This is a good illustration of why we shouldn’t always hold off on proposing solutions. Have some Cornflakes and spend your time thinking about something more important.
I think in the abstract form it’s a good question for consideration, in the sense that it gets asked on a daily basis by all of us and the answer is important to our health and productivity. Surely spending some time thinking about it could be helpful.
The fact that frequently something demands an answer now is a good reason to decide a working answer to take action with—but that does not imply that you can’t later revisit it and consider it more abstractly when you do have the time and distance from the pressing situation. Whether your past choice was right or wrong is worth knowing, as well as how to act in the future.
Think of a split-second decision to grab a candy bar versus taking a few minutes to fry up an egg—or even e.g. studying vegan cooking. We can rate these as relatively better or worse later on by various criteria, even if there wasn’t much room for debate on the matter at the time.
This is true. However, since this is a problem which is literally encountered on a daily basis, I think a more general version of it might be important enough to merit the use of this technique. For instance, if the grandparent were reformulated as “please help me come up with an algorithm for what I should eat for breakfast in the future”, then by devising a good one we could ensure that the questioner would no longer need to spend time thinking about his/her breakfast choices for the rest of their life while still being confident that they weren’t suffering undesirable opportunity costs present in the “always eat Cornflakes” strategy.
A good question, as it breaks the rules by blatantly proposing a solution (i.e. eat some cornflakes and quit pondering the question) right after raising a good point (some problems cannot afford to wait very long for solutions).
It only breaks the rules of the game after identifying this problem as one for which holding off on proposing solutions was not a worthwhile endeavor. Plus, the fairly whimsical nature of the solution was probably amusing to some, which may account for some of the upvotes; I know I smiled when I read it.
This is a good illustration of why we shouldn’t always hold off on proposing solutions. Have some Cornflakes and spend your time thinking about something more important.
I think in the abstract form it’s a good question for consideration, in the sense that it gets asked on a daily basis by all of us and the answer is important to our health and productivity. Surely spending some time thinking about it could be helpful.
The fact that frequently something demands an answer now is a good reason to decide a working answer to take action with—but that does not imply that you can’t later revisit it and consider it more abstractly when you do have the time and distance from the pressing situation. Whether your past choice was right or wrong is worth knowing, as well as how to act in the future.
Think of a split-second decision to grab a candy bar versus taking a few minutes to fry up an egg—or even e.g. studying vegan cooking. We can rate these as relatively better or worse later on by various criteria, even if there wasn’t much room for debate on the matter at the time.
This is true. However, since this is a problem which is literally encountered on a daily basis, I think a more general version of it might be important enough to merit the use of this technique. For instance, if the grandparent were reformulated as “please help me come up with an algorithm for what I should eat for breakfast in the future”, then by devising a good one we could ensure that the questioner would no longer need to spend time thinking about his/her breakfast choices for the rest of their life while still being confident that they weren’t suffering undesirable opportunity costs present in the “always eat Cornflakes” strategy.
Why is this at positive karma?
A good question, as it breaks the rules by blatantly proposing a solution (i.e. eat some cornflakes and quit pondering the question) right after raising a good point (some problems cannot afford to wait very long for solutions).
It only breaks the rules of the game after identifying this problem as one for which holding off on proposing solutions was not a worthwhile endeavor. Plus, the fairly whimsical nature of the solution was probably amusing to some, which may account for some of the upvotes; I know I smiled when I read it.