disclaimer: the ranty part is not directed at yudkowsky
“From within that project—what good does a sense of violated entitlement do? At all? Ever? What good does it do to tell ourselves that we did everything right and deserved better, and that someone or something else is to blame? Is that the key thing we need to change, to do better next time?”
I dunno. I don’t follow that many competitive endeavours but the people who cast about looking for excuses after a loss tend to be pretty good. Admittedly the people who go on about what a bitch you are if you make excuses also tend to be pretty good, as do the people who say stuff like only the results matter tend to be pretty good. (I’ll also note I don’t notice the middle group making any less excuses than average)
I also notice this among people I know.
People who are “bitter losers” don’t tend to be very good but I expect the excuses are a product rather than cause of the problem. (and yes you can get into a bad self reinforcing system of excuses.) Of course being a bitter loser is something to avoid. But it’s the loser part that’s bad. The bitterness is never prior to the losing (and sometimes “fair enough).
But anyway, as to why casting about looking for excuses when you lose can be a good thing: if you’re not really trying you’re not going to care enough for there to be enough cognitive dissonance that you’ll feel the need for an excuse. If you feel that losing is good enough, or that there’s nothing to be done etc you won’t need an excuse.
When losing It can be useful to feel like you should do better. If, to get that sense of should you have to cast about for something or someone to blame maybe you should do so.
If feeling entitled to victory makes you more likely to win, maybe you should feel entitled to victory.
And finally, if losing doesn’t hurt you probably weren’t trying at full capacity. One way to make it hurt less is to try less hard. Another is to make up excuses. Neither are optimal but one is obviously much more harmful and not everyone has the cognitive or emotional resources to react optimally (or more precisely, it’s not optimal for everyone who doesn’t to try to fix this due to oppurtunity cost as well as plain old normal cost)
Why write excuses off a priori? The important thing is to focus on winning.
Also, this is actually basically unrelated, but relevant to the same quote.
“What good does it do to tell ourselves that we did everything right and deserved better, and that someone or something else is to blame?”
If you really did do everything right and deserved better, and luck is to blame e.g. if you are playing tournament poker and make a bet at 60:40 odds losing shouldn’t make you calibrate away from making those kinds of bets. You really, genuinely made the right decision. More generally doing things right does not necessarrilly entail winning. Don’t become a responsibility fetishist (actually maybe do, but at least compartmentalise it), or a mystic that thinks lady luck bestows the winning cards on the player who deserves to win (hindsight bias.) Sometimes you need to defy the data (all this idiosynractic vocabulary is actually really useful. So much compression.)
Related to both of these points is I get really annoyed at people takeing more responsibility than they have earned. Taking responsibility for mistakes, fine, specifically stuff like “I could have done better, if I did this there wouldn’t have been a problem” is probably healthy. Taking responsibility for everything that goes well, annoying and stupid: “I just went all in at 10 to 1 odds for a 50⁄50 payoff and won, clearly I cunningly outwitted my opponent” a great attitude for tilting (unsettling psychologically so as to cause suboptimal play) your opponents (and might be instrumentally useful to adopt sometimes, or even always, for that reason for some people) but as something you generally do, other than for this purpose (and/or used the same way as I described excuses could be earlier) is fucking terrible epistemology. Taking responsibility usually also means taking credit.
All of which was probably prompted by my hatred of people who, when they have a starting advantage, or get lucky, or just have more talent blame their opponents loss on self pity, excuses and so on. I forget where it was but there was an article about in which Eliezer claimed to have decided not to get anxious when doing public speaking after looking up at the crowd and not being anxious. A lot of this bitter loser stuff is self-fulfilling prophecy inflicted, in part, by this “making excuses makes you a loser” meme. Be satisfied with winning. You don’t have to have the moral high ground as well as the actual win. especially when you make more excuses than the person you’re robbing of them. This thing where every win has to be the product of cunning and outwitting, and anything the loser says is an excuse pisses me off. Just world fallacy?
But yeah there does seem to be something to all that positive thinking stuff. Specifically it can be easier to do something if you feel more confident, much like it can be harder to e.g. get angry at someone liable to punch you if you get angry with them.
