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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on The Wrongness Iceberg - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: alfredmacdonald 04 February 2013 09:02AM

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Tags: mental models map and territory

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 February 2013 04:53:44PM *  7 points [-]

When I've been in situations like this in the past I've been way, way too hesitant to ask for help and advice. The proactive thing to do is to ask for help and advice (especially in situations you expect many people to have been in; this becomes less useful the more unique your situation is). This doesn't just mean asking your boss for help and advice as buybuydandavis suggests (although this is a good idea if your boss is willing to help and advise): it means asking

  • your friends who have had similar jobs
  • your mom if she has some insight into what the owners will and won't care about
  • the internet

It took me way too long to realize that the heuristic "consult domain experts if I am not a domain expert" is a great heuristic. One reason is probably that asking for help and advice felt like admitting incompetence, which was an uncomfortable feeling for me. I am in the process of jettisoning this emotional response from my brain and replacing it with a recontextualization of asking for help and advice as doing research, but by querying people's brains instead of Wikipedia.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 February 2013 05:07:59PM 3 points [-]

One reason is probably that asking for help and advice felt like admitting incompetence, which was an uncomfortable feeling for me.

I have this problem. Any advice on how to ask for advice?

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 February 2013 05:36:46PM *  4 points [-]

Several ideas and techniques from the CFAR workshop are relevant:

  • Value of information: how much better can I make decisions after getting this advice?
  • Cultivating curiosity: gee, I wonder what advice I'll get?
  • Overcoming aversions / comfort zone expansion: what motives do I have for avoiding asking for advice? Does thinking about asking for advice make me feel bad? Do I view myself as someone who doesn't ask for advice? What do I expect will happen if I ask for advice and, taking the outside view, how realistic are those expectations?
  • Evaluating advice: now that I've gotten some advice, how much should I trust it (taking the outside view again)? Is the sample I've chosen to ask for advice from biased? How independent is the advice that I get from multiple people? When I asked for advice, did I accidentally prime the person I was asking in a particular direction?

The workshop included a practical session on comfort zone expansion (we went to a mall and did mildly uncomfortable things involving strangers) which I found helpful, mostly because it helped me internalize social pressure in the direction of comfort zone expansion. At the workshop this was abbreviated as CoZE and there was a half-serious idea floating around of awarding "CoZE points" to people whenever they expanded their comfort zones, which is the main technique I used the last time I tried asking for advice. (The other technique I used was a social commitment mechanism, but explaining how that fit in would make the story too long.)

Comment author: Vaniver 04 February 2013 07:01:53PM 2 points [-]

Any advice on how to ask for advice?

Try explicitly admitting to them that you care more about getting the job done correctly than appearing to be competent while doing the job.

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