Having now practiced this for 2 years: “Think It Faster” is most obviously useful when you identify a concrete new habit out of it, and then actually implement that habit. It has combined well with hiring a longterm Thinking Assistant who helps remind me of my habits.
I’ve run this exercise at workshops, where it produces interesting results locally, but, I suspect doesn’t turn out to help as much longterm because people don’t have good habit infrastructure.
Some habits I’ve gotten from this are more general (in particular “notice the blurry feeling of not-quite-knowing-what-to-do” or “notice ‘flailingness’”, followed by “deliberately strategize about figuring out what to do next”).
As I review this now, my biggest realization is: I mention ‘the 5 minute version’ at the end, almost as an afterthought. But the 5 minute version is the version I do ~3x per week, and is most of the source of value. The hour-long version still feels useful to do first, to develop a rich understanding of what is possible. But, it’d be kinda embarrassing if I never tried out a “Think It Faster” lesson plan that just started with a 5 minute version and find out if the 60-minute version is basically unnecessary.
So I’m thinking about that now, and if I run more workshops will try out some variants.
...
The original Think It Faster tweet ends with Eliezer saying:
Every time I complete a chain of thought that took what my intuition says was a lot of time, I look back and review and ask myself “How could I have arrived at the same destination by a shorter route?”
[...] If AI timelines were longer I’d tell somebody, like, try that for 30 years and see what happens.
I’ve now been doing this exercise for a few years. I previously noted in Tuning your Cognitive Strategies that, idk, subjectively it seems to me like I am much more intellectually generative than I was before I started (separate from being better at specific individual skills). I don’t think I have much more evidence about that now than I did then.
Having now practiced this for 2 years: “Think It Faster” is most obviously useful when you identify a concrete new habit out of it, and then actually implement that habit. It has combined well with hiring a longterm Thinking Assistant who helps remind me of my habits.
I’ve run this exercise at workshops, where it produces interesting results locally, but, I suspect doesn’t turn out to help as much longterm because people don’t have good habit infrastructure.
Some habits I’ve gotten from this are more general (in particular “notice the blurry feeling of not-quite-knowing-what-to-do” or “notice ‘flailingness’”, followed by “deliberately strategize about figuring out what to do next”).
A lot are more specific (i.e. most of the concepts and habits in Debugging for Mid Coders).
...
As I review this now, my biggest realization is: I mention ‘the 5 minute version’ at the end, almost as an afterthought. But the 5 minute version is the version I do ~3x per week, and is most of the source of value. The hour-long version still feels useful to do first, to develop a rich understanding of what is possible. But, it’d be kinda embarrassing if I never tried out a “Think It Faster” lesson plan that just started with a 5 minute version and find out if the 60-minute version is basically unnecessary.
So I’m thinking about that now, and if I run more workshops will try out some variants.
...
The original Think It Faster tweet ends with Eliezer saying:
I’ve now been doing this exercise for a few years. I previously noted in Tuning your Cognitive Strategies that, idk, subjectively it seems to me like I am much more intellectually generative than I was before I started (separate from being better at specific individual skills). I don’t think I have much more evidence about that now than I did then.