Regarding “Staying grounded and stable in spite of the stakes”: I think it might be helpful to unpack the vritue/skill(s) involved according to the different timescales at which emergencies unfold.
For example:
1. At the time scale of minutes or hours, there is a virtue/skill of “staying level headed in a situation of accute crisis”. This is the sort of skill you want your emergency doctor or firefighter to have. (When you pointed to the military, I think you in part pointed to this scale but I assume not only.)
From talking to people who do or did jobs like this, a typical pattern seems to be that some types of people when in siutations like this basically “freeze” and others basically move into a mode of “just functioning”. There might be some margin for practice here (maybe you freeze the first time around and are able to snap out of the freeze the second time around, and after that, you can “remember” what it feels like to shift into funcitoning mode ever after) but, according to the “common wisdom” in these prfoessions (as I undestand it), mostly people seem to fall in one or the other category.
The sort of practice that I see being helpful here is a) overtraining on whatever skill you will need in the moment (e.g. imagine the emergency doctor) such that you can hand over most cognitive work to your autopilot once the emergency occurs; and b) train the skill of switching from freeze into high-functioning mode. I would expect “drill-type practices” are the most abt to get at that, but as noted above I don’t know how large the margin for improvement is. (A subtlety here: there seems to be a massive difference between “being the first person to switch in to funcitoning mode”, vs “switching into functioning mode after (literally or metaphorically speaking) someone screamed at your face to get moving”. (Thinking of the military here.))
All that said, I don’t feel particularly excited for people to start doing a bunch of drill practice or the like. I think there are possible extreme scenarios of “narrow hingy moments” that will involve this skill but overall this doesn’t seem to me not to be the thing that is most needed/with highest EV.
(Probably also worth putting some sort of warning flag here: genuinly high-intensity situations can be harmful to people’s psychy so one should be very cautious about experimenting with things in this space.)
2. Next, there might be a related virtue/skill at the timescale of weeks and months. I think the pandemic, especially from ~March to May/June is an excellent example of this, and was also an excellent learning opportunities for people involved in some time-sensitive covid-19 problem. I definitely think I’ve gained some gears on what a genuin (i.e. highly stakey) 1-3 month sprint involves, and what challenges and risks are invovled for you as an “agent” who is trying to also protect their agency/ability to think and act (though I think others have learnt and been stress-tested much more than I have).
Personally, my sense is that this is “harder” than the thing in 1., because you can’t rely on your autopilot much, and this makes things feel more like an adaptive rather than technical problem (where the latter is aproblem where the solution is basically clear, you just have to do it; and the latter is a problem most of the work needed is in figuring out the solution, not so much (necessarily) in executing it.)
One difficulty is that this skill/virtue involves managing your energy not only spending it well. Knowing yourself and hoy your energy and motivation structures work—and in particular how they work in extreme scenarios—seems very important. I can see how people who have meditated a lot have gained valuable skills here. I don’t think it’s th eonly way to get these skills, and I expect the thing that is paying off here is more “being able to look back on years of meditaton practice and the ways this has rewired one’s brain in some deep sense” rather than “benefits from having a routine to meditate” or something like this.
During the first couple of COVID-19 months, I was also surprised how “doing well at this” was more a question of collective rationality than I would have thought (by collective rationality I mean things like: ability to communciate effectively, ability to mobilise people/people with the right skills, abilty to delegate work effectively). There is still a large individual component of “staying on top of it all/keeping the horizon in sight” such that you are able to make hard decisoins (which you will be faced with en masse).
I think it could be really good to collect lessons learnt from the folks invovled in some EA/rationlaist-adjacent COVID-19 projects.
3. The scale of ~(a few) years seems quite similar in type to 2. The main thing that I’d want to add here is that the challenge of dealing with stronguncertainty while the stakes are massive can be very psychologically challenge. I do think meditation and related practices can be helpful in dealing with that in a way that is both grounded and not flinching from the truth.
I find myself wondering whether the miliatry does anything to help soldiers prepare for the act of “going to war” where the posisbility of death is extremely real. I imaigne they must do things to support people in this process. It’s not exactly the same but there certainly are parallels with what we want.
