kdbscott's Shortform

Faith

I've been playing around with this concept I call 'faith', which might also be called 'motivation' or 'confidence'. Warning: this is still a naive concept and might only be positive EV when used in conjunction with other tools which I won't mention here.

My current go-to example is exercising to build muscle: if I haven't successfully built muscle before, I'm probably uncertain about whether it's worth the effort to try. I don't have 'faith' that this whole project is worth it, and this can cause parts of me to (reasonably!) suggest that I don't put in the effort. On the other hand, if I've successfully built muscle many times (like Batman), I have faith that my effort will pay off. It's more like a known purchase (put in the effort, you'll get the gains), instead of an uncertain bet (put in the effort, maybe get nothing).

Worth noting: It's not as clear cut as a known effort purchase. The world is more uncertain than that, and the faith I'm referring to is more robust to uncertainty. I expect every time Christian Bale re-built muscle, it was a different process. Some routines didn't work as well, and some new routines were tried. Faith is the confidence/motivation that even in the face of uncertainty and slow feedback loops, your effort will be worth it.

A lesswrong-style framing of this concept might be something like 'a fully integrated sense of positive expected value'.

Holding this concept in mind as something that might be going on (having/lacking/building/losing faith) has been useful lately. I might keep editing this as I better flesh out what's going on.