[SEQ RERUN] On Not Having an Advance Abyssal Plan
Today’s post, On Not Having an Advance Abyssal Plan was originally published on 23 February 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Don’t say that you’ll figure out a solution to the worst case scenario if the worst case scenario happens. Plan it out in advance.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Fairness vs. Goodness, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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Not a justification but maybe an attempt at an explanation: planning for the worst case scenario 1) reminds people that the worst case scenario exists, which is uncomfortable, and 2) makes you look suspicious. It looks like you have some inside knowledge about how likely the worst case scenario is and/or are planning to bring it about yourself for some reason.
It also increases the implicit likelihood you will attribute to the scenario, unless you have superhuman bias-checking abilities. In some cases that can increase the actual likelihood, which I guess is your part of your point #2.