I would be interested in some elaboration on how you feel last week’s responses were unsatisfactory.
I can’t speak for anyone else who answered, but I was treating it as a game in the same way as in previous weeks, and I don’t see any obvious reason why I shouldn’t have. If you want to actually solve a real problem then you don’t just babble, you babble&prune, and the place for that is not for something that advertises itself as a “Babble Challenge”. (And if you want to actually solve a real problem in your own life then you usually do it in private, or with carefully selected friends / advisers / therapists / whatever, not out loud and in public.)
So when you say “It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl.” what I read is “I invited people to do some bicep curls while holding the racket, and they didn’t read my mind and figure out that I was actually hoping they’d play some real tennis shots.”.
Thanks for writing that—I think my post was confusingly written, and your comment helps me clarify!
but I was treating it as a game in the same way as in previous weeks, and I don’t see any obvious reason why I shouldn’t have
The rules I’m upholding seem to me to be very basic ones.
I’m not disqualifying any submissions by “pruning them and not finding them creative enough”, or “claiming that the person is not actually solving their problem”. I think that would be too much prune, just like you mention.
I think both Slider and Elizabeth did a bunch of great babbles in their submissions, and I’m happy they joined.
The particular instances that were disqualifying:
Elizabeth used a combinatorial hack, writing: “Write letter to China, write letter to Russia, write letter to NASA, …”. I explained further why I don’t think that counts here. I think that it would have been better to, for example, include those to “keep the babble going”, but instead go up to 60 or so to compensate for them. This happened before, and I didn’t count those submissions either.
Slider prefaced his challenge with the following:
The intutive way of reading the question as (trying to) solve an actual problem seems very hard for me. (Challenge factor real) (Challenge factor personal). I get to essentially pick what I would try to solve and I feel overwhelmed by that (Challenge factor choice paralysis).
I still feel like sticking to a timelimit is helpful and actually working your brain is helpful. However I am going to massively chicken on this one. I don’t f grow stronger if after putting shoes on and then practising trying shoelaces I am suddenly thrust into a marathon.
Faced with the sandbox of the universe, what one should do? (This problem is still somewhat relevant as depression and meaninglessness are actual rather than hypothetical issues)
Definitely kudos to Slider for at least doing something, and continuing to practice in a way that worked for them. Still, they didn’t complete the challenge as stated, and so I don’t count it towards the scoring.
So when you say “It felt a bit too me like the tennis player [...]
This sentence was entirely directed at myself! It seems it might have been read as a subtweet of other participants, which is definitely not the case.
I personally felt that it didn’t make that much progress on my problem. Compared to, like you mention, sitting down with friends, advisers, therapists, etc. and using a toolbox of techniques where babbling is but one component.
Other people might actually have found it useful. If so, awesome! I’d be interested to hear.
To be clear, I wasn’t commenting at all on the disqualification of Elizabeth’s and Slider’s earlier answers. (Except to whatever extent your regretful comments about last week’s results related to those answers, which it seems clear they can’t have for Elizabeth’s since that was in an earlier week and it never occurred to me they did for Slider’s.)
I hadn’t at all understood that your comment about the tennis player was a reference to your own answer. Rereading what you wrote, it’s hard to see how I could have missed that … aha, it turns out you edited it. (It used to say “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. It felt like it went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” and now it says “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. When I did it, I felt a bit like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. I felt like I went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” (Boldface added in the three places that changed.))
I would suggest not expecting an exercise like this to be practically useful for solving problems. If you’re going to be in a boxing match and you are doing bicep curls to get stronger[1], the fact that the exercise is not knocking anyone out should not factor at all into how you feel about your progress, and trying to tweak the exercise so that it actually knocks people out would probably not be an improvement.
[1] I have no idea whatsoever whether bicep curls would in fact help you get stronger in a way that would be useful in a boxing match.
How did my interpretation fail to answer the challenge? I picked a problem that was an actual problem for me and then proceeded to answer that.
The feeling bad was largely because I wasn’t following the gusto or the spirit of the exercise but it was so techically lax so it is easy to fullfill. Part of the thing is that you don’t automatically assume that your pen is not allowed to go outside of the box. Instead you answer the question actually posed. Instead of doing the thing the most difficult route and shooting for style points if you are unsure whether you can do it at all you instead go where the fence is the lowest.
If the basis was not “not creative enough” or “not actually solving” what was it? It seems it is treated as if it should be self-evident but to me it is not. If I say “here are 25 bullet points” but then actually list 50 I am in the clear and answered the question. If I say “there are a lot of things but they are just essentially the same thing” but instead list 50 genuinely different things I am in the clear.
