Against “You can just do things”
The barriers between us and what we want are often entirely imagined. It is true: you can learn how to paint, change careers, write a paper or run a marathon. These things are hard, but we shouldn’t pretend that they are impossible. You can just do them.
But this mindset has a dangerous edge case: it can make you skip asking for permission precisely when you should ask. The anxiety you’re overriding might be trying to tell you something important: that sometimes the fence is there for a reason.
Here are two illustrative examples from my life (with details changed to protect the privacy of those involved) that motivated my thinking:
A close friend in high school (we call him friend #1) was faced with the pressure of finding a date to the prom lest he look like a total loser. Under the pressure of desperately trying to find someone to go to prom with, he realized that there was nothing stopping him from asking the girl that he had liked for years. He realized he could “just do things.” The worst she could say is no!
Friend #1 asked out his love interest and she said yes. It turns out, however, that another one of his friends had gone on a few dates with her and assumed they would be going to prom together! Friend #1 knew about the dates but assumed this wasn’t a big deal. To friend #2, this was a very big deal. The girl ended up changing her mind about prom and decided to go with no one because she didn’t want to cause drama.
Everyone in the friend group took the side of friend #2 and friend #1 spent his prom night alone while his friends, who now were now upset with him, partied it up.
Person #1 agreed to start an EA club with person #2 at their college. Without consulting person #2, person #1 quickly got funding, recruited a faculty advisor and appointed themselves to be president on the newly created website they created. Person #1 reportedly gave themselves credit for “being agentic.”
Although there was no explicit decision to be co-presidents, person #2 felt like they were cut out of the club that they collectively decided to start together and became skeptical of self-identified EAs and EA in general.
My interpretation is not that people use “being agentic” as an excuse to be a bad person. I believe that people who “just do things” have neutral to good intentions but their initiative can get in the way of their actual goals.
It turns out that getting things done, whether that is finding love or starting an EA group, requires quite a bit of not “just doing things.” In the high school prom example: Although it is true that you can in fact just ask your crush on a date (or anyone!), the anxiety related to making these advances can be a useful barrier between you and a terrible decision you will regret. Interpersonal dynamics around romantic relationships are extremely delicate. Asking out someone is actually a huge risk in a tightly bound high school where everyone knows each other.
One could convincingly argue that friend #1 really did nothing wrong. The girl he liked was single and he asked her out. It’s really everyone else’s fault for being crazy! Fine. But that doesn’t change the social reality that people are often crazy and that friend #1’s actions were ultimately detrimental to his goals.
The University group example is similar. Person #1 confused “not needing permission to do things” with “not needing to coordinate with your stated collaborator.” Yes, looping person #2 in would have slowed things down but the speed came at the cost of the partnership itself. Person #1 optimized for individual velocity when they needed to optimize for collective buy-in. As a result, they alienated person #2 (who was one of the most promising young EAs in the country!).
Consider doing things but like still think about it
The tension between “you can just do things” and “you need permission” dissolves when you realize we’re talking about very different kinds of people.
You don’t need permission from:
People who hate you and do not want to see you happy
Those who claim authority but have no stake
You need permission from:
People you’ve made commitments to
Relationships where trust is necessary
The key insight is that doing things requires thinking about who else is in the system you’re acting within. Friend #1′s mistake wasn’t asking someone out; it was not recognizing that friend #2 had built (arguably unreasonable) expectations around an ongoing courtship. Person #1′s mistake was clearer: they had an explicit partner and acted unilaterally.
Before you “just do” something, ask yourself: whose permission am I assuming I don’t need? Sometimes you’re good to go. Sometimes you’re about to ruin prom for everyone.
I can’t help myself from questioning the example provided.
Like, Friend #1 is just a bad friend?
Yes, it was?
It was not recognising that Friend #2 had built a completely reasonable expectation that his friend, who a) is aware of the dates b) is his friend, won’t interfere in that?
Maybe we just have an object-level disagreement about dating culture, though.
Sometimes you are a bad friend in ways that you don’t realise; everyone has their blind spots. Telling people before taking actions that affect them can let you adjust your expectations before doing something you don’t realise is harmful.
I actually agree that friend #1 is a bad friend but I acknowledge this is specific to my context. Expectations relating to this kind of thing though vary a lot for different subcultures in my experience so I didn’t want to editorialize too much or distract from my core argument.
The reason I say “arguably unreasonable” or that “Friend #1′s mistake wasn’t asking someone out” is that weather or not he is a good person or did a good thing isn’t relevant to issue I’m describing. Regardless of weather his actions where good or bad, they weren’t smart/rational/useful for accomplishing his goals and they only made his situation worse. The mistake he was making was:
He was being a bad friend (but this is really a whole different issue and many readers would probably disagree)
He didn’t realize that his actions would lead to an explosive argument which would go on to destroy his social life.
Because a lot of readers may object to #1 and arguing this isn’t necessary in my opinion, I kept my focus to #2.
As someone who recently got too wrapped up in “just doing things” at the expense of a friend whose permission I did not ask, this post strongly resonates with me right now. Seems like a good word of caution.
On the other hand, things will probably be fine in the long term and as @Bastiaan said, I probably have a more accurate sense of where the boundaries are than I would have if I just avoided doing things. So it’s maybe a grey area. But you’ll probably always be better off asking permission from the people you might be affecting, as long as you care about their opinion and they are in good faith.
Two things:
There is an unspoken (though for me personally clearly felt) corollary to “You can just do things”: “and you will have to accept the consequences”. Mostly those consequences are way less severe than we imagine / fear (which is why we have the saying in the first place). But they are never zero.
Following from this and related to your examples: These to me are great mistakes to make! Yes, they absolutely suck. And also, they give the possibility to learn how the world works, to learn to say sorry, to learn where -real- boundaries are.
I actually do not think I agree with this. I believe people confuse “the chances are close to zero” with “the chances are zero.” For this post, I also tried to choose examples that are genuinely negative expected value: where if you continue doubling down on those choices your life will likely start to fall apart.
In the dating example, I see your perspective. In the university group example, I think that this is really only the kind of choice one would make if they have taken “I can just do things” and “be agentic” to the extreme. This kind of mistake seems to be entirely avoidable with a more measured world-veiw.
I think it’s still a powerful tool for the many of us with some mix of OCD / Autism / whatever is in the water these days
I realized very slowly and with much pain that I am someone who massively overthinks everything I do
I am someone who very much should “just do things” like 3x more than I would naturally feel drawn to do
Doing so has brought me much success and almost everything good in life
Certainly it can be taken too far, but my impression was that the phrase was to a great extent directed at a certain person / TPOT / rationalist type who are insane overthinkers
Curious, on what metric is this measured?
Intelligence and social skills but this is really just my personal opinion so perhaps a more principled answer is simply “vibes.” Upon reflection, I think my original statement here was too strong and it would have been good to tone it down a little.