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.
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.