e.g. the whole strategy of "dynamic programming", write a recursive solution, then memoize it, then reduce the amount of memory if you don't use it anymore. This works because you have changed your perspective from what clever thing can I do to how can I solve this with a smaller subproblem.
This also applies to physical actions like walking and opening doors. Most people do these slowly, but since you spend so much time doing them, it is extremely worth it to focus on what you're doing.
disagree with the everything part of optimize everything. instead we need
Consistency check: After coming up with a conclusion, check that it's consistent with other simple facts you know. This lets you catch simple errors very quickly.
Give an example: If you've got an abstract object, think of the simplest possible object which instantiates it, preferably one you've got lots of good intuitions about. This resolves confusion like nothing else I know.
Proving too much: After you've come up with a clever argument, see if it can be used to prove another claim, ideally the opposite claim. It can massively weaken the strength of arguments at little cost.
Prove it another way: Don't leave things at one proof, find another. It shines light on flaws in your understanding, as well as deeper principles.
Are any of these satisfactory?
proving too much comes from Scott Alexander's wonderful blog, slate star codex and i have used it often as a defense to poor generalizations. seconded.
'consistency check' seems like a sanity baseline and completely automatic; its nice to include but not particularly revelatory imo.
'give it an example' also seems pretty automatic.
'Prove it another way' is useful but expensive, so less likely to be used if you're moving fast.
Dimensional analysis is in instance of type signature checking, as fully understood. Unfortunately very few type systems for existing programming languages support the type transformations necessary to implement it directly.
It seems that lesswrong was (before it became mostly AI content) essentially just a massive compilation of such intellectual life hacks. If you filter by the right tags (Rationality?) it should still be usable for this purpose. Have you determined that there is not currently a good centralized table of this kind of content?
The Sequences? Not quite what you're looking for, but that's what I have always thought of as the essentials of LW (before the AI explosion).
Why, the Practical tag (https://www.lesswrong.com/w/practical) has a lot of cool stuff like this.
On a quick search, I couldn't find such a repo. I agree that this is/was the heart of Lesswrong, but what I'm aiming for is more specific than ‘any cool intellectual thing’. A lot of LW's posts are about contrarian viewpoints, or very particular topics. I'm looking for well-known but surprising stuff, to develop common knowledge.
Should feel like: ‘OMG, everyone should know [INSERT YOUR TRICK]’
Thanks to Celarix:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/umzNiYpHLypdcXuEf/useful-concepts-repository
Let's list our ‘intellectual lifehacks’ here, i.e., elements of knowledge that have properties like. :
I don't have a proper definition other than ‘I feel like it’ to the question ‘Does this count as an intellectual lifehack?’, but I'd like to make it clear that I'm setting the bar very high. I hope you'll be able to connect the dots with n=3... Anyway, share and discuss!
Hereby, our intellectual lifehacks repo:
See: How to keep the essence of a theory by looking at the type signature, or to make progress on ontologically unsolved questions
See: How to import such intellectual lifehack in another intellectual field