You're allowed to be inconsistent

I often see friends run into a failure mode I call "false consistency," especially in the Effective Altruism and Rationality circles, where consistency is an important virtue. The False Consistency error is committed when someone has conflicting desires, thoughts, or beliefs, and bludgeons all but one of them

I often see friends run into a failure mode I call "false consistency," especially in the Effective Altruism and Rationality circles, where consistency is an important virtue. The False Consistency error is committed when someone has conflicting desires, thoughts, or beliefs, and bludgeons all but one of them into silence, in the name of "consistency." This has the effect of robbing that person of the ability to use inarticulable intuition and gut-level analysis, and I suspect that it leads to the accumulation of resentment and frustration. For example, imagine that Alice is pressuring Bob to

saved by

• Klaudia U.
• Elizabeth Qiu
• Cole Killian

related reading

• Dark Arts of Rationality — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Internal Double Crux — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Minding our waymindingourway.com
• Before the game beginssparcjcs.substack.com
• Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them — LessWronglesswrong.com
• On sincerity - Joe Carlsmithjoecarlsmith.com
• Your Strength as a Rationalist — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Aim high, even if you fall shortforum.effectivealtruism.org
• Dark Arts of Rationalitymindingourway.com
• Lonely Dissent — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Here's the exit. — LessWronglesswrong.com
• You don't get to know what you're fighting formindingourway.com