What does winning look like to you? Lots of rationalists have pretty successful careers as programmers, which depending on what they are going for, could be considered winning. Is it that they aren’t “winning” by your definition, or theirs?
Can you describe the thing you think rationalists are failing at, tabooing “winning”?
On various metrics, there can be differences in quantity, e.g. “a job that pays $10k” vs “a job that pays $20k”, and differences in quality, e.g. “a job” vs “early retirement”. Merely improving quantity does not make a good story. And perhaps it is foolish, but I imagine “winning” as a qualitative improvement, instead of merely 30% or 300% more of something.
And maybe this is wrong, because a qualitative improvement brings qualitative improvements as a side effect. A change from “$X income” to $Y income” can also mean a change from “worrying about survival” to “not worrying about survival”, a change from “cannot afford X” to “bought the X”, or even a change from “the future is dark” to “I am going to retire early in 10 years, but as of today, I am not there yet”. Maybe we insufficiently emphasize these qualitative changes, because… uhm, illusion of transparency?
What does winning look like to you? Lots of rationalists have pretty successful careers as programmers, which depending on what they are going for, could be considered winning. Is it that they aren’t “winning” by your definition, or theirs?
Can you describe the thing you think rationalists are failing at, tabooing “winning”?
Not the author, but my guess would be this:
On various metrics, there can be differences in quantity, e.g. “a job that pays $10k” vs “a job that pays $20k”, and differences in quality, e.g. “a job” vs “early retirement”. Merely improving quantity does not make a good story. And perhaps it is foolish, but I imagine “winning” as a qualitative improvement, instead of merely 30% or 300% more of something.
And maybe this is wrong, because a qualitative improvement brings qualitative improvements as a side effect. A change from “$X income” to $Y income” can also mean a change from “worrying about survival” to “not worrying about survival”, a change from “cannot afford X” to “bought the X”, or even a change from “the future is dark” to “I am going to retire early in 10 years, but as of today, I am not there yet”. Maybe we insufficiently emphasize these qualitative changes, because… uhm, illusion of transparency?