✨😶🌫️🌁 You can just walk into cathedrals and nobody cares | 11
The world doesn't really care most of the time
Neil here! This is my no-longer-weekly-help-procrastination-is-a-bane newsletter to my close friends! One of the main goals of the neilsletter is to keep in touch with people I won't interact with as much anymore; you can do that with a short reply to this email. Apparently a lot of my friends read them, but I never hear about it because they don't respond; that's why any reply, even a single emoji, suffices. All past issues can be found here. Si vous ne parlez que français, utilisez Google Translate!
I.
Fear contains no information
There's a popular heuristic in decision-making which goes "in hesitation, pick the option that scares you the most". More often than not, this is good advice: you'd be surprised how many valuable things you're avoiding because of fear.
Why though? Emotions are generally useful! They exist because they gave your ancestors a reproductive advantage over their peers! If you're feeling angry or sad or scared, it's probably for good reason.
So why is "do it scared" a good heuristic?
Because the world is no longer as dangerous as it used to be, but your brain injects fear into you just the same, and at the site of the same now-obsolete danger-proxies!
Fear of being a social outcast, for instance, helped your ancestors not die from isolation, back when social isolation meant . This is no longer the case today. What people think of you is still kinda relevant—but not nearly as it was to great-great-great-great-great-grampa.
So if your reason for not doing something is fear of what other people think of you... remember that your brain has no idea what's going on! Your fear is not a correct assessment of the danger you are facing.
Fear contains no information. It's your best shot at surviving when faced with a pouncing tiger; but in any other situation, its effectiveness is trumped by that of the ancient art called "thinking things through". If you have enough time and calmness to write up a risk analysis, then that analysis will be a much more correct assessment of the danger you're in than primal emotions.
... and I'm laughing at the deeply ironic fact that I've been procrastinating on writing this issue for 20+ days now because my fear of social backlash rises for every dozen new people I add onto the list. Please send me angry emails if ever I take this long again.
II.
Any advice for me?
I'm working on an agency incubator! The point will be to encourage smart and conscientious kids to act out in the world more.
Often I'll forget I can *do things*. I'll forget that there are, in fact, many avenues which are open to me. I could start a Gratitude Google Form! Or send an email to academics if I have a question to answer! Or write a post! Or cough cough stop procrastinating on the neilsletter!
I'll forget I can do this stuff and then I just... won't do them. I'll forget that there's a list of things I can do out there—and not even look at my own! My default stance is not doing extraordinary things; it takes a reminder to do them! :/
So... at least a large part of doing things is remembering you can do them? Yes!
Sometimes it's that easy! Cold emails, for instance: by default, people don't think:
"I could answer the question I have for X
"I could land a job at Y
"I could get advice from person-I-admire W
... if I shot them an email"
But so few people write cold emails that they're surprisingly effective! And they're relatively low cost; most of the work is in remembering you can do it.
That'll be the point of the program! For starters, to get kids to send cold emails. I might have the backing of NonTrivial for this project. I've sent emails of advice to university and high school professors to gauge the difficulty of such an enterprise and the logistics it'll imply.
III.
More gratitude!
I made a Google Form for you to list things you're grateful for. The Form will bounce back your answers to you, so you can always search your inbox for what you wrote last time. It's extremely effective and extremely cheap to do. It's one of things no one does because they're not reminded of it all the time.
Here's the shortened link: tinyurl.com/form-gratitude
Also the painting on the Form changes every time—as a bonus!
IV.
General news:
I joined PauseAI France a few days ago. It's a fledgling non-profit aiming to, well, pause AI development
(You can join too! PauseAI global is here, contact me with regard to PauseAI France)
Non-Trivial and ESPR are programs I'm a finalist in. 90% sure I'll get into the first, 65% sure I'll get into the second
---> Ah, so I held off on publishing this issue for enough time that I have the results of my predictions: I got into both!
With the last of exams gone, all of high school is over: I am now a human being of indeterminate purpose (because I totally wasn't before)
Did you know you can just... walk into cathedrals? There are a bunch of chairs there and so long as you're silent no one cares. I mention this because I wrote part of this issue in one this morning.
If you crane your neck backwards, cathedrals look cool from below—like staring at the shimmering surface of the sea while swimming upside-down.
V.
“If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. You are not taking any notice of me at all. God forgive you – all I wanted was a few words from you.”
- Adrian Tchaikovsky