Those all have to do with belief and evidence. I’m sure Eliezer has said this about morality as well (if you want something to be the right action, you already think it is the right action), but I haven’t tracked that down. There’s this, but no pithy quote.
Thanks for the links, but those aren’t it. I’m familiar with that recurring tidbit, but the post I am thinking of, I believe, contained more of an encouraged heuristic; something like, “If you’re finnagling over a decision and think you’ll end up on one side, at a certain point, you should just get it over with and actually go to that side.”
As I was thinking about this, I thought it might have been in The Proper Use of Doubt. While it’s actually close, it’s not what I remember. The quote I’m looking for would have embodied something kind of like this:
Eventually the cost of searching will exceed the expected benefit, and you’ll stop searching. At which point you can no longer claim to be usefully doubting. A doubt that is not investigated might as well not exist.
No, I remember it too. It was something about a survey of students; of the group that could say they hadn’t yet decided but would probably end up doing course A, almost every student chose course A. So the message was something like if you can guess where you’re probably going to head, actually you’ve pretty much made the decision.
Well, that does sound a lot like what Richard came up with above:
Once you know your destination, you are already there.
But… I take that comment to be somewhat of a negative statement. As in, you shouldn’t know your destination, otherwise all of this rationality stuff is pointless. The phrase I recall (and perhaps what you’re suggesting as well) was almost more of an encouragement—like, “If you’re endlessly deliberating, it will be more useful for you to head in the direction you’re leaning vs. continuing to deliberate as if you don’t know at all.”
Once you know your destination, you are already there.
In the Way of Bayes, the prior probability equals the expected posterior probability: If you know your destination, you are already there.
You should not think that you know which direction [your belief] will go [after getting evidence], because by the laws of probability theory, if you know your destination, you are already there.
Those all have to do with belief and evidence. I’m sure Eliezer has said this about morality as well (if you want something to be the right action, you already think it is the right action), but I haven’t tracked that down. There’s this, but no pithy quote.
Thanks for the links, but those aren’t it. I’m familiar with that recurring tidbit, but the post I am thinking of, I believe, contained more of an encouraged heuristic; something like, “If you’re finnagling over a decision and think you’ll end up on one side, at a certain point, you should just get it over with and actually go to that side.”
As I was thinking about this, I thought it might have been in The Proper Use of Doubt. While it’s actually close, it’s not what I remember. The quote I’m looking for would have embodied something kind of like this:
Maybe I’m just making things up in my head!
No, I remember it too. It was something about a survey of students; of the group that could say they hadn’t yet decided but would probably end up doing course A, almost every student chose course A. So the message was something like if you can guess where you’re probably going to head, actually you’ve pretty much made the decision.
Well, that does sound a lot like what Richard came up with above:
But… I take that comment to be somewhat of a negative statement. As in, you shouldn’t know your destination, otherwise all of this rationality stuff is pointless. The phrase I recall (and perhaps what you’re suggesting as well) was almost more of an encouragement—like, “If you’re endlessly deliberating, it will be more useful for you to head in the direction you’re leaning vs. continuing to deliberate as if you don’t know at all.”