I think the “only focus on winning” “there is no try” advice/attitude can be useful for bypassing anxiety problems. Don’t give something any more space in your mind than is useful.
disclaimer: the ranty part is not directed at yudkowsky
“From within that project—what good does a sense of violated entitlement do? At all? Ever? What good does it do to tell ourselves that we did everything right and deserved better, and that someone or something else is to blame? Is that the key thing we need to change, to do better next time?”
I dunno. I don’t follow that many competitive endeavours but the people who cast about looking for excuses after a loss tend to be pretty good. Admittedly the people who go on about what a bitch you are if you make excuses also tend to be pretty good, as do the people who say stuff like only the results matter tend to be pretty good. (I’ll also note I don’t notice the middle group making any less excuses than average)
I also notice this among people I know.
People who are “bitter losers” don’t tend to be very good but I expect the excuses are a product rather than cause of the problem. (and yes you can get into a bad self reinforcing system of excuses.) Of course being a bitter loser is something to avoid. But it’s the loser part that’s bad. The bitterness is never prior to the losing (and sometimes “fair enough).
But anyway, as to why casting about looking for excuses when you lose can be a good thing: if you’re not really trying you’re not going to care enough for there to be enough cognitive dissonance that you’ll feel the need for an excuse. If you feel that losing is good enough, or that there’s nothing to be done etc you won’t need an excuse.
When losing It can be useful to feel like you should do better. If, to get that sense of should you have to cast about for something or someone to blame maybe you should do so.
If feeling entitled to victory makes you more likely to win, maybe you should feel entitled to victory.
And finally, if losing doesn’t hurt you probably weren’t trying at full capacity. One way to make it hurt less is to try less hard. Another is to make up excuses. Neither are optimal but one is obviously much more harmful and not everyone has the cognitive or emotional resources to react optimally (or more precisely, it’s not optimal for everyone who doesn’t to try to fix this due to oppurtunity cost as well as plain old normal cost)
Why write excuses off a priori? The important thing is to focus on winning.
Also, this is actually basically unrelated, but relevant to the same quote.
“What good does it do to tell ourselves that we did everything right and deserved better, and that someone or something else is to blame?”
If you really did do everything right and deserved better, and luck is to blame e.g. if you are playing tournament poker and make a bet at 60:40 odds losing shouldn’t make you calibrate away from making those kinds of bets. You really, genuinely made the right decision. More generally doing things right does not necessarrilly entail winning. Don’t become a responsibility fetishist (actually maybe do, but at least compartmentalise it), or a mystic that thinks lady luck bestows the winning cards on the player who deserves to win (hindsight bias.) Sometimes you need to defy the data (all this idiosynractic vocabulary is actually really useful. So much compression.)
Related to both of these points is I get really annoyed at people takeing more responsibility than they have earned. Taking responsibility for mistakes, fine, specifically stuff like “I could have done better, if I did this there wouldn’t have been a problem” is probably healthy. Taking responsibility for everything that goes well, annoying and stupid: “I just went all in at 10 to 1 odds for a 50⁄50 payoff and won, clearly I cunningly outwitted my opponent” a great attitude for tilting (unsettling psychologically so as to cause suboptimal play) your opponents (and might be instrumentally useful to adopt sometimes, or even always, for that reason for some people) but as something you generally do, other than for this purpose (and/or used the same way as I described excuses could be earlier) is fucking terrible epistemology. Taking responsibility usually also means taking credit.
All of which was probably prompted by my hatred of people who, when they have a starting advantage, or get lucky, or just have more talent blame their opponents loss on self pity, excuses and so on. I forget where it was but there was an article about in which Eliezer claimed to have decided not to get anxious when doing public speaking after looking up at the crowd and not being anxious. A lot of this bitter loser stuff is self-fulfilling prophecy inflicted, in part, by this “making excuses makes you a loser” meme. Be satisfied with winning. You don’t have to have the moral high ground as well as the actual win. especially when you make more excuses than the person you’re robbing of them. This thing where every win has to be the product of cunning and outwitting, and anything the loser says is an excuse pisses me off. Just world fallacy?
But yeah there does seem to be something to all that positive thinking stuff. Specifically it can be easier to do something if you feel more confident, much like it can be harder to e.g. get angry at someone liable to punch you if you get angry with them.
I think the “only focus on winning” “there is no try” advice/attitude can be useful for bypassing anxiety problems. Don’t give something any more space in your mind than is useful.