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wedrifid comments on HELP! I want to do good - Less Wrong Discussion
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It sounds to me like you're suffering from the perfect being the enemy of the good. I guess my advice would be that you're worrying too much about optimizing for the best possible course of action and not simply pursuing one reasonable course of action.
If it makes you feel any better, you're a better person than I am at the moment, as I don't really care about saving the world (right now), just trying to save myself, by which I mean getting into grad school/finding a career.
For me, the personal terror of mediocrity and slacking is far more effective in driving me away from saving-the-world-type-activities than akrasia. I don't know. Maybe in a few years if I'm in a more stable situation I'll worry about saving the world.
Isn't "optimizing for the best possible course of action and not simply pursuing one reasonable course of action" what instrumental rationality is all about?
"You're a better person than I am at the moment" doesn't make me feel any better, no. This is something I'll address in a later post.
Given your psychological situation, choosing to pursue one reasonable course of action may well be the best course of action. Maybe over time you'll get over your akrasia issues, but until then, the optimal decision is to do as much good as you can given those issues.
Instrumental rationality is about the best course of action, yes. But stressing over things so much that you can't achieve even the second- or third- or hundredth-best course of action isn't instrumentally rational either.
This is a very good point, and I'll be basing a later post around this theme.
Having said that, at the moment I don't feel that I have akrasia issues. But in my decision-making, I certainly have to consider the hypothesis that I have akrasia issues that I am in denial about.