Asking this question since I expect other people to be in a similar position:[1]
There are many ways the future could plausibly go from here, ranging from “doom this year” to “things are mostly fine by default”. And as some of these scenarios draw near, my epistemic updates are getting more entangled with my emotions. (Which I endorse.) Now, if I was convinced the world is going to go in a particular way, these emotional updates would be easy(ier): Maybe I expect things to go fine, so I go about my life as usual. Or maybe I have P(doom)=99%, so I mourn for a bit and then take an indefinite vacation to enjoy travel and friends. Or maybe things could go either way, and there is no way to know until the last moment, so I work as hard as I can (while having fun on the way, obviously).
However, things are not so simple: At the moment, I am very uncertain on how things will go. I expect that the next year(s) will be quite wild in terms of epistemic updates. Maybe there will come a point when confidence in one of the scenarios is justified, in which case I want to make the appropriate emotional update as soon as possible. And maybe it won’t. And this type of uncertainty is something I do not know how to approach.
Does anybody have recommendations or observations for how to relate to this? (Without deluding oneself in any way.)
[Question] How do you align your emotions through updates and existential uncertainty?
Asking this question since I expect other people to be in a similar position:[1]
There are many ways the future could plausibly go from here, ranging from “doom this year” to “things are mostly fine by default”. And as some of these scenarios draw near, my epistemic updates are getting more entangled with my emotions. (Which I endorse.) Now, if I was convinced the world is going to go in a particular way, these emotional updates would be easy(ier): Maybe I expect things to go fine, so I go about my life as usual. Or maybe I have P(doom)=99%, so I mourn for a bit and then take an indefinite vacation to enjoy travel and friends. Or maybe things could go either way, and there is no way to know until the last moment, so I work as hard as I can (while having fun on the way, obviously).
However, things are not so simple: At the moment, I am very uncertain on how things will go. I expect that the next year(s) will be quite wild in terms of epistemic updates. Maybe there will come a point when confidence in one of the scenarios is justified, in which case I want to make the appropriate emotional update as soon as possible. And maybe it won’t. And this type of uncertainty is something I do not know how to approach.
Does anybody have recommendations or observations for how to relate to this? (Without deluding oneself in any way.)
EDIT: Rephrased the title based on feedback.