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evand comments on Enjoy solving "impossible" problems? Group project! - Less Wrong
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There's no reason to interpret that as "Never set out to do the impossible." Eliezer begins with "The virtue of tsuyoku naritai, 'I want to become stronger', is to always keep improving—to do better than your previous failures, not just humbly confess them." It is THAT spirit that I refer to - "I want to become stronger" If you don't relate to the desire for impossible problems because you want to become stronger, then it's simple - this thread is not your cup of tea. I am not going to sit around waiting for an opportunity to become stronger. I'm going to seek them out. If you don't relate to taking initiative when it comes to getting a challenge, then go find some other thread you do relate to.
Thinking about an impossible or merely very difficult problem, because you think that putting forth effort on it will make you stronger, is very different from what Eliezer is talking about.
Ask yourself this: if you spend time working on one of the problems from this thread, and in the process become stronger and learn something, and eventually give up to work on something else, will your reaction be more like "I have failed" or "at least I learned something while failing"? If the latter, Eliezer's post is not relevant to you, and your attempts are not in its spirit.
I rewrote my entire intro because of your post. Thanks for giving me complaints specific enough to go on. Now that I've explained my vision much better, do you feel like I've done a good job of addressing the concerns in your comment?
Yes, this is an improvement. Now I just think that you're going about things in suboptimal fashion, rather than also attempting to justify it with appeals to an article that goes against what you're doing. As I doubt recommending an alternative plan would increase your chance of success, I will simply wish you good luck. It would be awesome to see something good come of this!
(FWIW, I don't think you picked a good example for "even Eliezer can be wrong". It seems too much like you made a very short search for an instance of Eliezer being wrong and stopped at the first plausible option, which wasn't a very good one.)