aspera comments on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions - Less Wrong
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My mother's husband professes to believe that our actions have no control over the way in which we die, but that "if you're meant to die in a plane crash and avoid flying, then a plane will end up crashing into you!" for example.
After explaining how I would expect that belief to constrain experience (like how it would affect plane crash statistics), as well as showing that he himself was demonstrating his unbelief every time he went to see a doctor, he told me that you "just can't apply numbers to this," and "Well, you shouldn't tempt fate."
My question to the LW community is this: How do you avoid kicking people in the nuts all of the time?
I jest, but the sense of the question is serious. I really do want to teach the people I'm close to how to get started on rationality, and I recognize that I'm not perfect at it either. Is there a serious conversation somewhere on LW about being an aspiring rationalist living in an irrational world? Best practices, coping mechanisms, which battles to pick, etc?