wedrifid comments on Compartmentalization in epistemic and instrumental rationality - Less Wrong

77 Post author: AnnaSalamon 17 September 2010 07:02AM

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

Comments (121)

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

Comment author: JGWeissman 17 September 2010 10:12:57PM 4 points [-]

a golfer envisions and attempts to anticipate every shot as if it were going to be a hole-in-one, even though most of them will not be... but in the process, achieves a better result than if s/he anticipated performing an average shot.

Suppose there is a lake between the tee and the hole, too big for the golfer to hit the ball all the way across. Should he envision/anticipate a hole in one, and waste his first stroke hitting the ball into the water, or should he acknowledge that this hole will take multiple strokes, and hit the ball around the lake?

Comment author: wedrifid 18 September 2010 03:31:58AM *  0 points [-]

Suppose there is a lake between the tee and the hole, too big for the golfer to hit the ball all the way across. Should he envision/anticipate a hole in one, and waste his first stroke hitting the ball into the water, or should he acknowledge that this hole will take multiple strokes, and hit the ball around the lake?

Depends. Do you want to win or do you want to get the girl?