years) future, and I wasn’t credentialed enough to get into a maze so I survived on (and learned from and grew with) smaller, edgier jobs for quite some time (4 small companies in 12 years, before getting an actual solid position in a medium-sized company). This wasn’t exactly a choice to avoid mazes, it was what I saw as highest-monetary-EV option. If someone had offered me 1.5x salary for a maze-like job, I’d likely have jumped at it.
I got incredibly lucky—my contrarian nature and lack of feeling of responsibility paid off, and I have found a good middle-ground—not paid as much as I probably could be, but able to do some interesting and worthwhile work, even in a large company. I am VERY aware of https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy , and I strongly suspect that the vast majority of other humans will be less lucky (and risk-accepting) than I have been. In fact, I recognize that much of my risk profile is probably based on the fact that I’ve been incredibly lucky on a number of dimensions. If I had less, I’d be more protective of it, and The Fear would easily dominate my choices.
When I wrote The Fear down, I was thinking about a specific past Magic: The Gathering article, but I was unable to find it; if someone else knows where it still exists that would be great. The Fear was when people built their plans for matches in terror of the one card/thing that they had no way to deal with reasonably, as opposed to accepting that such a thing was unlikely but would be extremely bad if it happened, and messing tons of other things up. There’s also a Lily Allen song of the same name which is related, and might be worth using if I can’t find the article.
I don’t know if I have much advice beyond what I already said above, but my basic response is that this isn’t how life works, at least not going forward. There is no safe path, and maze work does not make your future safer. The biggest problem with The Fear is that it leads one to look for the actions that tell a story that you are doing the thing that means that when you lose/fail it won’t be your fault, as opposed to the thing that actually makes you win/succeed.
Very happy that you found a good solution.
Totally explains my observations. Giving up chances of the success, just to remove feelings of responsibility at prospect of failure. The thing is, many people would still make the trade if you present it as such.