= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RichardKennaway comments on Good Quality Heuristics - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (112)
Never decide what to do until you've thought of at least half a dozen alternatives beyond the ones you immediately thought of. [Sometimes the obvious thing is the best, but do it because you actually made that decision.]
Link: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions.
Didn't you just violate that heuristic? Don't you pretty much have to, unless you want to live your live in permanent decision paralysis?
Limit it to large, important decisions and I'd agree.
It's a heuristic. It's up to one's judgement how or whether to apply it in any situation.
Myself, I'd draw the line wider than just large, important decisions.
Yes, it's a heuristic, but that means it needs to be usually correct. Yours is rarely correct. You make numerous decisions throughout the day, such as how to word your comment. Coming up with 6 alternatives to everything would guarantee that you would Lose.
But if you're just going to fall back on "but you apply it with your judgment", then you miss the point of a heuristic, which is to assist with your judgment. Why not have just one universal, all-encompassing heuristic:
"Use judgment."
Ok, this answers my question above.
Perhaps it's useful, when discussing heuristics, to describe the type of problem they are best applied to. The worth of the heuristic doesn't just lie in itself, but also lies in knowing when to apply it.
What types of problems do you expect this heuristic to be successful with? If the problem is something like improvizing jazz, it will fail miserably.
If it's easy to judge that a given heuristic fails for a certain problem, then heuristic is not at fault: it can be easily seen to not apply there, and so won't introduce bias in that situation. The trouble lies where you think the heuristic applies but it doesn't.
Problems that require decisions. I doubt that any of the heuristics mentioned here would have any relevance to jazz improvisation.
More generally, I consider heuristics to be not substitutes for thought, but pointers to get thought moving in the most promising direction first.