Regarding “Staying grounded and stable in spite of the stakes”:
I think it might be helpful to unpack the vritue/skill(s) involved according to the different timescales at which emergencies unfold.
For example:
1. At the time scale of minutes or hours, there is a virtue/skill of “staying level headed in a situation of accute crisis”. This is the sort of skill you want your emergency doctor or firefighter to have. (When you pointed to the military, I think you in part pointed to this scale but I assume not only.)
From talking to people who do or did jobs like this, a typical pattern seems to be that some types of people when in siutations like this basically “freeze” and others basically move into a mode of “just functioning”. There might be some margin for practice here (maybe you freeze the first time around and are able to snap out of the freeze the second time around, and after that, you can “remember” what it feels like to shift into funcitoning mode ever after) but, according to the “common wisdom” in these prfoessions (as I undestand it), mostly people seem to fall in one or the other category.
The sort of practice that I see being helpful here is a) overtraining on whatever skill you will need in the moment (e.g. imagine the emergency doctor) such that you can hand over most cognitive work to your autopilot once the emergency occurs; and b) train the skill of switching from freeze into high-functioning mode. I would expect “drill-type practices” are the most abt to get at that, but as noted above I don’t know how large the margin for improvement is. (A subtlety here: there seems to be a massive difference between “being the first person to switch in to funcitoning mode”, vs “switching into functioning mode after (literally or metaphorically speaking) someone screamed at your face to get moving”. (Thinking of the military here.))
All that said, I don’t feel particularly excited for people to start doing a bunch of drill practice or the like. I think there are possible extreme scenarios of “narrow hingy moments” that will involve this skill but overall this doesn’t seem to me not to be the thing that is most needed/with highest EV.
(Probably also worth putting some sort of warning flag here: genuinly high-intensity situations can be harmful to people’s psychy so one should be very cautious about experimenting with things in this space.)
2. Next, there might be a related virtue/skill at the timescale of weeks and months. I think the pandemic, especially from ~March to May/June is an excellent example of this, and was also an excellent learning opportunities for people involved in some time-sensitive covid-19 problem. I definitely think I’ve gained some gears on what a genuin (i.e. highly stakey) 1-3 month sprint involves, and what challenges and risks are invovled for you as an “agent” who is trying to also protect their agency/ability to think and act (though I think others have learnt and been stress-tested much more than I have).
Personally, my sense is that this is “harder” than the thing in 1., because you can’t rely on your autopilot much, and this makes things feel more like an adaptive rather than technical problem (where the latter is aproblem where the solution is basically clear, you just have to do it; and the latter is a problem most of the work needed is in figuring out the solution, not so much (necessarily) in executing it.)
One difficulty is that this skill/virtue involves managing your energy not only spending it well. Knowing yourself and hoy your energy and motivation structures work—and in particular how they work in extreme scenarios—seems very important. I can see how people who have meditated a lot have gained valuable skills here. I don’t think it’s th eonly way to get these skills, and I expect the thing that is paying off here is more “being able to look back on years of meditaton practice and the ways this has rewired one’s brain in some deep sense” rather than “benefits from having a routine to meditate” or something like this.
During the first couple of COVID-19 months, I was also surprised how “doing well at this” was more a question of collective rationality than I would have thought (by collective rationality I mean things like: ability to communciate effectively, ability to mobilise people/people with the right skills, abilty to delegate work effectively). There is still a large individual component of “staying on top of it all/keeping the horizon in sight” such that you are able to make hard decisoins (which you will be faced with en masse).
I think it could be really good to collect lessons learnt from the folks invovled in some EA/rationlaist-adjacent COVID-19 projects.
3. The scale of ~(a few) years seems quite similar in type to 2. The main thing that I’d want to add here is that the challenge of dealing with strong uncertainty while the stakes are massive can be very psychologically challenge. I do think meditation and related practices can be helpful in dealing with that in a way that is both grounded and not flinching from the truth.
I find myself wondering whether the miliatry does anything to help soldiers prepare for the act of “going to war” where the posisbility of death is extremely real. I imaigne they must do things to support people in this process. It’s not exactly the same but there certainly are parallels with what we want.