If there’s a world-saving button, you should make sure to press it, and equally sure you don’t press so hard it breaks. I would definitely want to be ‘impossibly sure’ that I would/did press it right. (That is, confident to a level I might currently consider preposterous or overkill.)
In this case, it is important to press the button right. But it is not hard. Being dramatic about the very small effort it takes is not helpful.
You only say that because you don’t know about the angry ninja. Yet.
How important it is should determine what you are willing to do to accomplish it, and what you should be prepared to do. (For even moderately important things, that includes fighting ninjas, and mindhacking)
If this isn’t covered by try harder/extraordinary effort/Do the impossible, then we need a whole new sequence.
You only say that because you don’t know about the angry ninja.
You said a silly thing, and now you are saying sillier things to try to justify it.
If there is a “Save the World” button and I go to press it, and then I discover an angry ninja is guarding it, then I am greatly surprised and I most likely die and never get the chance to “shut up and do the impossible”. If I know in advance that there is a ninja, then it is time to “shut up and do the impossible”. If I have no evidence about a ninja, but I worry about one, and spend my time working out how to get past the ninja to press the button, then I am failing to do the easy thing that saves the world.
This is hardly silly. Our very thread started with a comment about complications to an easy thing.
When something is important, you should not assume you are in the position to properly evaluate its difficulty (or even that you have the right task), and adopt that level of determination. Rather you determine to do the important thing, and figure out what is it and how hard it could be.
You don’t do the impossible because FAI is realy hard, you decide to do the impossible because the world needs saved.
And yes, you weight the risk of ninjas against all other possible challenges and the risks of preparation and inaction, the probability that you’re mistaken about the button and ought to be doing something else, and all other factors within your limits. But you don’t just throw out the idea of ninja-level obstacles.
This means we ought to be preparing to press every possible world saving button, and counter every possible challenge, weighted against how likely they are to present themselves, and to actually save the world. Lesswrong tries at this, but we have a long way to go.
Eliezer initially downvoted (I think sight unseen, the mere concept of) this billion dollar button. I would have rated the likelihood of something like this pretty low without the details of Newmark’s comments, and I suspect this is typical of lesswrongers.
I don’t I think we’ve ever devoted a whole lot of thought to polite viral marketing, Advertising contracts, what to do with a billion dollars, or Facebook.
Now here we are facing a ninja we didn’t train for, and any of us could put up a facebook page and break the button, and we’re not sure how hard to press.
EDIT: We DO need to make good rational plans on how to do this, but that planning can be done by a small group of rationalists. I mean only that the front end should be targeted at less-rational people.
Before that, it really did seem like you were using “Shut up and do the impossible” to dismiss MrHen’s questions as complaints about the difficulty.
I see now that you meant to refer to the task of figuring out how to do execute the idea effectively. A major reason this was confusing is that no one was complaining that this is hard, let alone impossible. There was no reason to support it with “Shut up and do the impossible”. To communicate more effectively, forget the colorful slogans and metaphors (it also wasn’t clear that you meant the “save the world” button as a metaphor for the Facebook group, and not just an example), and just clearly state your position, in this case, what you want to do.
In this case, it is important to press the button right. But it is not hard. Being dramatic about the very small effort it takes is not helpful.
You only say that because you don’t know about the angry ninja. Yet.
How important it is should determine what you are willing to do to accomplish it, and what you should be prepared to do. (For even moderately important things, that includes fighting ninjas, and mindhacking)
If this isn’t covered by try harder/extraordinary effort/Do the impossible, then we need a whole new sequence.
You said a silly thing, and now you are saying sillier things to try to justify it.
If there is a “Save the World” button and I go to press it, and then I discover an angry ninja is guarding it, then I am greatly surprised and I most likely die and never get the chance to “shut up and do the impossible”. If I know in advance that there is a ninja, then it is time to “shut up and do the impossible”. If I have no evidence about a ninja, but I worry about one, and spend my time working out how to get past the ninja to press the button, then I am failing to do the easy thing that saves the world.
This is hardly silly. Our very thread started with a comment about complications to an easy thing.
When something is important, you should not assume you are in the position to properly evaluate its difficulty (or even that you have the right task), and adopt that level of determination. Rather you determine to do the important thing, and figure out what is it and how hard it could be.
You don’t do the impossible because FAI is realy hard, you decide to do the impossible because the world needs saved.
And yes, you weight the risk of ninjas against all other possible challenges and the risks of preparation and inaction, the probability that you’re mistaken about the button and ought to be doing something else, and all other factors within your limits. But you don’t just throw out the idea of ninja-level obstacles.
This means we ought to be preparing to press every possible world saving button, and counter every possible challenge, weighted against how likely they are to present themselves, and to actually save the world. Lesswrong tries at this, but we have a long way to go.
Eliezer initially downvoted (I think sight unseen, the mere concept of) this billion dollar button. I would have rated the likelihood of something like this pretty low without the details of Newmark’s comments, and I suspect this is typical of lesswrongers. I don’t I think we’ve ever devoted a whole lot of thought to polite viral marketing, Advertising contracts, what to do with a billion dollars, or Facebook.
Now here we are facing a ninja we didn’t train for, and any of us could put up a facebook page and break the button, and we’re not sure how hard to press.
Ok, I went back and read your edit:
Before that, it really did seem like you were using “Shut up and do the impossible” to dismiss MrHen’s questions as complaints about the difficulty.
I see now that you meant to refer to the task of figuring out how to do execute the idea effectively. A major reason this was confusing is that no one was complaining that this is hard, let alone impossible. There was no reason to support it with “Shut up and do the impossible”. To communicate more effectively, forget the colorful slogans and metaphors (it also wasn’t clear that you meant the “save the world” button as a metaphor for the Facebook group, and not just an example), and just clearly state your position, in this case, what you want to do.