This is one part shameless self-promotion and one (hopefully larger) part seeking advice and comments. I'm wondering: what do you guys think are the most common and/or important trade-offs that decision makers (animals, humans, theoretical AIs) face across different domains?
Of course you could say "harm of doing something vs benefit of doing it", but that isn't particularly interesting. That's the definition of a trade-off. I'm hoping to carve out a general space below that, but still well above any particular decision.
Here's what I have so far:
1) Efficiency vs Unpredictability
2) Speed vs Accuracy
3) Exploration vs Exploitation
4) Precision vs Simplicity
5) Surely Some vs Maybe More
6) Some Now vs More Later
7) Flexibility vs Commitment
8) Sensitivity vs Specificity
9) Protection vs Freedom
10) Loyalty vs Universality
11) Saving vs Savoring
Am I missing anything? I.e., can you think of any other common, important trade-offs that can't be accounted by the above?
Also, since so many of you guys are computer programmers, a particular question: is there any way that the space vs memory trade-off can be generalized or explained in terms of a non-computer domain?
Relevance to rationality: at least in theory, understanding how decisions based on these trade-offs tend to play out will help you, when faced with a similar decision, to make the kind of decision that helps you to achieve your goals.
Here's an intro to the project, which is cross-posted on my blog:
About five years ago I became obsessed with the idea that nobody had collected an authoritative list of all the trade-offs that cuts across broad domains, encompassing all of the sciences. So, I started to collect such a list, and eventually started blogging about it on my old site, some of which you can find in the archives.
Originally I had 25 trade-offs, then I realized that they could be combined until I had only 20, which were published in the first iteration of the list. As I noted above, at this point I wanted to describe all possible trade-offs, from the space vs memory trade-off in computer science, to the trade-offs underlying the periodic table, to deciding what type of tuna fish you should buy at the grocery store.
Eventually, I decided that this would not only be a) practically impossible for me, unless life extension research becomes way more promising, b) not particularly interesting or useful, because most of the trade-offs that come up over and over again occur because of the context-dependent structure of the world that we live in. In particular, most trade-offs are interesting mostly because of how our current situations have been selected for by evolutionary processes.
Upon deciding this, I trimmed the trade-offs list from 20 down to 11, and that is the number of trade-offs that you can find in the essay today. This new goal of indexing the common trade-offs that decision makers face is, I think, still ambitious, and still almost certainly more than I will be able to accomplish in my lifetime. But this way the interim results, at least, are more likely to be interesting.
Ultimately, I think that using these sort of frameworks can be a helpful way for people to learn from the decisions that others have made when they are making their own decisions. It certainly has been for me. I’m actively seeking feedback, for which you can either email me, leave me anonymous feedback here, or, of course, comment below.