Probably getting back to organizing my journals and sketchbooks attempting to reintegrate some of the better ideas into workable projects. I was originally attempting to either get my student debt under control to enable me to go to grad school, or write a grant to create a non-profit that would allow me to tackle some specific problems by getting funding to hire people who could do the technical work instead of having to learn to do it myself.
Unfortunately I split with my ex and had no where else to go except into the homeless shelter system, where I’ve been for the last 4 years. Finally have my own place in a building with dozens of other formerly homeless people, but the drugs and violence in the neighborhood are a distraction and a drain. My goals in very general terms at this point are three-fold:
1) synthesize usable ideas from what I’ve already done (have some but I’m still not clear on what I have, as I made some forays into mathematics in an ‘artistic way’, and want to know what I can make of what I discovered);
2) make some connections with people who can help me sort through the actual work I’ve done and see if I can use what I’ve created to explore the questions I have which motivated me to come up with the work in the first place;
3) then build on the work by conducting more focused research and data analysis and producing some form of physical object, like drawings or presentations or potentially learning some programming to begin trying to prototype somethings myself. I had been doing some work with 3d modeling as well.
Thing is, this is a terrible environment to study in and to try to do online learning of some sort, but I have time on my hands I don’t want it to go to waste.
So is your personal Hamming problem getting into a better environment for study? If so, what would be your first step? Are you working on it? And if not, why not?
You’re clearly in a difficult situation, so know that the reason I ask those questions is because that’s the theme of this discussion. There is no implicit criticism here. This is just a space to explore these questions, whatever the problems each individual person is facing.
Maybe it would help if I understood a little better what a ‘Hamming Problem’ was. It looks a bit to me like it has to do with issues of Communication Complexity (the Gap-Hamming Problem?), so I’m assuming in the context of this post a Hamming Problem is one concerning inadequate understanding of (and so inadequate problem solving approaches to) a personal issue due to issues of complexity that can potentially be overcome by breaking the more complicated problem down into smaller, easier to tackle tasks? Although from the other posts there seems to be some consideration of adjacent or tertiary problems in relation to a Hamming Problem too.
Overall, my life goal currently is to find some happiness and some long term financial and social stability. How that comes about is up in the air, but what I’ve been attempting to do is to take my experience and use it in conjunction with UX research/design skills to find some solutions to my problems. I was hoping to apply that work towards other issues besides personal ones, but circumstances caused me to start having to analyze the Public Health/Assistance system in the US from a client perspective.
As a result, I started to develop a catalog of concerning issues—and began trying to design some countering solutions—with the Public System and how it interfaces with the Private System in order to create some sort of a social safety net. Turns out, at a certain point, the support these systems offer change dramatically, and the fall into homelessness is pretty quick, pretty complete, and pretty devastating, depending on where you started in life.
So while trying to solve my own issues, I ended up attempting to understand the entire system, and some of the Systemic Biases and resulting problems. I would dearly love to separate out my issues from those of the ‘system’ so that I could work only on my personal problems to a satisfactory resolution, but because of the systemic biases in the system I believe I’ve discovered, my personal issues may be inseparable from the ‘systems’ problems.
Getting into a better environment given my circumstances is optimistically, a year to 2 year long process at this point, probably longer given the complications of the continued traumatization of being in this system for so long. Getting into a better environment more than likely means getting steady, gainful employment, which has been an issue ever since I graduated from College in 2007, and into a severely depressed economy.
Adding PTSD into the equation, which has been worsened because of the extended existence in the shelter system, makes getting gainful work even more difficult, and because the Public System deals so badly with PTSD, the progress I make on this front is limited. It was rough enough living here trying to complete a 15 week IT training class when I first moved in, but I earned my A+ and Network+ certificates despite constantly being woken in the middle of the night by screaming and pounding on the walls.
But right as I was interviewing with about 6 or 7 different recruiting firms, the Pandemic hit and all my job leads dried up. The last year has seen my IT skills diminished from lack of use.
So I’m looking at a large amount of downtime, with little to do, and a catalog of potential solutions to a number of systemic issues, but as I’m writing this, I’m having to listen to an argument right outside my window between a guy threatening another guy over 2 dollars, a woman yelling at someone about some boxes, and a guy with his stereo turned up to 10 so that the entire building can hear his music.
So, in short, Yes, getting into a better environment is a somewhat long term goal, but being able to put the next year to 2 years to good purpose while I’m still living where I’m at is a more realistic goal. Finances are non-existent, so even escaping for a bit to the library isn’t possible right now as I don’t have a bus pass, and while I’d love to be illustrating and diagramming some of my ideas, my mouse recently died and I’m working with Libre Office instead of the Adobe Suite or even Power Point or the Mac equivalents. Illustrating with a track pad is way too difficult, and while I am a skilled draughtsman, the camera on my $100 phone makes it difficult to get good quality images of my drawings so I can post them.
