″...What do you do with this impossible challenge?
First, we assume that you don’t actually say “That’s impossible!” and give up a laLuke Skywalker. You haven’t run away.
Why not? Maybe you’ve learned to override the reflex of running away. Or maybe they’re going to shoot your daughter if you fail. We suppose that you want to win, not try—that something is at stake that matters to you, even if it’s just your own pride. (Pride is an underrated sin.)
Will you call upon the virtue of tsuyoku naritai? But even if you become stronger day by day, growing instead of fading, you may not be strong enough to do the impossible. You could go into the AI Box experiment once, and then do it again, and try to do better the second time. Will that get you to the point of winning? Not for a long time, maybe; and sometimes a single failure isn’t acceptable.
(Though even to say this much—to visualize yourself doing better on a second try—is to begin to bind yourself to the problem, to do more than just stand in awe of it. How, specifically, could you do better on one AI-Box Experiment than the previous?—and not by luck, but by skill?)
Will you call upon the virtue isshokenmei? But a desperate effort may not be enough to win. Especially if that desperation is only putting more effort into the avenues you already know, the modes of trying you can already imagine. A problem looks impossible when your brain’s query returns no lines of solution leading to it. What good is a desperate effort along any of those lines?
Make an extraordinary effort? Leave your comfort zone—try non-default ways of doing things—even, try to think creatively? But you can imagine the one coming back and saying, “I tried to leave my comfort zone, and I think I succeeded at that! I brainstormed for five minutes—and came up with all sorts of wacky creative ideas! But I don’t think any of them are good enough. The other guy can just keep saying ‘No’, no matter what I do.”
And now we finally reply: “Shut up and do the impossible!”
As we recall from Trying to Try, setting out to make an effort is distinct from setting out to win. That’s the problem with saying, “Make an extraordinary effort.” You can succeed at the goal of “making an extraordinary effort” without succeeding at the goal of getting out of the Box.
“But!” says the one. “But, SUCCEED is not a primitive action! Not all challenges are fair—sometimes you just can’t win! How am I supposed to choose to be out of the Box? The other guy can just keep on saying ‘No’!”
True. Now shut up and do the impossible.
Your goal is not to do better, to try desperately, or even to try extraordinarily. Your goal is to get out of the box.”
“Shut up and do the impossible!”
Fighting is different from trying. To fight harder for X is more externally verifiable than to try harder for X.
It’s one thing to acknowledge that the game appears to be unwinnable. It’s another thing to fight any less hard on that account.