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Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of Sylvia Plath's fig tree - [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7511-i-saw-my-life-branching-out-before-me-like-th

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of Sylvia Plath's fig tree - [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7511-i-saw-my-life-branching-out-before-me-like-the https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7511-i-saw-my-life-branchin...] which I always think about. I've observed that it's useful to think of the one future that you would sacrifice all other futures for. Which would be what exactly do you value? On regrets and mistakes, Jordan Peterson talks about this sort of thing in a beautiful way as the idea of "redemptive mistakes", and that "people are a lot more unhappy when they look back in their lives about the things they didn't do than they are about the mistakes they made while they were doing things" - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGDnSWmqhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGDnSWmqhM]. It has stuck with me as I try to be more permissive of myself making mistakes and being imperfect.

AstralStorm 7y ago
This is in no way an endorsement of doing without thinking, which will catch up with you and result in you being forced to skip options. At least I hope it isn't. There's a clear spectrum between recklessness on one end, indecision and inaction on the other and doing right things right in the middle, spontaneously or in a planned way. Relevancy is key, nobody remembers things that are irrelevant by definition as a regret... Cost is a kind of relevancy. Going back to the article, you almost completely lost contact with the original problem once you're past third or rarely fourth order thinking because you will lack enough particular data to decide on any measure of success, with exception of particularly structured recursive problems. Welcome to decision variant of Goedel's second. Decisions and axioms (data points) are countable.
- the_greyd 7y ago
  I don't think everybody has the capacity to be reckless. I think we are bounded by our temperament (nature + nurture). Some of us have exact perfectionist tendencies, and some of us have creative tendencies, and more. This is very much an oversimplification, but you can think of a Scientist as trying to get to the exact truth (in the realm of theory) and science as a field that aims for perfection. Engineers on the other hand are used to working with constraints and imperfect conditions (in the realm of practice), and the motto seems to be "get shit done" (a kind of pragmatism). And so sometimes you have to be a scientist and sometimes you have to be an engineer.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Science is also there to "get things done". You set out with a goal or stumble upon one. You have only limited time to go stumbling and digging too deep is only sometimes productive. But when it is, the results are profound if not immediately used or understandable. Like the one about decision or chance exchangeability. Regardless, mathematics is partially the art of building high order abstractions that explain the world, at the core. (And of course applied mathematics is the practice.) It is not a coincidence that it was mostly developed by people with many brain cycles to spare. There are many outdated (usually superseded, limited or outright meaningless, sometimes finished) branches of it too, which may not be apparent.

AstralStorm 7y ago

This is in no way an endorsement of doing without thinking, which will catch up with you and result in you being forced to skip options. At least I hope it isn't. There's a clear spectrum between recklessness on one end, indecision and inaction on the other and doing right things right in the middle, spontaneously or in a planned way. Relevancy is key, nobody remembers things that are irrelevant by definition as a regret... Cost is a kind of relevancy. Going back to the article, you almost completely lost contact with the original problem once you're past third or rarely fourth order thinking because you will lack enough particular data to decide on any measure of success, with exception of particularly structured recursive problems. Welcome to decision variant of Goedel's second. Decisions and axioms (data points) are countable.

the_greyd 7y ago
I don't think everybody has the capacity to be reckless. I think we are bounded by our temperament (nature + nurture). Some of us have exact perfectionist tendencies, and some of us have creative tendencies, and more. This is very much an oversimplification, but you can think of a Scientist as trying to get to the exact truth (in the realm of theory) and science as a field that aims for perfection. Engineers on the other hand are used to working with constraints and imperfect conditions (in the realm of practice), and the motto seems to be "get shit done" (a kind of pragmatism). And so sometimes you have to be a scientist and sometimes you have to be an engineer.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Science is also there to "get things done". You set out with a goal or stumble upon one. You have only limited time to go stumbling and digging too deep is only sometimes productive. But when it is, the results are profound if not immediately used or understandable. Like the one about decision or chance exchangeability. Regardless, mathematics is partially the art of building high order abstractions that explain the world, at the core. (And of course applied mathematics is the practice.) It is not a coincidence that it was mostly developed by people with many brain cycles to spare. There are many outdated (usually superseded, limited or outright meaningless, sometimes finished) branches of it too, which may not be apparent.