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fiddlemath comments on Useful maxims - Less Wrong
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I'm anti-impulsive by default. In the face of new things to try or do or see, saying no is easy, saying yes is hard. I usually enjoy new experiences when I have them, and I crave them in general, but I have to steel myself to have them. I'm afraid of doing things wrong because they're new, I'm afraid of looking silly because I don't know what I'm doing, I'm afraid of doing things suboptimally, or paying too much, or spending too much time at something, and so on and so on. Reflectively, I endorse none of these fears to the degree I have them. And so:
I run this in my head, and get some distance from those little fears, and that often suffices to do awesome things.
My counter to this instinct, which is obviously less accurate, but perhaps more snappy is:
In particular, if it comes to a choice between doing something and not doing it (as opposed to a choice between doing something and doing something else), you should always choose to actively do. Obviously, there are likely to be budget constraints, but it's only supposed to be a guideline.
Heh, the thing I try to think to myself is not always true, but worth thinking about.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. - - Publilius Syrus
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. - - Sydney Harris
My version: You will regret missed opportunities far more than anything you actually do.
But that's probably a bias. You often don't realize what you missed; and even if you do, the missed things are usually in a far mode.
Totally not true. Things I actually do have far more salience. Things I don't actually do I usually don't even remember and if I do they certainly don't drag around much in the way of emotional weight. Perhaps my regret mechanism is different?
I expect that people who regret missed opportunities more than actual behavior have higher estimates of the expected value of hypothetical actions than people who don't. That is, they believe the X they didn't do would have been totally awesome, whereas the Xes they actually did do have various flaws and blemishes.
I tend towards inaction, so I tend to regret inaction more than action - there's often been situations where I think I probably could have made a difference if I'd just gotten involved. That said, actions occasionally explode in BIG ways and form very lasting, intense regrets. I seem to handle the latter MUCH better than the former, though, so I'd still rather push towards action over inaction.
But, ideally, I'd like to push for "action, with 5 minutes of sane contemplation beforehand", because I almost never regret that - I often still have "learning experiences", but it's much easier to say to myself "Well, I did the best I could with the information I had at the time, and now I'll have a better model in the future".
The (mostly sound) heuristic underlying this, I think, is: choose the action that will cause you to learn more.
"Oh no, not another learning experience!"