Gwern and Pjeby had a long discussion about book stats and likelihoods of making bestselling lists. It is clear that it is very hard. But it made me feel it is less hard than I thought before.
Learning that there are literally millions of new books a year and that bestseller lists are narrower than you probably thought made you feel it was less hard?
Yes, but I don’t think it happened for good reasons.
Maybe it was just the feeling of something floating from the unknown unknowns category to the mildly known unknown. Maybe it was the feeling that only if you have the courage to try impossible things you can succeed in this kicking in. But I take it that it was just an emotion that didn’t correctly implement decision theoretic cascades of neurotransmitters according to what would have been desirable in a homo economicus perspective. So do many of our less rational emotions. In other words, it is not a feeling I feel responsible for justifying, I just took it at face value.
Learning that there are literally millions of new books a year and that bestseller lists are narrower than you probably thought made you feel it was less hard?
Yes, but I don’t think it happened for good reasons. Maybe it was just the feeling of something floating from the unknown unknowns category to the mildly known unknown. Maybe it was the feeling that only if you have the courage to try impossible things you can succeed in this kicking in.
But I take it that it was just an emotion that didn’t correctly implement decision theoretic cascades of neurotransmitters according to what would have been desirable in a homo economicus perspective. So do many of our less rational emotions. In other words, it is not a feeling I feel responsible for justifying, I just took it at face value.