Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 03 November 2014 09:55AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 November 2014 09:50:58AM 3 points [-]

This seems correct. In a jungle, the cost of failure is frequently death. In our society, when you live an ordinary life (so this does not apply to things like organized crime or playing with explosives), the costs are much smaller, and there is much fun to be gained. But our brains are biased to believe they are in the jungle; they incorrectly perceive many things as tiger equivalents.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 05 November 2014 04:51:52PM 2 points [-]

This is kind of nitpicky, but "the cost of failure is frequently death" is not the same as "avoidance and/or submission is a good way of dealing with the problem". It's not enough to show that in the EEA things could kill you... you have to show that they could kill you, and that trying hard not to think about them was the best way to avoid having them kill you.