”The only way to get a good model of the world inside your head is to bump into the world, to let the light and sound impinge upon your eyes and ears, and let the world carve the details into your world-model. Similarly, the only method I know of for finding actual good plans is to take a bad plan and slam it into the world, to let evidence and the feedback impinge upon your strategy, and let the world tell you where the better ideas are.”—Nate Soares, https://mindingourway.com/dive-in-2/
Then I thought something like this...
What about 1,000-day problems that require you to go out and bump up against reality? Problems that require a tight feedback loop?
A 1,000-day monk working on fixing government AI policy probably needs to go for lunch with 100s of politicians, lobbyists and political donors to develop intuitions and practical models about what’s really going on in politics.
A 1,000-day monk working on an intelligence boosting neurofeedback device needs to do 100s of user interviews to understand the complex ways in which the latest version of the device effects it’s wearers’ thought patterns.
And you might answer: 1-day monks do that work and report their findings to the 1,000 day monk. But there’s an important way in which being there, having the conversation yourself, taking in all the subtle cues and body language and being able to ask clarifying questions develops intuitions that you won’t get from reading summaries of conversations.
Maybe on your island the politicians, lobbyists and political donors are brought to the 1,000-day monk’s quarters? But then ‘monk’ doesn’t feel like the right word because they’re not intentionally isolating themselves from the outside world at all. In fact, quite the opposite – they’re being delivered concentrated outside-world straight to their door everyday.
If the 1,000 day problem is maths-based you can bring all the relevant data and apparatus into your cave with you – a whiteboard with numbers on it. But for many difficult problems the apparatus is the outside world.
I think the nth order monks idea still works but you can’t specify that the monks isolate themselves or else they would be terrible at solving a certain class of problem – having deep thoughts which are powered by intuitions developed through bumping into reality over and over again or that require data which you can only pick out if you’ve been working on the problem for years.
Perhaps we should change “come out” to “must report in,” at least for some subset of 1,000-day monks who do indeed need to continually bump into the territory.
EDIT: this led to an edit in response! Double thank-you.
I have a sense of niggling confusion.
This immediately came to mind...
”The only way to get a good model of the world inside your head is to bump into the world, to let the light and sound impinge upon your eyes and ears, and let the world carve the details into your world-model. Similarly, the only method I know of for finding actual good plans is to take a bad plan and slam it into the world, to let evidence and the feedback impinge upon your strategy, and let the world tell you where the better ideas are.”—Nate Soares, https://mindingourway.com/dive-in-2/
Then I thought something like this...
What about 1,000-day problems that require you to go out and bump up against reality? Problems that require a tight feedback loop?
A 1,000-day monk working on fixing government AI policy probably needs to go for lunch with 100s of politicians, lobbyists and political donors to develop intuitions and practical models about what’s really going on in politics.
A 1,000-day monk working on an intelligence boosting neurofeedback device needs to do 100s of user interviews to understand the complex ways in which the latest version of the device effects it’s wearers’ thought patterns.
And you might answer: 1-day monks do that work and report their findings to the 1,000 day monk. But there’s an important way in which being there, having the conversation yourself, taking in all the subtle cues and body language and being able to ask clarifying questions develops intuitions that you won’t get from reading summaries of conversations.
Maybe on your island the politicians, lobbyists and political donors are brought to the 1,000-day monk’s quarters? But then ‘monk’ doesn’t feel like the right word because they’re not intentionally isolating themselves from the outside world at all. In fact, quite the opposite – they’re being delivered concentrated outside-world straight to their door everyday.
If the 1,000 day problem is maths-based you can bring all the relevant data and apparatus into your cave with you – a whiteboard with numbers on it. But for many difficult problems the apparatus is the outside world.
I think the nth order monks idea still works but you can’t specify that the monks isolate themselves or else they would be terrible at solving a certain class of problem – having deep thoughts which are powered by intuitions developed through bumping into reality over and over again or that require data which you can only pick out if you’ve been working on the problem for years.
Yes, good point (and thanks).
Perhaps we should change “come out” to “must report in,” at least for some subset of 1,000-day monks who do indeed need to continually bump into the territory.
EDIT: this led to an edit in response! Double thank-you.
(this is the same question i was trying to ask in another comment but you did it better.)