Right, I thought you were RobinZ. By the context, it sounds like he does consider serenity incongruous with heroic responsibility:
There are no rational limits to heroic responsibility. It is impossible to fulfill the requirements of heroic responsibility. What you need is the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
With my (rhetorical) question, I expressed doubt towards his interpretation of the phrase, not (necessarily) all reasonable interpretations of it.
and I don’t see a reason to have a difference between things I “can’t change” and things I might be able to change but which are simply suboptimal.
The Virtue of Narrowness may help you. I have different names for “DDR Ram” and “A replacement battery for my Sony Z2 android” even though I can see how they both relate to computers.
For me at least, saying something “can’t be changed” roughly means modelling something as P(change)=0. This may be fine as a local heuristic when there are significantly larger expected utilities on the line to work with, but without a subject of comparison it seems inappropriate, and I would blame it for certain error modes, like ignoring theories because they have been labeled impossible at some point.
To approach it another way, I would be fine with just adding adjectives to “extremely ridiculously [...] absurdly unfathomably unlikely” to satisfy the requirements of narrowness, rather than just saying something can’t be done.
A human psychological experience and tool that can approximately be described by referring to allocating attention and resources efficiently in the face of some adverse and difficult to influence circumstance.
I would call this “level-headedness”. By my intuition, serenity is a specific calm emotional state, which is not required to make good decisions, though it may help. My dataset luckily isn’t large, but I have been able to get by on “numb” pretty well in the few relevant cases.
Right, I thought you were RobinZ. By the context, it sounds like he does consider serenity incongruous with heroic responsibility:
I agree. I downvoted RobinZ’s comment and ignored it because the confusion about what heroic responsibility means was too fundamental, annoyingly difficult to correct and had incidentally already been argued for far more eloquently elsewhere in the thread. In contrast I fundamentally agree with most of what you have said on this thread so the disagreement on one conclusion regarding a principle of rationality and psychology is more potentially interesting.
With my (rhetorical) question, I expressed doubt towards his interpretation of the phrase, not (necessarily) all reasonable interpretations of it.
I agree with your rejection of the whole paragraph. My objection seems to be directed at the confusion about heroic (and arguably mundane) responsibility rather than the serenity wisdom heuristic.
For me at least, saying something “can’t be changed” roughly means modelling something as P(change)=0.
I can empathize with being uncomfortable with colloquial expressions which deviate from literal meaning. I can also see some value in making a stand against that kind of misuse due to the way such framing can influence our thinking. Overconfident or premature ruling out of possibilities is something humans tend to be biased towards.
I would call this “level-headedness”.
Whatever you call it it sounds like you have the necessary heuristics in place to avoid the failure modes the wisdom quote is used to prevent. (Avoiding over-responsibility and avoiding pointless worry loops).
By my intuition, serenity is a specific calm emotional state, which is not required to make good decisions, though it may help.
The phrasing “The X to” intuitively brings to my mind a relative state rather than an absolute one. That is, while getting to some Zen endpoint state of inner peace or tranquillity is not needed but there are often times when moving towards that state to a sufficient degree will allow much more effective action. ie. it translates to “whatever minimum amount of acceptance of reality and calmness is needed to allow me correctly account for opportunity costs and decide according to the bigger picture”.
My dataset luckily isn’t large, but I have been able to get by on “numb” pretty well in the few relevant cases.
That can work. If used too much it sometimes seems to correlate with developing pesky emotional associations (like ‘Ugh fields’) with related stimulus but that obviously depends on which emotional cognitive processes result in the ‘numbness’ and soforth.
I downvoted RobinZ’s comment and ignored it because the confusion about what heroic responsibility means was too fundamental, annoyingly difficult to correct and had incidentally already been argued for far more eloquently elsewhere in the thread.
I would rather you tell me that I am misunderstanding something than downvote silently. My prior probability distribution over reasons for the −1 had “I disagreed with Eliezer Yudkowsky and he has rabid fans” orders of magnitude more likely than “I made a category error reading the fanfic and now we’re talking past each other”, and a few words from you could have reversed that ratio.
I would rather you tell me that I am misunderstanding something than downvote silently.
Thankyou for your feedback. I usually ration my explicit disagreement with people on the internet but your replies prompt me to add “RobinZ” to the list of people worth actively engaging with.
...huh. I’m glad to have been of service, but that’s not really what I was going for. I meant that silent downvoting for the kind of confusion you diagnosed in me is counterproductive generally—“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” is not a hypothesis that springs naturally to mind. The same downvote paired with a comment saying:
This is a waste of time. You keep claiming that “heroic responsibility” says this or “heroic responsibility” demands that, but you’re fundamentally mistaken about what heroic responsibility is and you can’t seem to understand anything we say to correct you. I’m downvoting the rest of this conversation.
...would have been more like what I wanted to encourage.
