Comment by mbiss on Ayn Rand’s model of “living money”; and an upside of burnout · 2024-12-08T17:53:48.559Z · LW · GW

“Living willpower” is willpower that is consciously understood as a bet on unknowns: “I don’t know whether this project will pay off, but I am betting my finite credibility on it anyhow.”

This feels related to the idea of Slack that Scott Alexander writes about here in SSC.

He gives this example towards the end:

7. Ideas. These are in constant evolutionary competition – this is the insight behind memetics. The memetic equivalent of slack is inferential range, aka “willingness to entertain and explore ideas before deciding that they are wrong”.

Willpower and money are both ways to create slack for yourself and others so that you can explore ideas/projects with an uncertain payoff.