If you accept that you cannot help everyone, a possible approach is to screen the people who need help, find the ones who only need help in one dimension, and focus on helping those… and give up on those who need help in multiple dimensions. This sounds cruel, but it is a way to convert resources to outcomes efficiently. Makes sense if your resources are dramatically inadequate to help everyone.
For example, if an endangered species only lives in one relatively small area, building a fence around that area might solve the problem of this specific species. Even if it does not generalize to help other species that may be even more endangered.
Or if you want to overcome prejudice against an ethnic group, you may pick the most intelligent children from the most conscientious families, and provide them focused support at education and achieving their dreams. Even if it does not help other kids from the same ethnic group who probably need help even more desperately.
But if you have enough resources to help everyone, or almost everyone, then yes, monitoring all possible problems simultaneously and intervening where necessary is how you prevent wasting those resources.
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I liked the part about being one bad step away from reverting to the mean (sounding ominously). That sounds true; I would probably call it “reverting to your defaults”.
If your background is generally okay, you just need to avoid doing something too bad, and unless something too bad happens to you accidentally, your life will probably be okay. If you have one big problem, you need to work hard to overcome your problem, but the result is worth it. But if you have multiple big problems… then you need to work hard in several different dimensions simultaneously, and if you fail or get unlucky at one of them, your entire effort may be wasted. (And if you succeed at all of them, you will feel very tired.)
I think that’s a fair interpretation, if you are restricted in your resources, stick to quantifiable outcomes—a stoic dichotomy of control approach. The article is however about how to solve coordination problems, rather than how to choose appropriate problems for your capacity, because there are some unavoidable coordination problems we face as a civilisation..
The original home of this post, nonzerosum.games is a world-help site as opposed to a self-help site. So, it is focused on these wider, unavoidable social issues. Although individuals will certainly face their own coordination problems, and I think your interpretation leads to some good personal advice.
If you accept that you cannot help everyone, a possible approach is to screen the people who need help, find the ones who only need help in one dimension, and focus on helping those… and give up on those who need help in multiple dimensions. This sounds cruel, but it is a way to convert resources to outcomes efficiently. Makes sense if your resources are dramatically inadequate to help everyone.
For example, if an endangered species only lives in one relatively small area, building a fence around that area might solve the problem of this specific species. Even if it does not generalize to help other species that may be even more endangered.
Or if you want to overcome prejudice against an ethnic group, you may pick the most intelligent children from the most conscientious families, and provide them focused support at education and achieving their dreams. Even if it does not help other kids from the same ethnic group who probably need help even more desperately.
But if you have enough resources to help everyone, or almost everyone, then yes, monitoring all possible problems simultaneously and intervening where necessary is how you prevent wasting those resources.
*
I liked the part about being one bad step away from reverting to the mean (sounding ominously). That sounds true; I would probably call it “reverting to your defaults”.
If your background is generally okay, you just need to avoid doing something too bad, and unless something too bad happens to you accidentally, your life will probably be okay. If you have one big problem, you need to work hard to overcome your problem, but the result is worth it. But if you have multiple big problems… then you need to work hard in several different dimensions simultaneously, and if you fail or get unlucky at one of them, your entire effort may be wasted. (And if you succeed at all of them, you will feel very tired.)
Thanks Viliam,
I think that’s a fair interpretation, if you are restricted in your resources, stick to quantifiable outcomes—a stoic dichotomy of control approach. The article is however about how to solve coordination problems, rather than how to choose appropriate problems for your capacity, because there are some unavoidable coordination problems we face as a civilisation..
The original home of this post, nonzerosum.games is a world-help site as opposed to a self-help site. So, it is focused on these wider, unavoidable social issues. Although individuals will certainly face their own coordination problems, and I think your interpretation leads to some good personal advice.