If there is one place that could seriously use some rational thinking and approaches to problem solving, where I’m at is it. So considering the above, would finding a better living environment be considered my Hamming Problem?
Mathematician Richard Hamming used to ask scientists in other fields “What are the most important problems in your field?” partly so he could troll them by asking “Why aren’t you working on them?” and partly because getting asked this question is really useful for focusing people’s attention on what matters.
I’m not trying to troll anybody. The three questions at the top of the OP are what you’d answer to articulate your Hamming problem, as you’ve done here. What is the most important problem you face in your life (whether practical, intellectual, or social), and why aren’t you working on it? Your HP might be finding a better living environment, or exploring your ideas, but either way, what stands in your way of working on them (more than you already are)?
As a note, the issues you’re having sound like they are probably best addressed with some combination of a social worker, counselor, and doctor. I don’t have any advice to give you on finding solutions. However, if you have not make a serious effort to connect with such people, stay connected, and change up who you work with until you find a good fit, that seems like a good place to start.
One of the issues the LW community has faced is how to field people who are experiencing profound struggles in their personal lives. As you know, those problems can be extremely severe, deep, and persistent, while strangers on the internet have zero ability to help in any deep way. So unfortunately, you are likely to find that LW is not a resource for the personal problems you face. However, we all hope that building our skills in rationality can help us overcome the thorny problems we individually face. I don’t know if that is true for sure. But I spend a lot of time at it. I hope you are able to use some of the ideas here to leverage what resources are on offer from the professional providers in your area to make some progress!
I grew up in poverty, so I’ve been a client of the Public System from birth. What this means is that I’ve been coordinating with all kinds of professionals to attempt to meet my needs for a long time. Like most domains/games/systems, the longer you are involved in/with them, the more you understand the limitations and problems of them. This is the case for me in trying to get out of poverty and homelessness.
So while I can appreciate the concern for my safety, I can assure you I’ve been connecting with health professionals and their support systems for decades.
This is also one of the main reasons why for the past 7 years I’ve been attempting to create and study a conceptual model of what I call “Cultural Lag” in a sort of “Social Physics” system, in order to better help myself help the people trying to help me. For example, the amount and variety of technical and scientific knowledge generated by academia and the like is amazing, and the amounts, varieties and quality of the knowledge is only increasing as time goes by.
But why it is that it takes so long for those cutting edge insights to make their way downstream into places like the Social Sciences and Social Services? What is it that is causing this lag in the dissemination and integration of the worlds best science (or money, or dispelling of myths and stereotypes, etc. etc.) into certain parts of society? I’m not satisfied anymore with the answer I keep getting from the people who are supposed to be helping me, namely that “The system is broken.”
This is the crux of my concern personally, socially and intellectually at this point. I seem to be in a position such that in order for me to make progress in those areas, I have to fix the parts of the system I’m ‘connecting’ with. I spend way too much time explaining to the people who are supposed to be helping me, why what they are doing hasn’t worked in the past, isn’t working now, and trying to suggest avenues for them to take.
It’s usually a year to two later that they start to actually take my suggestions, at which point I’ve wasted a couple years trying to work with someone who wasn’t equipped to help me in the first place, and in the meantime I’ve already moved onto to trying to understand my issues myself in a way which means I’m still not getting much ‘help’ from the professionals I work with. I often think I should be getting paid to teach these people an hour at a time, instead of paying them by the hour to ‘try’ to help me using outdated information.
So I understand the concept of a Hamming Question better, but I think where I’m having issues in general, is trying to understand my work (what I do—ALOT of—even though I don’t get paid to do it) and how better to define it so I can adjust my approach to doing it, and can speak more authoritatively about it.
From an Epistemic Statement perspective, I would consider myself an Independent Researcher of sorts, as I research, diagram, write and think about issues I find resonate with me. But I’m not allied with an institute of learning or research, so a lot of the resources which would be helpful aren’t available to me. Going back to school isn’t an option, and I can read all the books in the world, but it’s not my lack of curiousity or lack of motivation keeping me from being more successful. What I think I need is to be able to find some people who might be able to give me some insight into how my work can be leveraged to become something I can do to make a living.
This is why I originally came to LW after doing some research after reading an article in the New York Mag about Julia Galef and her new book. Somehow I was unable to connect with a community like LessWrong until recently despite having many of the same ideas and interests the LW community posts about. So I was heartened to find such a thriving community I somehow missed out on.
So with the aim of trying to take part in the community here online, and hopefully, maybe make some connections in the real world, I’m taking the site and people on it seriously in the belief that working for rational solutions to issues is better than the alternative.
I hope you are able to use some of the ideas here to leverage what resources are on offer from the professional providers in your area to make some progress!
