back to the original quote for a bit...Dresden actually complains quite a bit. But after dealing with flaming monkey poo (literally), a white court vampire as a friend, using a cleaning spell to deal with some giant scorpions, and who knows how many dead bodies (some of which were animated)....drinks seem really, really shallow to him. Not to mention he’s trying hard not to think too much about how, if he lets his magic the least bit off the leash, it will crash the plane. (something about complicated technology seems to override the rule “cannot accomplish what you don’t believe in accomplishing”)
Moving back to real life, someone is willing to complain about the drinks while someone else is being mugged.
Furthermore, If the person’s REAL complaint is about the unpleasant security measures, cramped seats, and air pressure changes, complaining about the drinks, even if the complaint gets the drinks to improve, will not really optimize much.
Furthermore, If the person’s REAL complaint is about the unpleasant security measures, cramped seats, and air pressure changes, complaining about the drinks, even if the complaint gets the drinks to improve, will not really optimize much.
Well, my real complaint is about both/all of those things. It is possible to have multiple complaints, you know; and also it is possible to improve more than one thing, ever.
Moving back to real life, someone is willing to complain about the drinks while someone else is being mugged.
But this generalizes. Someone is willing to complain about being mugged while someone else is being violently assaulted. Someone is willing to complain about being violently assaulted while someone else is imprisoned and tortured. And so on...
There’s no law that says we have to find The Worst Problem, devote all our resources to fixing it, and totally ignore every other problem that humanity has while The Worst Problem persists. Such a policy would lead to a rather horrifying world.
There’s no law that says we have to find The Worst Problem, devote all our resources to fixing it, and totally ignore every other problem that humanity has while The Worst Problem persists. Such a policy would lead to a rather horrifying world.
Something similar has been seriously argued here for donations to charity: you should donate all your money to the single charity that would do the most good (unless you’re a millionaire who can donate so much money that the charity will reduce the size of the problem to below the size of another problem).
back to the original quote for a bit...Dresden actually complains quite a bit. But after dealing with flaming monkey poo (literally), a white court vampire as a friend, using a cleaning spell to deal with some giant scorpions, and who knows how many dead bodies (some of which were animated)....drinks seem really, really shallow to him. Not to mention he’s trying hard not to think too much about how, if he lets his magic the least bit off the leash, it will crash the plane. (something about complicated technology seems to override the rule “cannot accomplish what you don’t believe in accomplishing”)
Moving back to real life, someone is willing to complain about the drinks while someone else is being mugged.
Furthermore, If the person’s REAL complaint is about the unpleasant security measures, cramped seats, and air pressure changes, complaining about the drinks, even if the complaint gets the drinks to improve, will not really optimize much.
Well, my real complaint is about both/all of those things. It is possible to have multiple complaints, you know; and also it is possible to improve more than one thing, ever.
But this generalizes. Someone is willing to complain about being mugged while someone else is being violently assaulted. Someone is willing to complain about being violently assaulted while someone else is imprisoned and tortured. And so on...
There’s no law that says we have to find The Worst Problem, devote all our resources to fixing it, and totally ignore every other problem that humanity has while The Worst Problem persists. Such a policy would lead to a rather horrifying world.
As always, a relevant xkcd.
Something similar has been seriously argued here for donations to charity: you should donate all your money to the single charity that would do the most good (unless you’re a millionaire who can donate so much money that the charity will reduce the size of the problem to below the size of another problem).
http://lesswrong.com/lw/elo/a_mathematical_explanation_of_why_charity/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gtm/when_should_you_give_to_multiple_charities/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/aid/heuristics_and_biases_in_charity/
Some of the comments have good arguments against this, however.
Quite so, and I agree with this argument in the charity case; I just don’t think it generalizes to a strategy for dealing with Problems In General.