I meant that silent downvoting for the kind of confusion you diagnosed in me is counterproductive generally
I fundamentally disagree. It is better for misleading comments to have lower votes than insightful ones. This helps limit the epistemic damage caused to third parties. Replying to every incorrect claim with detailed arguments in not viable and not my responsibility either heroic or conventional—even though my comment history suggests that for a few years I made a valiant effort.
Silent downvoting is often the most time efficient form positive influence available and I endorse it as appropriate, productive and typically wiser than trying to argue all the time.
I didn’t propose that you should engage in detailed arguments with anyone—not even me. I proposed that you should accompany some downvotes with an explanation akin to the three-sentence example I gave.
Another example of a sufficiently-elaborate downvote explanation: “I downvoted your reply because it mischaracterized my position more egregiously than any responsible person should.” One sentence, long enough, no further argument required.
Right, I thought you were RobinZ. By the context, it sounds like he does consider serenity incongruous with heroic responsibility:
With my (rhetorical) question, I expressed doubt towards his interpretation of the phrase, not (necessarily) all reasonable interpretations of it.
For me at least, saying something “can’t be changed” roughly means modelling something as P(change)=0. This may be fine as a local heuristic when there are significantly larger expected utilities on the line to work with, but without a subject of comparison it seems inappropriate, and I would blame it for certain error modes, like ignoring theories because they have been labeled impossible at some point.
To approach it another way, I would be fine with just adding adjectives to “extremely ridiculously [...] absurdly unfathomably unlikely” to satisfy the requirements of narrowness, rather than just saying something can’t be done.
I would call this “level-headedness”. By my intuition, serenity is a specific calm emotional state, which is not required to make good decisions, though it may help. My dataset luckily isn’t large, but I have been able to get by on “numb” pretty well in the few relevant cases.
I agree. I downvoted RobinZ’s comment and ignored it because the confusion about what heroic responsibility means was too fundamental, annoyingly difficult to correct and had incidentally already been argued for far more eloquently elsewhere in the thread. In contrast I fundamentally agree with most of what you have said on this thread so the disagreement on one conclusion regarding a principle of rationality and psychology is more potentially interesting.
I agree with your rejection of the whole paragraph. My objection seems to be directed at the confusion about heroic (and arguably mundane) responsibility rather than the serenity wisdom heuristic.
I can empathize with being uncomfortable with colloquial expressions which deviate from literal meaning. I can also see some value in making a stand against that kind of misuse due to the way such framing can influence our thinking. Overconfident or premature ruling out of possibilities is something humans tend to be biased towards.
Whatever you call it it sounds like you have the necessary heuristics in place to avoid the failure modes the wisdom quote is used to prevent. (Avoiding over-responsibility and avoiding pointless worry loops).
The phrasing “The X to” intuitively brings to my mind a relative state rather than an absolute one. That is, while getting to some Zen endpoint state of inner peace or tranquillity is not needed but there are often times when moving towards that state to a sufficient degree will allow much more effective action. ie. it translates to “whatever minimum amount of acceptance of reality and calmness is needed to allow me correctly account for opportunity costs and decide according to the bigger picture”.
That can work. If used too much it sometimes seems to correlate with developing pesky emotional associations (like ‘Ugh fields’) with related stimulus but that obviously depends on which emotional cognitive processes result in the ‘numbness’ and soforth.
I would rather you tell me that I am misunderstanding something than downvote silently. My prior probability distribution over reasons for the −1 had “I disagreed with Eliezer Yudkowsky and he has rabid fans” orders of magnitude more likely than “I made a category error reading the fanfic and now we’re talking past each other”, and a few words from you could have reversed that ratio.
Thankyou for your feedback. I usually ration my explicit disagreement with people on the internet but your replies prompt me to add “RobinZ” to the list of people worth actively engaging with.
...huh. I’m glad to have been of service, but that’s not really what I was going for. I meant that silent downvoting for the kind of confusion you diagnosed in me is counterproductive generally—“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” is not a hypothesis that springs naturally to mind. The same downvote paired with a comment saying:
...would have been more like what I wanted to encourage.
I fundamentally disagree. It is better for misleading comments to have lower votes than insightful ones. This helps limit the epistemic damage caused to third parties. Replying to every incorrect claim with detailed arguments in not viable and not my responsibility either heroic or conventional—even though my comment history suggests that for a few years I made a valiant effort.
Silent downvoting is often the most time efficient form positive influence available and I endorse it as appropriate, productive and typically wiser than trying to argue all the time.
I didn’t propose that you should engage in detailed arguments with anyone—not even me. I proposed that you should accompany some downvotes with an explanation akin to the three-sentence example I gave.
Another example of a sufficiently-elaborate downvote explanation: “I downvoted your reply because it mischaracterized my position more egregiously than any responsible person should.” One sentence, long enough, no further argument required.
I retract my previous statement based on new evidence acquired.
I continue to endorse being selective in whom one spends time arguing with.