I’m trying to understand what you’re saying, Anna. That someone will probably create an AI of some sort to predict chaos, one application of which you will apply to significantly reduce your anxiety issue and thus resolve your eating disorder?
This is my interpretation of what she’s saying at least
not exactly.
I’m saying that it is very possible that there will be some AI created that will predict the future.
Should that come to fruition, I would be very happy and have less anxiety. I do not particularly care if I can use it for my own problems, it is a cool concept I hope gets developed
I have very high confidence in the power of technological advancement and would love to see what’s possible, regardless if I ever come close to being able to use them
It just happens that I’m very likely to end up working with people who either will achieve these breakthroughs or are in close contact with these people/teams.
Are you familiar with the arrival fallacy?
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yes, but I do not understand how NOT knowing outcomes/disasters ahead of time with great certainty would be beneficial.
For me, failing to plan is planing to fail. It’s hard not to fail to plan (or waste energy planning for the wrong thing) if you don’t know what to plan for.
I wouldn’t always be basing decisions on past experience if I knew what was certain in the future
I have made no claims of that.
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My point is that I don’t think I’d be unhappy/worst off if I could dramatically reduce uncertainty
And my point is you will most likely experience the same degree of unhappiness if not even MORESO because you are affixing your happiness to external variables.
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ah. okay. I was thinking that if I knew what was coming, I could better prepare → better outcomes.
For example, if I knew when the next economic crash would come, I could make better financial decisions in preparation. Or, if I’ve known that I was going to study behvioural science and econ, I would have spent less time reading solzhenitsyn and more time doing math or reading Loewenstein’s papers
I lack the ability to explain my position on this any better.
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I lack the ability to understand your position
You have an uncanny ability to continually present some of humanities greatest plights ever as something solely your own. It’s fascinating.
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I belong to the set of humans → I want what most humans want. I’m not special in any way, just more selfish 
not really, I was just thinking of how I could use human intellect/tech advancement to solve my problems.
I saw your sneaky edit to remove that last sentence. I don’t believe you’re selfish. Don’t put yourself down like that. You’ve presented the exact opposite when it comes to comments about how you want to take care of your parents.
Lacking maturity, however? Absolutely. But that’s to be expected in your age bracket. There’s still a lot of life learnin’ you need to go through.
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You could already do this with 2000 year old human intellect though.
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I’m lazy… like a lot of humans
Also, tech is cool
This is why I say it’s arrival fallacy.
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ohhh I get it now
I met a woman at a writing group years ago who turned 90 this year. She is a published novelist, swam the Long Island Sound during a hurricane on a dare in her youth, was an inner city high school english teacher, etc. Just this force of nature. Last time I saw her she was in her early 80’s and was still taller than me. I’m almost 5’7".
Anyway, we were catching up a few years ago and when we got to how I was doing I said something along the lines of “Really good! It’s a little scary; I worry that something bad is going to happen.”
And she said “Of course something bad is going to happen! That’s just how life is! Good things happen, then bad things happen, then good things happen, then bad things happen - why worry about it now??”
And I realized that my experience completely supports that good things happen, then bad things happen, rinse and repeat. So yes, why waste the good trying to anticipate the bad?
But more importantly, your eating disorder promises an abundance of bad things. So if you’re going to entertain anticipatory anxiety, why not attach it to the very real and already in play bad things connected to that?
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You future trip a lot. I’m doing x now because I want to be ready for y in the future.
I can relate to some degree to your desire for control. But, it’s illusory.
I don’t need control. I need the capacity to handle uncertainty. My mantra is, “I am the kind of person who can handle anything.” I say that to myself a lot. And every hard thing that life throws my way makes me more sure that I am that person.
You underestimate yourself I think. Give up control. Get stronger—physically mental emotionally. That’s the way.
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