I think the essay is about believing correct things and dealing with the consequence. The first step is unnecessary and often harmful.
Anyway, some personal reaction first. It feels ironic to me reading this as someone with OCD, whose compulsions center around checking behavior. I’m reading this like, wait, you don’t check for spiders? Everywhere, constantly, hundreds of times per day, including in situations where you have literally no stake in whether there’s a spider? OCD sufferers suffer most when trying to manage their intrusive thoughts (everyone has them, OCD people desperately and futilely try to get rid of them) so I recognized the prayer pretty quickly as a “bad idea,” although still intrigued by its spiritual dimension (it’s like the serenity prayer minus the courage part?)
I think this forms a pretty serious objection to the nurse story. Firstly there’s the standard problems with futarchy—she’s using the market to effect the result, which has problems and perverse incentives. On topic to this essay, it’s just not clear the nurse is using any “checking” pattern that helps her do her job. I’d wager real nurses would say something like “I try not to focus on that information and just do my job.”
Belief is a physical act with a physical cost. That poem and the essay are entirely about marrying rational belief with physical belief, and doing so takes actual calories. Once we talk about physical belief, these facts arise that are not true for rational belief:
Not having a belief at all is the null state. If you don’t spend calories, you don’t believe.
From this it follows that just because you can put a probability on anything, doesn’t mean you should.
Even worse, information can distract and harm you. This is different from platonic belief which always benefits from information.
Believing an incorrect thing that you know is incorrect is often more instrumental than believing a correct thing. This seems contradictory because know ⇒ believe, but that’s only true in rational space.
You have some ability to change your belief without changing your knowledge.
The essay’s conclusion is much more compliant with this than the opening—it’s advice on how to pass the marshmallow test. The conclusion embraces “distraction” strategies. The “chocolate” strategy may work as a distraction, but fail as a ritual (“I can’t check my email until I go buy a chocolate bar.”)
But to my first point: why not distract from anxiety before formulating a belief, instead of formulate a belief then distract from that belief.
Practically: you can also weaken your belief if you want. One way to do this is to list 5 reasons something may be true and may be false. This will often weaken your prior—and it probably should because opening bids are often overconfident—and some of your “false” column won’t quite invalidate the thing but will point out other things you should think about instead.
I think the essay is about believing correct things and dealing with the consequence. The first step is unnecessary and often harmful.
Anyway, some personal reaction first. It feels ironic to me reading this as someone with OCD, whose compulsions center around checking behavior. I’m reading this like, wait, you don’t check for spiders? Everywhere, constantly, hundreds of times per day, including in situations where you have literally no stake in whether there’s a spider? OCD sufferers suffer most when trying to manage their intrusive thoughts (everyone has them, OCD people desperately and futilely try to get rid of them) so I recognized the prayer pretty quickly as a “bad idea,” although still intrigued by its spiritual dimension (it’s like the serenity prayer minus the courage part?)
I think this forms a pretty serious objection to the nurse story. Firstly there’s the standard problems with futarchy—she’s using the market to effect the result, which has problems and perverse incentives. On topic to this essay, it’s just not clear the nurse is using any “checking” pattern that helps her do her job. I’d wager real nurses would say something like “I try not to focus on that information and just do my job.”
Belief is a physical act with a physical cost. That poem and the essay are entirely about marrying rational belief with physical belief, and doing so takes actual calories. Once we talk about physical belief, these facts arise that are not true for rational belief:
Not having a belief at all is the null state. If you don’t spend calories, you don’t believe.
From this it follows that just because you can put a probability on anything, doesn’t mean you should.
Even worse, information can distract and harm you. This is different from platonic belief which always benefits from information.
Believing an incorrect thing that you know is incorrect is often more instrumental than believing a correct thing. This seems contradictory because know ⇒ believe, but that’s only true in rational space.
You have some ability to change your belief without changing your knowledge.
The essay’s conclusion is much more compliant with this than the opening—it’s advice on how to pass the marshmallow test. The conclusion embraces “distraction” strategies. The “chocolate” strategy may work as a distraction, but fail as a ritual (“I can’t check my email until I go buy a chocolate bar.”)
But to my first point: why not distract from anxiety before formulating a belief, instead of formulate a belief then distract from that belief.
Practically: you can also weaken your belief if you want. One way to do this is to list 5 reasons something may be true and may be false. This will often weaken your prior—and it probably should because opening bids are often overconfident—and some of your “false” column won’t quite invalidate the thing but will point out other things you should think about instead.