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there will always be someone smarter, better looking, richer, and with a bigger ____ than you Oh, come on, nazgulnarsil, where's your spirit? You can do it!
by Eliezer 18y ago
there will always be someone smarter, better looking, richer, and with a bigger ____ than you
Oh, come on, nazgulnarsil, where's your spirit? You can do it!
Bart: You make me sick, Homer. You're the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it!
Homer: Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.
Bart: Gotcha. Can't win, don't try.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agomy extreme pragmatism depresses most people. I always hear hope for the best but plan for the worst and I think it is unnecessarily pessimistic. Hope for the best, plan for the averages, have a backup plan for the worst. But the bottom line is that we're already incredibly wealthy by historical standards. I am in the bottom quintile by income in the U.S. (poor college student) and yet i enjoy a standard of living that is probably in the top 1% of all humans who've ever lived. P.S. assuming you are Mr. Yudkowsky your posts at overcoming bias singlehandedly turned me from an empiricist into a rationalist.