I think the idealized way to do it is with small, incremental steps that let you explore new, untrusted domains and people as safely as you can, and the issue is that life doesn’t necessarily provide safe, small, incremental steps where you can easily formally verify everything before diving in. Sometimes you meet a new person, find a new activity, or experience a new thing, and you don’t have much choice between taking a leap of faith, or being so hesitant that the opportunity passes you by before you had the chance to explore it.
Or, even when life is providing you with a nice “difficulty curve” / “formal verification curve”, the fact remains that there’s a difference between maximizing safety, and maximizing expected value. Sometimes they are the same, but sometimes the payoff of seizing a new opportunity quickly (and, having a habit of seizing new opportunities quickly) lets you gain much more than you’d get by minimizing damage.
I think the idealized way to do it is with small, incremental steps that let you explore new, untrusted domains and people as safely as you can, and the issue is that life doesn’t necessarily provide safe, small, incremental steps where you can easily formally verify everything before diving in. Sometimes you meet a new person, find a new activity, or experience a new thing, and you don’t have much choice between taking a leap of faith, or being so hesitant that the opportunity passes you by before you had the chance to explore it.
Or, even when life is providing you with a nice “difficulty curve” / “formal verification curve”, the fact remains that there’s a difference between maximizing safety, and maximizing expected value. Sometimes they are the same, but sometimes the payoff of seizing a new opportunity quickly (and, having a habit of seizing new opportunities quickly) lets you gain much more than you’d get by minimizing damage.