After reading this post, I decided to use this heuristic for one or two big decisions, which turned out well. That’s not a large sample size, but it’s something. To give a specific example, I decided to travel more on my own, through foreign countries, without a concrete plan of where I would be staying. Another decision was to take on a job that was outside my comfort zone. I have also used it in smaller ways to talk to more people and take more social chances.
If I had to guess, I would say this heuristic works because it leads to new experiences and character growth, which are things that we look back on in a positive way. I think rationalists sometimes disregard courage as a virtue because it can lead to mistakes. This is probably because characters in books often do “courageous” things that would be bad decisions if books were more realistic. However, for most situations that real people encounter, fear is probably not a reliable indicator of a bad decision. Most of the truly bad decisions don’t sound very “scary”, like starting a smoking habit. Ideally, fear should not be a factor in decision-making. However, this is hard to achieve in practice, and it seems to work better to lean into fear-inspiring decisions.
Anyway, thanks for writing a unique and practical post. It’s genuinely improved my life.
After reading this post, I decided to use this heuristic for one or two big decisions, which turned out well. That’s not a large sample size, but it’s something. To give a specific example, I decided to travel more on my own, through foreign countries, without a concrete plan of where I would be staying. Another decision was to take on a job that was outside my comfort zone. I have also used it in smaller ways to talk to more people and take more social chances.
If I had to guess, I would say this heuristic works because it leads to new experiences and character growth, which are things that we look back on in a positive way. I think rationalists sometimes disregard courage as a virtue because it can lead to mistakes. This is probably because characters in books often do “courageous” things that would be bad decisions if books were more realistic. However, for most situations that real people encounter, fear is probably not a reliable indicator of a bad decision. Most of the truly bad decisions don’t sound very “scary”, like starting a smoking habit. Ideally, fear should not be a factor in decision-making. However, this is hard to achieve in practice, and it seems to work better to lean into fear-inspiring decisions.
Anyway, thanks for writing a unique and practical post. It’s genuinely improved my life.