Alicorn comments on The First Step is to Admit That You Have a Problem - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Alicorn 06 October 2009 08:59PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 06 October 2009 09:46:52PM *  0 points [-]

While I agree with what you have said here, it's not quite what I was getting at. I was trying to introduce some terms and point out difficulties identifying the members of the two sets, not just talk about plans. If I include anything about plans in particular in this sequence, that'll be part 3.

Comment author: CannibalSmith 07 October 2009 08:46:34AM 0 points [-]

that'll be part 3

Why did you serialize the articles?

Comment author: Alicorn 07 October 2009 02:00:14PM 1 point [-]

Because I have multiple clever titles that I want to employ, not just one. Also, one really long article would annoy certain people and take longer to write than two or three brief ones.

Comment author: DanArmak 06 October 2009 10:09:03PM 0 points [-]

Let's add the terms to my summary: we generally start with a problem, something we're not happy about; then we design a plan to solve it; executing the plan is a task.

A plan can only have so much detail. Doing sub-tasks I didn't plan in sufficient detail, or which turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, are the remaining sub-problems. We should seek the best balance between pre-planning and deferring until a problem is encountered, and this is not trivial. Is that what you're talking about?

Otherwise, your list headed The approximate ways in which a "have to" might be a problem can be simply restated as "the cases where there is no obvious plan": when I lack procedural or propositional knowledge, or resources, which (I believe) are necessary to solve the problem. And then I can come up with a plan for when I've acquired them and go solve the sub-problem of getting what I need.

Comment author: jimrandomh 07 October 2009 02:03:15AM *  1 point [-]

As I understood it, the purpose was to sharpen the boundary between what would otherwise be relatively fuzzy concepts, by going through the edge cases systematically. The individual facts given are all obvious, but consolidating them into a single crisp distinction is not so obvious and enables that distinction to be used elsewhere.

Comment author: Alicorn 07 October 2009 02:47:07AM 0 points [-]

Yes, thanks - this is more what I had in mind.

Comment author: Alicorn 06 October 2009 10:15:53PM 0 points [-]

That's definitely closer. I'm now concerned that I haven't made this nearly as clear as I would have liked, though.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 October 2009 11:34:04PM 2 points [-]

Don't question your clarity too much. With so much prior knowledge about decision making schemes it is easy for your readers to match your words to other similar frameworks.