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brazil84 comments on Training Reflective Attention - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: BrienneYudkowsky 21 December 2014 12:53PM

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Comment author: brazil84 21 December 2014 04:10:48PM 1 point [-]

When her skills are most needed, a rationalist is lost in an unskillful state of mind. She doesn’t recognize that it’s happening, and she doesn’t remember that she has prepared for it by learning and practicing appropriate techniques.

Would you mind providing a couple examples of some of the worst decisions and/or actions taken while in such a state of mind that you later regretted?

Comment author: BrienneYudkowsky 21 December 2014 06:56:23PM 1 point [-]

If I answer that question honestly, it means I'm telling you the decisions I've made that I regret most. Mistakes like that pretty much don't happen when my mind is in good condition. I'm pretty sure I'm willing to do that, but I'd at least like to make sure first that trivial mistakes won't do.

Comment author: brazil84 21 December 2014 07:08:32PM 1 point [-]

If I answer that question honestly, it means I'm telling you the decisions I've made that I regret most.

Whatever, I don't need to probe that deeply. It just occurs to me that there is an easier and simpler solution to this problem, which is to avoid making important decisions in the heat of the moment. As your mother used to say, "always sleep on an angry letter."

In order to give this hypothesis some context, I thought it would be helpful to shine the spotlight on some specific actions and decisions which turned out to be especially poor in terms of consequences.