Some are paralyzed for more sophisticated reasons. When you’ve repeatedly noticed that people who don’t take the time to meta-optimize decisions, think through potential negative consequences, actually care about being right or doing the right thing, et cetera, tend to end up doing extremely abhorrent things while remaining self-righteous, and then furthermore notice that when you try to emulate this behavior bad things tend to happen not only to the people you care about but yourself and others’ perceptions of you, then you start getting major inhibitions about trying to do anything that has multiple steps, high uncertainty about utility, or that could set a bad precedent for future action.
The safe assumption is that the brain cannot distinguish between unimportant decisions in near mode and important decisions in far mode. Both tend to have similar amounts of perceived utility. If a lot of what you do involves careful thinking about far mode topics (Friendly AI, cosmology, decision theory, philosophy, epistemic rationality), then making hasty decisions in near mode could set a bad precedent for far mode epistemic dispositions. We just don’t know how context-sensitively the brain is wired. I personally would not bet heavily on the hypothesis that the brain is that context-sensitive about dispositions of judgment.
I repeatedly perceive anticorrelation between epistemic and “instrumental rationality” (that is, doing things because doing things is high status, even if they’re probably not the right things to do). Until I understand this better, I am going to go with my comparative advantage and genetic predisposition to being somewhat paralyzed when it comes to decisions and getting things done, while being very afraid of precedents and hasty decisions (including hasty decisions about which ideas to endorse).
The constant negative feedback of “this isn’t working, try something else” is not something I want to get rid of. Not as long as I have something to protect.
Maybe it’s the ability to admit to status-lowering traits and not the traits themselves that is high-status around here. The idea of status is considered irrational so people surpress those of their judgements that can be clearly recognized as status-based. But simply scoffing at a psychological mechanisms doesn’t turn it off so it ends up finding alternative ways of sorting people into a hierarchy. Dissaproval of status dynamics leads to new dynamics in which you get points for appearing unconcerned about the old system.
Speaking of bad precedents, LW is the only community I know of where it’s high-status to brag about not being able to do anything.
It seems at least superficially similar to how among some evangelical Christian groups it is high status to have been a terrible sinner before accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior. The analogy might hold more if it were a high status claim here to have once had terrible akrasia before finding solutions.
Some are paralyzed for more sophisticated reasons. When you’ve repeatedly noticed that people who don’t take the time to meta-optimize decisions, think through potential negative consequences, actually care about being right or doing the right thing, et cetera, tend to end up doing extremely abhorrent things while remaining self-righteous, and then furthermore notice that when you try to emulate this behavior bad things tend to happen not only to the people you care about but yourself and others’ perceptions of you, then you start getting major inhibitions about trying to do anything that has multiple steps, high uncertainty about utility, or that could set a bad precedent for future action.
The safe assumption is that the brain cannot distinguish between unimportant decisions in near mode and important decisions in far mode. Both tend to have similar amounts of perceived utility. If a lot of what you do involves careful thinking about far mode topics (Friendly AI, cosmology, decision theory, philosophy, epistemic rationality), then making hasty decisions in near mode could set a bad precedent for far mode epistemic dispositions. We just don’t know how context-sensitively the brain is wired. I personally would not bet heavily on the hypothesis that the brain is that context-sensitive about dispositions of judgment.
I repeatedly perceive anticorrelation between epistemic and “instrumental rationality” (that is, doing things because doing things is high status, even if they’re probably not the right things to do). Until I understand this better, I am going to go with my comparative advantage and genetic predisposition to being somewhat paralyzed when it comes to decisions and getting things done, while being very afraid of precedents and hasty decisions (including hasty decisions about which ideas to endorse).
The constant negative feedback of “this isn’t working, try something else” is not something I want to get rid of. Not as long as I have something to protect.
Speaking of bad precedents, LW is the only community I know of where it’s high-status to brag about not being able to do anything.
Maybe it’s the ability to admit to status-lowering traits and not the traits themselves that is high-status around here. The idea of status is considered irrational so people surpress those of their judgements that can be clearly recognized as status-based. But simply scoffing at a psychological mechanisms doesn’t turn it off so it ends up finding alternative ways of sorting people into a hierarchy. Dissaproval of status dynamics leads to new dynamics in which you get points for appearing unconcerned about the old system.
It seems at least superficially similar to how among some evangelical Christian groups it is high status to have been a terrible sinner before accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior. The analogy might hold more if it were a high status claim here to have once had terrible akrasia before finding solutions.
I wouldn’t say it’s generally high status or bragging at LW to talk about not doing anything.
Talking about having trouble getting things done probably doesn’t lower one’s status here as much as it would in a lot of other places.