pjeby comments on Rationality Quotes Thread May 2015 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Vaniver 01 May 2015 02:31PM

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Comment author: elspood 14 May 2015 12:24:04AM -1 points [-]

Reading this reply, I was immediately reminded of a situation described by Jen Peeples, I think in an episode of The Atheist Experience, about her co-pilot's reaction of prayer during a life-threatening helicopter incident. ( This Comment is all I could find as reference. )

Unless your particular prayer technique is useful for quickly addressing emergency situations, you probably don't want to be in the habit of relying on it as a general practice. I think the "rubber duck" Socratic approach could still be useful, so this isn't a disagreement with your entire comment, just a warning about possible failure modes.

Comment author: pjeby 17 May 2015 02:14:49PM 3 points [-]

Rubber ducking is for when you're uncertain how to proceed. An incident on a military aircraft is not such a situation: there are checklists that detail precisely how you're supposed to proceed, which you'd better be following.

If you are doing problem-solving in a distressed aircraft, and that problem-solving activity is not explicitly listed on the checklist for the current issue, you are Doing It Wrong. And if you're praying in such a scenario, it had better be something like, "grant me the calm and clarity to follow the checklist, so I'm not distracted by any panicky impulses".