It’d be easier if “people’s ability to solve Thinking Physics problems” was better studied, and it was, say, known that some given exercises generally take an average undergrad 2 hours to deconfuse themselves on. (Then, you set yourself a 2 hour timer and submit your best answer when you’re done, rather than potentially spending days on it doublechecking yourself).
I think, for the immediate future, “take as long as you want to thoroughly understand the scenario” is a better test of thinking-skill for people doing openended research, and the fact it is it mostly makes sense to do this if you’re actually already planning to invest years in openended research with poor feedback loops.
Is part of your hesitance that your “dataset” of thinking physics type of questions is not super large? I’d expect just doing 5 of the exercises in 50 minutes every day as a “test set” is going to get you more reliable feedback whether your daily training regime is working, but then you need to find new exercises once you run out of thinking physics questions.
Is part of your hesitance that your “dataset” of thinking physics type of questions is not super large? I’d expect just doing 5 of the exercises in 50 minutes every day as a “test set” is going to get you more reliable feedback whether your daily training regime is working, but then you need to find new exercises once you run out of thinking physics questions.