At the local presence I run, there happen to appear projects I anticipate strongly to fail when posted, but encourage to try nevertheless for a couple of reasons not mentioned in your post, Richenda:
• There’s value in building the culture of doing. I believe the old motto of ours is “figure out how to do the most good, and then do it”. It’s not uncommon for me to hear that we’re failing at the latter. To what extent that’s true or not, is a valid concern.
• There’s value in being seen as both thinkers and doers. I find it attracts the kinds of people ready to take the risks of getting through trial and error to gather new insight otherwise more expensive to acquire. It also attracts sympathy from bystanders and potential donors. Especially those who aren’t deeply analytical by default.
• Growth of this sort, as well as the thrill of getting feedback from acting as group is good for building morale.
• Mentioning this, I keep my arbitrary belief that failure is more informative than success.
• There’s vast uncertainty to any of our actions. We should be disciplined about how we build and use our models, but I wouldn’t dismiss the importance of spontaneous activity. I dislike the idea of holding it back, even when it’s obviously a missed hit.
Disclaimer: my comment is a bit spontaneous itself because of time constraint I’m facing. I’ll revise it later as the discussion unfolds. Thanks!
Thanks Michal! I wish I had already read your post about fetishising the long term (which I’ll do now!) as I definitely would have referenced it here!
These are great additional points that I wish I’d written ;)
I agree totally that there are a lot of risks to conservatism and over-caution when it comes to taking action. Another metaphor I came across years ago was that ‘you can’t steer a car if it’s not moving’. CZEA is a really inspirational example of striking this reflexive balance of doing, but doing in an experimental and analytical fashion.
At the local presence I run, there happen to appear projects I anticipate strongly to fail when posted, but encourage to try nevertheless for a couple of reasons not mentioned in your post, Richenda:
• The chances for flow-through effects, that “a substantial part of the good that one does may be indirect” and “helping to address any problem is a possible path to addressing many other problems” (https://blog.givewell.org/2013/05/15/flow-through-effects/).
• There’s value in building the culture of doing. I believe the old motto of ours is “figure out how to do the most good, and then do it”. It’s not uncommon for me to hear that we’re failing at the latter. To what extent that’s true or not, is a valid concern.
• As is analysis paralysis, mentioned in this old post: https://80000hours.org/articles/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/.
• There’s value in being seen as both thinkers and doers. I find it attracts the kinds of people ready to take the risks of getting through trial and error to gather new insight otherwise more expensive to acquire. It also attracts sympathy from bystanders and potential donors. Especially those who aren’t deeply analytical by default.
• Growth of this sort, as well as the thrill of getting feedback from acting as group is good for building morale.
• Mentioning this, I keep my arbitrary belief that failure is more informative than success.
• There’s vast uncertainty to any of our actions. We should be disciplined about how we build and use our models, but I wouldn’t dismiss the importance of spontaneous activity. I dislike the idea of holding it back, even when it’s obviously a missed hit.
Disclaimer: my comment is a bit spontaneous itself because of time constraint I’m facing. I’ll revise it later as the discussion unfolds. Thanks!
Thanks Michal! I wish I had already read your post about fetishising the long term (which I’ll do now!) as I definitely would have referenced it here! These are great additional points that I wish I’d written ;)
I agree totally that there are a lot of risks to conservatism and over-caution when it comes to taking action. Another metaphor I came across years ago was that ‘you can’t steer a car if it’s not moving’. CZEA is a really inspirational example of striking this reflexive balance of doing, but doing in an experimental and analytical fashion.