Civilization might collapse; I might get hit by a bus; or I might just claw through some of my biases but not others, make poor choices, and fail to accomplish much of anything.
If those things are true, then you were already enduring the possibility. Admitting it doesn’t make it worse.
Rationality has stripped me of some of my traditional sources of confidence that everything will work out OK, but it hasn’t provided any new ones—there is no formula that I can recite to myself to say “Well, as long as I do this, then everything will be fine.”
What do you need that confidence for?
In the last day or two, it’s occurred to me that nearly all I have ever done in my life is try to solve problems and find the “right” answers, and one particularly perplexing puzzle I’ve been trying to solve, cannot be answered “correctly”. It can only be answered by an essentially arbitrary choice on my part—a choice of what I want the answer to be.
One would think that this would be easy, then, but the catch is that to be “right”, the choice has to be a choice, not an attempt to divine an optimal answer—one that brings me the most pain or least pleasure. In a certain sense, if I cannot choose arbitrarily, then I have made no choice at all, and no real progress has been made.
I think there is a certain similarity between your problem and mine, and it is this:
Freedom isn’t easy, if you’ve been been practicing all your life to be a slave.
And it doesn’t even matter that much what it is you were practicing being a slave to.
Using magical aesthetic sense? This feels more like some neural network reaching a threshold than an “arbitrary choice”. It’s only arbitrary because it’s not explainable.
Occasionally I find it easier making arbitrary decisions by tossing a coin; even without an explicit coin certain decisions are arbitrary by intent (e.g. mixed strategies in games would be an academic exaple), I would never go back and say I compromised my aesthetic sense on these due to laziness or whatever.
I don’t see any connection between your answer and my question, nor do I see why you asked for an example or started this subthread in the first place.
I understand the disconnect is frustrating, but my question was pure curiosity—trying to understand when “an essentially arbitrary choice” is the right choice is the right choice, and not satisfied with the “creative endeavor” answer. Feel free to not reply if this has no further interest to you.
The whole comment? Or just one part? I don’t necessarily see any mistakes (possibly because I don’t see any conclusions he makes, other than the pithy quote at the end*)
If those things are true, then you were already enduring the possibility. Admitting it doesn’t make it worse.
What do you need that confidence for?
In the last day or two, it’s occurred to me that nearly all I have ever done in my life is try to solve problems and find the “right” answers, and one particularly perplexing puzzle I’ve been trying to solve, cannot be answered “correctly”. It can only be answered by an essentially arbitrary choice on my part—a choice of what I want the answer to be.
One would think that this would be easy, then, but the catch is that to be “right”, the choice has to be a choice, not an attempt to divine an optimal answer—one that brings me the most pain or least pleasure. In a certain sense, if I cannot choose arbitrarily, then I have made no choice at all, and no real progress has been made.
I think there is a certain similarity between your problem and mine, and it is this:
Freedom isn’t easy, if you’ve been been practicing all your life to be a slave.
And it doesn’t even matter that much what it is you were practicing being a slave to.
This sounds interesting. Can you give an example of such a beast?
Any creative endeavor, actually. How do you decide when something is finished? It really depends on your arbitrary, personal choice.
Using magical aesthetic sense? This feels more like some neural network reaching a threshold than an “arbitrary choice”. It’s only arbitrary because it’s not explainable.
And what part of your everyday experience would you expect to NOT involve “some neural network reaching a threshold”? ;-)
Occasionally I find it easier making arbitrary decisions by tossing a coin; even without an explicit coin certain decisions are arbitrary by intent (e.g. mixed strategies in games would be an academic exaple), I would never go back and say I compromised my aesthetic sense on these due to laziness or whatever.
I don’t see any connection between your answer and my question, nor do I see why you asked for an example or started this subthread in the first place.
I understand the disconnect is frustrating, but my question was pure curiosity—trying to understand when “an essentially arbitrary choice” is the right choice is the right choice, and not satisfied with the “creative endeavor” answer. Feel free to not reply if this has no further interest to you.
I think you are making a philosophical mistake here.
Ticket Closed: Could not reproduce.
The whole comment? Or just one part? I don’t necessarily see any mistakes (possibly because I don’t see any conclusions he makes, other than the pithy quote at the end*)
*which I like, regardless of its pithiness