But it still feels to me like it’s a post trying to push the pendulum in a particular direction, rather than trying to fully and openly embody the optimal-by-your-lights Balancing Point.
AFAICT, I am trying to fully and openly embody the way of reasoning that actually makes sense to me in this domain, which… isn’t really a “balancing point.” It’s more like the anarchist saying “the means are the ends.” Or it’s more like Szilard’s “ten commandments,” (which I highly recommend reading for anyone who hasn’t; they’re short). Or more like the quote from the novel The Dispossessed: “To reassert its validity and strength, he thought, one need only act, without fear of punishment and without hope of reward: act from the center of one’s soul. “
I don’t have the right concepts or articulation here. This is an example of the “hard to justify personal opinions” I warned about in my “epistemic status.” But IMO, thinking about tradeoffs and balancing points can be good when your map is good enough; at other times, it’s more like I want to try to hone in on priors, on deep patternness, on where reasoning is before it’s reasoning. This is where the power of leisure comes from, where the possibility of hobbies that end up giving you glimpses of new bits of the universe come from. And it’s a thing I’m trying to show here. Not a particular balance-point between depleting your long-term resources and “being nice to yourself” by eating chocolates and cartoons. (Neither of those help with getting to the tao, usually, AFAICT.)
We can be empirical about trying to see which actions, which mindsets, add to our and others’ long-term robust abilities.
In short-term crises for which you have decent-quality maps, balance-points and trading things off with local consequentialist reasoning makes sense to me. But not the rest of everywhere.
I agree many people underestimate their own capacities, and too seldom try hard or scary things. I think this is often many of the same people who burn themselves out.
Sorry this reply, and my other one, are somewhat incoherent. I’m having trouble mapping both where you’re coming from, and why/where I disagree.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I’m complaining about a larger class of posts, so maybe this one isn’t really an example and I’m just pattern-matching. I do still wish there existed more posts that were very obviously examples of the ‘both-and’ things I was pointing at. (Both dentist appointments and Dyson spheres; both embrace slack and embrace maxipok; etc.)
It might be that if my thinking were clearer here, I’d be able to recognize more posts as doing ‘both-and’ even if they don’t explicitly dwell on it as much as I want.
AFAICT, I am trying to fully and openly embody the way of reasoning that actually makes sense to me in this domain, which… isn’t really a “balancing point.” It’s more like the anarchist saying “the means are the ends.” Or it’s more like Szilard’s “ten commandments,” (which I highly recommend reading for anyone who hasn’t; they’re short). Or more like the quote from the novel The Dispossessed: “To reassert its validity and strength, he thought, one need only act, without fear of punishment and without hope of reward: act from the center of one’s soul. “
I don’t have the right concepts or articulation here. This is an example of the “hard to justify personal opinions” I warned about in my “epistemic status.” But IMO, thinking about tradeoffs and balancing points can be good when your map is good enough; at other times, it’s more like I want to try to hone in on priors, on deep patternness, on where reasoning is before it’s reasoning. This is where the power of leisure comes from, where the possibility of hobbies that end up giving you glimpses of new bits of the universe come from. And it’s a thing I’m trying to show here. Not a particular balance-point between depleting your long-term resources and “being nice to yourself” by eating chocolates and cartoons. (Neither of those help with getting to the tao, usually, AFAICT.)
We can be empirical about trying to see which actions, which mindsets, add to our and others’ long-term robust abilities.
In short-term crises for which you have decent-quality maps, balance-points and trading things off with local consequentialist reasoning makes sense to me. But not the rest of everywhere.
I agree many people underestimate their own capacities, and too seldom try hard or scary things. I think this is often many of the same people who burn themselves out.
Sorry this reply, and my other one, are somewhat incoherent. I’m having trouble mapping both where you’re coming from, and why/where I disagree.
Yeah, that makes sense to me. I’m complaining about a larger class of posts, so maybe this one isn’t really an example and I’m just pattern-matching. I do still wish there existed more posts that were very obviously examples of the ‘both-and’ things I was pointing at. (Both dentist appointments and Dyson spheres; both embrace slack and embrace maxipok; etc.)
It might be that if my thinking were clearer here, I’d be able to recognize more posts as doing ‘both-and’ even if they don’t explicitly dwell on it as much as I want.