Courage

What People Think It Means

The noble willingness to face fear and act despite danger or discomfort. Courageous people are heroes, cowards are shameful. You either have it in the critical moment or you don't. It's tied to honor, to character, to your worth as a person.

This framing exists because institutions (military, religious, social) need people to take actions against their immediate self-interest. Framing it as moral character makes compliance more likely – nobody wants to be a coward. It also prevents legitimate risk assessment, since expressing fear becomes shameful rather than informational.

What It Actually Is

Courage is what it looks like when your expected value calculation says "benefit > cost" and you have sufficient activation energy to cross the action threshold.

Fear is just a signal from threat-detection systems. It's not wrong to have fear responses – that's your amygdala doing its job.

The Difference Between "Courageous" and "Cowardly" Behavior

  1. More accurate probability estimation – The feared outcome is much less likely than it feels
  2. Higher valuation of potential reward – The upside is worth the risk
  3. Better emotional regulation – Continuing to function despite autonomic arousal
  4. Pattern recognition from experience – Reclassifying the stimulus as non-threatening
  5. Social/identity factors – Not doing it feels worse than doing it

Courage isn't absence of fear. It's executing despite the fear signal when the math checks out.

Example: Starting Idyllic

Here's what actually happened with my "courage" to start idyllic:

I wasn't heroically brave. I computed that:

  • Staying in crypto after Terra collapsed had negative expected value
  • I had pattern recognition from previous pivots that starting new things is survivable
  • I had 2 years of sobriety giving me confidence in my execution capacity
  • I had social commitment (told people I was doing it) that made backing out costly

The fear was there but the expected value clearly favored action.

How to Build It

Decompose the Feared Action

Break into specific threat components. For each one, gather data to update your probability estimates.

Feared outcomes are almost always less likely than they feel – your amygdala doesn't do statistics.

Run Exposure Therapy Protocols

Approach gradually, building tolerance to the fear response.

Each successful exposure updates your pattern recognition system. After doing the thing 5 times without catastrophe, your brain reclassifies it as less threatening.

Explicitly Calculate Expected Value

Include cost of inaction:

  • What's the regret cost?
  • What's the opportunity cost?

Sometimes inaction is more expensive than action but we don't compute it because it's less salient.

Use Social Commitment Devices

Tell people you're doing the thing.

Now not doing it has social cost, which changes the incentive structure.

Implement Rapid Execution Protocols

Decide → commit → execute within 10 seconds, before rumination spirals kick in.

Fear grows exponentially with deliberation time. Breach fast.

For Recurring Fear Patterns: Build Graduated Exposure Ladders

Start with low-stakes versions, work up to high-stakes.

Each step proves the feared outcome doesn't materialize, which updates your probability models.

Accept That Fear Is Informational But Not Determinative

It's one input into your decision algorithm, not a veto.

Compute the expected value, and if it's positive, execute regardless of the fear signal.

Key Principle

Calculate, then execute – Update probability estimates, compute expected value including inaction costs, then act when math favors it regardless of fear signal.