Part of this reminds me a lot of CFAR’s approach here (I can’t quite tell whether Julia Galef is interviewer, interviewee, or both):
For example, when I’ve decided to take a calculated risk, knowing that I might well fail but that it’s still worth it to try, I often find myself worrying about failure even after having made the decision to try. And I might be tempted to lie to myself and say, “Don’t worry! This is going to work!” so that I can be relaxed and motivated enough to push forward.
But instead, in those situations I like to use a framework CFAR sometimes calls “Worker-me versus CEO-me.” I remind myself that CEO-me has thought carefully about this decision, and for now I’m in worker mode, with the goal of executing CEO-me’s decision. Now is not the time to second-guess the CEO or worry about failure.
Your approach to gathering feedback and iterating on the output, making it more and more refined with every iteration but also deciding whether it’s worth another iteration, that process sounds great!
I think a lot of people aim for such a process or want to after reading your comment, but will held back from showing their first draft to their first round of reviewers because they worry the reviewers will think badly of them for addressing a topic of this particular level of perceived difficulty or relevance (maybe it’s too difficult or too irrelevant in the reviewer’s opinion), or think badly of them for a particular wording, or think badly of them because they think you should’ve anticipated a negative effect of writing about the topic and not done so (e.g., some complex acausal trade or social dynamics thing that didn’t occur to you), or just generally have diffuse fears holding them back. Such worries are probably disproportionate, but still, overcoming them will probably require particular tricks or training.
I like that “Worker-me versus CEO-me” framing, and hadn’t heard of it or seen that page, so thanks for sharing that. It does seem related to what I said in the parent comment.
I share the view that it’ll be decently common for a range of disproportionate worries to hold people back from striking out into areas that seem good in expected value but very uncertain and with real counterarguments, and from sharing early-stage results from such pursuits. I also think there can be a range of good reasons to hold back from those things, and that it can be hard to tell when the worries are disproportionate!
I imagine it’d be hard (though not impossible) to generate advice on this that’s quite generally useful without being vague/littered with caveats. People will probably have to experiment to some extent, get advice from trusted people on their general approach, and continue reflecting, or something like that.
Part of this reminds me a lot of CFAR’s approach here (I can’t quite tell whether Julia Galef is interviewer, interviewee, or both):
Your approach to gathering feedback and iterating on the output, making it more and more refined with every iteration but also deciding whether it’s worth another iteration, that process sounds great!
I think a lot of people aim for such a process or want to after reading your comment, but will held back from showing their first draft to their first round of reviewers because they worry the reviewers will think badly of them for addressing a topic of this particular level of perceived difficulty or relevance (maybe it’s too difficult or too irrelevant in the reviewer’s opinion), or think badly of them for a particular wording, or think badly of them because they think you should’ve anticipated a negative effect of writing about the topic and not done so (e.g., some complex acausal trade or social dynamics thing that didn’t occur to you), or just generally have diffuse fears holding them back. Such worries are probably disproportionate, but still, overcoming them will probably require particular tricks or training.
I like that “Worker-me versus CEO-me” framing, and hadn’t heard of it or seen that page, so thanks for sharing that. It does seem related to what I said in the parent comment.
I share the view that it’ll be decently common for a range of disproportionate worries to hold people back from striking out into areas that seem good in expected value but very uncertain and with real counterarguments, and from sharing early-stage results from such pursuits. I also think there can be a range of good reasons to hold back from those things, and that it can be hard to tell when the worries are disproportionate!
I imagine it’d be hard (though not impossible) to generate advice on this that’s quite generally useful without being vague/littered with caveats. People will probably have to experiment to some extent, get advice from trusted people on their general approach, and continue reflecting, or something like that.