Part fo the reason to explain what I was doing is to fight fear of rejection, to explain as much as possible to avoid to come off as odd or needlessly complex. When in a “just do it” mindset and specifically looking to overcome mental obstacles an attitude of “I don’t care if you cry while doing it if you do it” is very proper.
I would be interested in some elaboration on how you feel last week’s responses were unsatisfactory.
I can’t speak for anyone else who answered, but I was treating it as a game in the same way as in previous weeks, and I don’t see any obvious reason why I shouldn’t have. If you want to actually solve a real problem then you don’t just babble, you babble&prune, and the place for that is not for something that advertises itself as a “Babble Challenge”. (And if you want to actually solve a real problem in your own life then you usually do it in private, or with carefully selected friends / advisers / therapists / whatever, not out loud and in public.)
So when you say “It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl.” what I read is “I invited people to do some bicep curls while holding the racket, and they didn’t read my mind and figure out that I was actually hoping they’d play some real tennis shots.”.
Thanks for writing that—I think my post was confusingly written, and your comment helps me clarify!
The rules I’m upholding seem to me to be very basic ones.
I’m not disqualifying any submissions by “pruning them and not finding them creative enough”, or “claiming that the person is not actually solving their problem”. I think that would be too much prune, just like you mention.
I think both Slider and Elizabeth did a bunch of great babbles in their submissions, and I’m happy they joined.
The particular instances that were disqualifying:
Elizabeth used a combinatorial hack, writing: “Write letter to China, write letter to Russia, write letter to NASA, …”. I explained further why I don’t think that counts here. I think that it would have been better to, for example, include those to “keep the babble going”, but instead go up to 60 or so to compensate for them. This happened before, and I didn’t count those submissions either.
Slider prefaced his challenge with the following:
Definitely kudos to Slider for at least doing something, and continuing to practice in a way that worked for them. Still, they didn’t complete the challenge as stated, and so I don’t count it towards the scoring.
This sentence was entirely directed at myself! It seems it might have been read as a subtweet of other participants, which is definitely not the case.
I personally felt that it didn’t make that much progress on my problem. Compared to, like you mention, sitting down with friends, advisers, therapists, etc. and using a toolbox of techniques where babbling is but one component.
Other people might actually have found it useful. If so, awesome! I’d be interested to hear.
To be clear, I wasn’t commenting at all on the disqualification of Elizabeth’s and Slider’s earlier answers. (Except to whatever extent your regretful comments about last week’s results related to those answers, which it seems clear they can’t have for Elizabeth’s since that was in an earlier week and it never occurred to me they did for Slider’s.)
I hadn’t at all understood that your comment about the tennis player was a reference to your own answer. Rereading what you wrote, it’s hard to see how I could have missed that … aha, it turns out you edited it. (It used to say “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. It felt like it went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” and now it says “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. When I did it, I felt a bit like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. I felt like I went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” (Boldface added in the three places that changed.))
I would suggest not expecting an exercise like this to be practically useful for solving problems. If you’re going to be in a boxing match and you are doing bicep curls to get stronger[1], the fact that the exercise is not knocking anyone out should not factor at all into how you feel about your progress, and trying to tweak the exercise so that it actually knocks people out would probably not be an improvement.
[1] I have no idea whatsoever whether bicep curls would in fact help you get stronger in a way that would be useful in a boxing match.
(Just noting that I agree and that seems pretty right to me)
How did my interpretation fail to answer the challenge? I picked a problem that was an actual problem for me and then proceeded to answer that.
The feeling bad was largely because I wasn’t following the gusto or the spirit of the exercise but it was so techically lax so it is easy to fullfill. Part of the thing is that you don’t automatically assume that your pen is not allowed to go outside of the box. Instead you answer the question actually posed. Instead of doing the thing the most difficult route and shooting for style points if you are unsure whether you can do it at all you instead go where the fence is the lowest.
If the basis was not “not creative enough” or “not actually solving” what was it? It seems it is treated as if it should be self-evident but to me it is not. If I say “here are 25 bullet points” but then actually list 50 I am in the clear and answered the question. If I say “there are a lot of things but they are just essentially the same thing” but instead list 50 genuinely different things I am in the clear.
Part fo the reason to explain what I was doing is to fight fear of rejection, to explain as much as possible to avoid to come off as odd or needlessly complex. When in a “just do it” mindset and specifically looking to overcome mental obstacles an attitude of “I don’t care if you cry while doing it if you do it” is very proper.
(Before I reply, I want to check whether you’ve read my comment on your post so that we both have full context?)
I followed up on the issue in that comment thread