johnlawrenceaspden comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Yvain 13 March 2009 01:41AM

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Comment author: johnlawrenceaspden 06 May 2016 11:33:32AM 2 points [-]

Took me about 30 seconds, but I'm only an ex-mathematician and I'm not as clever as g!

Comment author: CCC 09 May 2016 08:53:35AM 0 points [-]

Noted. Thanks, this tells me that to someone with some knowledge of mathematics it really is as obvious as it looked.

Comment author: gjm 09 May 2016 10:44:34AM -1 points [-]

In my case, at least, essentially all the time taken to solve the problem was "decoding" it -- working out what it was really saying. That is: fnlvat gung jura lbh jevgr n ahzore va onfr o vg raqf va n gjb vf rknpgyl gur fnzr guvat nf fnlvat gung gur ahzore rdhnyf gjb zbqhyb o, naq (vs lbh'er hfrq gb guvf fghss) gb fnl gung vf gb frr gur fbyhgvba.

Comment author: CCC 10 May 2016 12:11:41PM 1 point [-]

Never underestimate the utility of properly describing a problem. I've found that it's really amazing how often, by the time you've figured out what question you really want to ask to solve the problem, you're already most of the way to the answer...

Comment author: CynicalOptimist 10 May 2016 09:14:13PM 0 points [-]

I think this is the basis of good Business Analysis. A field I'm intending to move into.

It's the very essence of "Hold off on proposing solutions".

Comment author: gjm 10 May 2016 12:33:39PM -2 points [-]

Yes, I very much agree.