Ask HN: What is your favorite motto? • Hacker News Board

rocqua wrote: post #123

falcor84 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised by this one. What about things like marriage or a career change?

If you are doubting whether to get married, then apparently, both options are roughly equal. Hence the difference between either decision is small, not in outcome but in expected 'desirability'. Hence the decision 'doesn't matter much' insofar as there are no real wrong choices, just a slightly more right one.

> ... apparently, both options are roughly equal.

But that's the thing, they aren't really roughly equal in any meaningful way. I think Anscombe's quartet [0] is a good illustration of the issue, only in this case there are very many dimensions involved, with huge uncertainty in each, leading to vastly different risk profiles for the different alternatives.

> ... no real wrong choices ...

This is a matter of philosophy of course, but more objectively, there are many many people actively regretting their choices.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite motto?

#220

Post by sidcool » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 11:57 AM UTC

SpaceX and Tesla driving principles.