Rolf_Nelson2 comments on Hold Off On Proposing Solutions - Less Wrong

45 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 October 2007 03:16AM

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Comment author: Rolf_Nelson2 18 October 2007 05:31:08AM 1 point [-]

Constant, regarding "analysis paralysis," keep in mind there are often two separate questions:

1. How much time should I spend thinking about X?

2. Given I'm allocating T time to think about X, how should I divide up T among different thought subtasks?

Analysis Paralysis would generally be a problem with (1).

The current blog post applies more to (2). In the Maier example, the participants presumably know they have a sizable chunk of time blocked out, and the experimental group presumably gets better results not by spending more time overall, but because they reserved a good chunk of T to spend learning the problem, *without* committing right away to a solution.