https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WLJwTJ7uGPA5Qphbp/trying-to-try

"No! Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try." —Yoda

Years ago, I thought this was yet another example of Deep Wisdom that is actually quite stupid. SUCCEED is not a primitive action. You can't just decide to win by choosing hard enough. There is never a plan that works with probability 1.

But Yoda was wiser than I first realized.

The first elementary technique of epistemology—it's not deep, but it's cheap—is to distinguish the quotation from the referent. Talking about snow is not the same as talking about "snow". When I use the word "snow", without quotes, I mean to talk about snow; and when I use the word ""snow"", with quotes, I mean to talk about the word "snow". You have to enter a special mode, the quotation mode, to talk about your beliefs. By default, we just talk about reality.

If someone says, "I'm going to flip that switch", then by default, they mean they're going to try to flip the switch. They're going to build a plan that promises to lead, by the consequences of its actions, to the goal-state of a flipped switch; and then execute that plan.

No plan succeeds with infinite certainty. So by default, when you talk about setting out to achieve a goal, you do not imply that your plan exactly and perfectly leads to only that possibility. But when you say, "I'm going to flip that switch", you are trying only to flip the switch—not trying to achieve a 97.2% probability of flipping the switch.

So what does it mean when someone says, "I'm going to try to flip that switch?"

Well, colloquially, "I'm going to flip the switch" and "I'm going to try to flip the switch" mean more or less the same thing, except that the latter expresses the possibility of failure. This is why I originally took offense at Yoda for seeming to deny the possibility. But bear with me here.

Much of life's challenge consists of holding ourselves to a high enough standard. I may speak more on this principle later, because it's a lens through which you can view many-but-not-all personal dilemmas—"What standard am I holding myself to? Is it high enough?"

So if much of life's failure consists in holding yourself to too low a standard, you should be wary of demanding too little from yourself—setting goals that are too easy to fulfill.

Often where succeeding to do a thing, is very hard, trying to do it is much easier.

Which is easier—to build a successful startup, or to try to build a successful startup? To make a million dollars, or to try to make a million dollars?

So if "I'm going to flip the switch" means by default that you're going to try to flip the switch—that is, you're going to set up a plan that promises to lead to switch-flipped state, maybe not with probability 1, but with the highest probability you can manage—

—then "I'm going to 'try to flip' the switch" means that you're going to try to "try to flip the switch", that is, you're going to try to achieve the goal-state of "having a plan that might flip the switch".

Now, if this were a self-modifying AI we were talking about, the transformation we just performed ought to end up at a reflective equilibrium—the AI planning its planning operations.

But when we deal with humans, being satisfied with having a plan is not at all like being satisfied with success. The part where the plan has to maximize your probability of succeeding, gets lost along the way. It's far easier to convince ourselves that we are "maximizing our probability of succeeding", than it is to convince ourselves that we will succeed.

Almost any effort will serve to convince us that we have "tried our hardest", if trying our hardest is all we are trying to do.