This is a good point. In fact, I wrote an essay for Ribbonfarm about avoiding competition where you can, such as in education, careers, and dating.
This is not a contradiction. This post is about building *traits* that let you be competitive. That’s why sports is the best place to learn them: it’s a very benign and rule-bound form of competition, very unlike cutthroat politics, academia, AI startups etc. Building skills that allow you to compete doesn’t mean you have to seek out zero-sum contests to grind your life away at, but it does mean that you won’t get scared away from a field if it becomes competitive and starts forming a hierarchy. It lets you choose where to compete.
Example: MIRI can work on AI safety at its leisure because it successfully competed for a high rank in the hierarchy of EA organizations. MIRI has to compete for donations and employees, and sportsmanship values let it do so without destroying other EA orgs along the way.
I am currently getting a Page Not Found response from Putanumonit through that link. It seems that the link includes ” avoiding competition where you can” in the address, but shortening it back to winning-is-for-losers works.
This is a good point. In fact, I wrote an essay for Ribbonfarm about avoiding competition where you can, such as in education, careers, and dating.
This is not a contradiction. This post is about building *traits* that let you be competitive. That’s why sports is the best place to learn them: it’s a very benign and rule-bound form of competition, very unlike cutthroat politics, academia, AI startups etc. Building skills that allow you to compete doesn’t mean you have to seek out zero-sum contests to grind your life away at, but it does mean that you won’t get scared away from a field if it becomes competitive and starts forming a hierarchy. It lets you choose where to compete.
Example: MIRI can work on AI safety at its leisure because it successfully competed for a high rank in the hierarchy of EA organizations. MIRI has to compete for donations and employees, and sportsmanship values let it do so without destroying other EA orgs along the way.
I am currently getting a Page Not Found response from Putanumonit through that link. It seems that the link includes ” avoiding competition where you can” in the address, but shortening it back to winning-is-for-losers works.