byrnema comments on Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alicorn 09 July 2010 06:54AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (770)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: byrnema 21 July 2010 12:03:32PM *  0 points [-]

I think the warm-fuzzies from an engineering solution could be quite significant.

Throughout the day, if I had encountered a live or dead frog in my stairwell, my mind might return to the subject of frogs caught in stairwells several times. If I had saved the frog by hand, I would feel some satisfaction (tinged with some cynicism, see here) but also anxiety that I could not always be there for every frog. With the engineering solution, I would feel proud about human ingenuity and happy about all the potential frogs I could be saving any moment. Lots and lots of warm fuzzies.