On: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?

[paulpauper]

how about the iraq war. that was timely and costly wrong decision

[kickout → paulpauper]

That's a bit disingenuous. Individual decisions != policy decisions. No government struggles with 'perfectionism'

[simonw → paulpauper]

"A timely wrong decision is often better than no decision"

Looks like you found the "often".

[undergrowth54 → paulpauper]

Avoiding perfectionism requires accepting flaws and failures. This requires keeping a sense of proportion about the impact of those flaws and the likelihood of those failures. Suppose you notice that your decision-making habits would work well for living a humble good life but would fail you if you were a head of state deciding whether or not to go to war. It is likely worth accepting that flaw because the likelihood of being in that situation without time to philosophically prepare is quite low.

[bogdanoff_2 → paulpauper]

When you say "wrong decision" do you really mean "bad outcome"? Be careful not to confound the two. (See "outcome bias")

[chucksta → paulpauper]

If you are going to poke, does that mean you consider there to be a perfect war?

[exdsq → chucksta]

The Emu War would be pretty high on that list [1]. TLDR; the Australians lost a war to Emus.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

[chucksta → exdsq]

That continent always wins lol;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo_Fence

[edgyquant → exdsq]

In what way is this perfect, other than as a joke?

[exdsq → edgyquant]

It’s mostly a joke but it did result in jobs and money being dispersed among poor farmers in rural Australia with zero casualties (human) and minimal emu casualties.

Plus Emus won so, for the Emus, this is perfect because it means they’ve never lost a war and there hasn’t been another one waged against them since! Plus, as Emus are notable for never once using a gun in war, it’s probably good as a case study for pacifist strategists.

[0x008 → paulpauper]

It doesn’t say “always”.