Episode Details

People often make arguments against “trying hard” (working very hard, pushing yourself to the brink, being intensely goal-directed, and so on) by pointing to the risks of burnout or of losing some kind of wholesomeness[1].

But there's another, very simple argument against it that I have not seen anyone fully make explicit[2], even though I think it's very important. It goes like this:

We face a lot of uncertainty about the sign of our impact.

Therefore, we should be very vigilant about our epistemics to make sure that we are not having a negative impact in expectation.

But trying hard deeply distorts our epistemics - it makes us more prone to motivated reasoning about what we’re doing, and leaves us with less slack to reflect on it.

Therefore, all else being equal, we should try less hard.

Crucially, this argument applies much more strongly to people working in “longtermist areas” - which other critiques of trying hard generally don’t do. For example, global health EAs whose terminal value is short-term welfare also face uncertainty about the impact of their actions - but much less (especially about the sign) than people trying to improve the long-term future. So [...]

---

Outline:

(01:28) Uncertainty

(03:47) Epistemic distortion

(05:24) Conclusion

---

First published:
June 13th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrJmpReG7uptfazpX/a-simple-argument-for-trying-less-hard

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.