DeterminateJacobian comments on Rationality Quotes October 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 October 2014 11:02PM

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Comment author: shminux 31 October 2014 09:05:27PM *  6 points [-]

The winner worldview is that you have responsibility for your own life and it is irrelevant who is at fault if the people at fault can't or won't fix the problem. I've noticed over the course of my life that winners ignore questions of blame and fault and look for solutions they can personally influence. Losers blame others for their problems and expect that to produce results.

Scott Adams musing on what that woman in the Manhattan harassment video could do.

This actually clashes with the idea of heroic responsibility, a popular local notion. I guess it depends on what your values are.

Comment author: DeterminateJacobian 31 October 2014 09:51:10PM *  3 points [-]

Or what your skills are. People who are poor at soliciting the cooperation of others might begin to classify all actions which intend to change others' behavior as "blame" and thus doomed to fail, just because trying to change others' behavior doesn't usually succeed for them.

What could the woman in the harassment video do? Maybe she could start an entire organization dedicated to ending harassment, and then stay in NY as a way to signal she is refusing to let the harassers win. Or if the tradeoff isn't worth it to her personally, leave as Adams suggests. She isn't making it Scott Adam's problem, she's making it the problem of anybody who actually wants it to also be their problem. That's how cooperation works, and people can be good or bad at encouraging cooperation, in completely measurable ways. Assigning irremediable blame, or refusing to encourage change at all are both losing solutions.