Alternate approach: recognize that rules (as opposed to physical laws) are always and only guidelines, or defaults, or lossy summaries of one’s intent. There’s no such thing as a complete and consistent ruleset, and even if we could get close, it wouldn’t fit in our brains.
Rules are like models: none are true (none are fully binding or complete descriptions of desired behavior), many are useful (in that they can give good defaults and heuristics for common cases, where deeper computation is undesirable or infeasible).
There are no real rules. Exceptions may be fiction, but that’s because rules are fiction in the first place. Rules don’t exist in the territory, they’re just fuzzy areas on maps.
Something something Law Thinking vs Toolbox Thinking. My read on Said’s post here is to help people think about Lawful thinking, noticing that there *is* some actual optimal rule you can follow (even if it’s computationally intractable and you don’t know what the rule is)
I don’t think I can pass an ITT for strict lawful thinking. I’m absolutely supportive of discovering and creating summaries of future decision intent, and of being somewhat rigorous in doing so. But I can’t ignore the fundamental complexity of the real world, and the fact that these are ONLY extremely compressed expressions of a set of beliefs.
I may be stuck in toolbox thinking, though I’ll definitely use lawful models as some of my tools. Or I may simply not be smart enough to identify and make legible the incredible variety of decisions I face over time. Rules (and habits, which are basically unconscious rules) make this tolerable, as I can spend very little energy on most of them. But there are daily choices where I see conflicts among rules and have to choose among rules that might apply, and also among the meta-rules to pick the right rule, and meta-meta-rules to weigh across different meta-rules, etc.
I kind of wonder if we have actual different felt experiences on the topic. I can only think of stated rules as porous and directional, and I feel good when I violate one for a good purpose. Take that, over-simplistic, condescending non-agent worldview! I also feel good when I recognize a new context in which a rule applies and find that the rule is stronger than I previously thought, so I’m not anti-rule in general, just that I think they’re a convenience rather than a truth.
I’ve talked with other people who are horrified when they find a case that an accepted rule interferes with doing the best thing, and work hard to reconcile the situation with patches or meta-rules (and get angry when I use the word “rationalization”). They seem to feel near-physical pain from violating (some) rules without a lot of justification. I have sometimes been guilty of thinking they just need to find the right Manic Pixie Dream Person to break them out of the bonds of propriety, but I also wonder if there’s something deeper in the way the world actually feels day-to-day to them and to me.
I like to formulate this as “I intend to be the kind of person who mostly X” or “I plan to X on a [TIME]ish basis”. Using these formulations removes the friction and stress I experience from “I must X every day” or “I must never X”. I’ve found this makes habits easier to assimilate since they are intentions and not hard rules.
Alternate approach: recognize that rules (as opposed to physical laws) are always and only guidelines, or defaults, or lossy summaries of one’s intent. There’s no such thing as a complete and consistent ruleset, and even if we could get close, it wouldn’t fit in our brains.
Rules are like models: none are true (none are fully binding or complete descriptions of desired behavior), many are useful (in that they can give good defaults and heuristics for common cases, where deeper computation is undesirable or infeasible).
There are no real rules. Exceptions may be fiction, but that’s because rules are fiction in the first place.
Rules don’t exist in the territory, they’re just fuzzy areas on maps.
Something something Law Thinking vs Toolbox Thinking. My read on Said’s post here is to help people think about Lawful thinking, noticing that there *is* some actual optimal rule you can follow (even if it’s computationally intractable and you don’t know what the rule is)
I don’t think I can pass an ITT for strict lawful thinking. I’m absolutely supportive of discovering and creating summaries of future decision intent, and of being somewhat rigorous in doing so. But I can’t ignore the fundamental complexity of the real world, and the fact that these are ONLY extremely compressed expressions of a set of beliefs.
I may be stuck in toolbox thinking, though I’ll definitely use lawful models as some of my tools. Or I may simply not be smart enough to identify and make legible the incredible variety of decisions I face over time. Rules (and habits, which are basically unconscious rules) make this tolerable, as I can spend very little energy on most of them. But there are daily choices where I see conflicts among rules and have to choose among rules that might apply, and also among the meta-rules to pick the right rule, and meta-meta-rules to weigh across different meta-rules, etc.
I kind of wonder if we have actual different felt experiences on the topic. I can only think of stated rules as porous and directional, and I feel good when I violate one for a good purpose. Take that, over-simplistic, condescending non-agent worldview! I also feel good when I recognize a new context in which a rule applies and find that the rule is stronger than I previously thought, so I’m not anti-rule in general, just that I think they’re a convenience rather than a truth.
I’ve talked with other people who are horrified when they find a case that an accepted rule interferes with doing the best thing, and work hard to reconcile the situation with patches or meta-rules (and get angry when I use the word “rationalization”). They seem to feel near-physical pain from violating (some) rules without a lot of justification. I have sometimes been guilty of thinking they just need to find the right Manic Pixie Dream Person to break them out of the bonds of propriety, but I also wonder if there’s something deeper in the way the world actually feels day-to-day to them and to me.
The comment I wrote just now is relevant.
I like to formulate this as “I intend to be the kind of person who mostly X” or “I plan to X on a [TIME]ish basis”. Using these formulations removes the friction and stress I experience from “I must X every day” or “I must never X”. I’ve found this makes habits easier to assimilate since they are intentions and not hard rules.