Thanks. Unfortunately I am coming to LW trying to figure out how I can leverage the resources here to help the professional providers in my area. This is the paradox of my situation. There is a cultural myth that states that when most people fall into homelessness, there is some sort of a moral reason for it—they did something ‘wrong’ to cause their ostracization from society. This is a prevalent bias (in my opinion) of most providers in my area, if not everywhere.
It usually takes me about a year to two years to sufficiently explain to the professionals I work with that it’s not me that is the problem, that it is in fact a systemic problem. At which point I hear “The system is broken, there’s nothing I can do.” This is not the answer anyone wants to hear, but I have heard it enough to know that it’s an unacceptable answer for me. Which is why I try to study why the system is broken.
Professionals tend to only want to work with other ‘professionals’, and don’t like the idea that maybe it is them that is part of the problem. So that not having another piece of paper on my wall is both keeping me from being taken seriously by them, but in some ways is the only thing that keeps me from falling into the same irrational logic loops they’ve been educated and trained to inhabit professionally.
Which is why I came here, hoping to find some people who might take my crazy ideas seriously enough to help me prove them. I understand into everyone’s life a little shade must fall, but in my situation, considering how long I’ve been trying to solve the same problems over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion the problem isn’t me.
So I suppose my Hamming Question is “How do I get people in positions to be helpful to take me seriously enough to help?”
Probably getting back to organizing my journals and sketchbooks attempting to reintegrate some of the better ideas into workable projects. I was originally attempting to either get my student debt under control to enable me to go to grad school, or write a grant to create a non-profit that would allow me to tackle some specific problems by getting funding to hire people who could do the technical work instead of having to learn to do it myself.
Unfortunately I split with my ex and had no where else to go except into the homeless shelter system, where I’ve been for the last 4 years. Finally have my own place in a building with dozens of other formerly homeless people, but the drugs and violence in the neighborhood are a distraction and a drain. My goals in very general terms at this point are three-fold:
1) synthesize usable ideas from what I’ve already done (have some but I’m still not clear on what I have, as I made some forays into mathematics in an ‘artistic way’, and want to know what I can make of what I discovered);
2) make some connections with people who can help me sort through the actual work I’ve done and see if I can use what I’ve created to explore the questions I have which motivated me to come up with the work in the first place;
3) then build on the work by conducting more focused research and data analysis and producing some form of physical object, like drawings or presentations or potentially learning some programming to begin trying to prototype somethings myself. I had been doing some work with 3d modeling as well.
Thing is, this is a terrible environment to study in and to try to do online learning of some sort, but I have time on my hands I don’t want it to go to waste.
So is your personal Hamming problem getting into a better environment for study? If so, what would be your first step? Are you working on it? And if not, why not?
You’re clearly in a difficult situation, so know that the reason I ask those questions is because that’s the theme of this discussion. There is no implicit criticism here. This is just a space to explore these questions, whatever the problems each individual person is facing.
Maybe it would help if I understood a little better what a ‘Hamming Problem’ was. It looks a bit to me like it has to do with issues of Communication Complexity (the Gap-Hamming Problem?), so I’m assuming in the context of this post a Hamming Problem is one concerning inadequate understanding of (and so inadequate problem solving approaches to) a personal issue due to issues of complexity that can potentially be overcome by breaking the more complicated problem down into smaller, easier to tackle tasks? Although from the other posts there seems to be some consideration of adjacent or tertiary problems in relation to a Hamming Problem too.
Overall, my life goal currently is to find some happiness and some long term financial and social stability. How that comes about is up in the air, but what I’ve been attempting to do is to take my experience and use it in conjunction with UX research/design skills to find some solutions to my problems. I was hoping to apply that work towards other issues besides personal ones, but circumstances caused me to start having to analyze the Public Health/Assistance system in the US from a client perspective.
As a result, I started to develop a catalog of concerning issues—and began trying to design some countering solutions—with the Public System and how it interfaces with the Private System in order to create some sort of a social safety net. Turns out, at a certain point, the support these systems offer change dramatically, and the fall into homelessness is pretty quick, pretty complete, and pretty devastating, depending on where you started in life.
So while trying to solve my own issues, I ended up attempting to understand the entire system, and some of the Systemic Biases and resulting problems. I would dearly love to separate out my issues from those of the ‘system’ so that I could work only on my personal problems to a satisfactory resolution, but because of the systemic biases in the system I believe I’ve discovered, my personal issues may be inseparable from the ‘systems’ problems.
Getting into a better environment given my circumstances is optimistically, a year to 2 year long process at this point, probably longer given the complications of the continued traumatization of being in this system for so long. Getting into a better environment more than likely means getting steady, gainful employment, which has been an issue ever since I graduated from College in 2007, and into a severely depressed economy.
Adding PTSD into the equation, which has been worsened because of the extended existence in the shelter system, makes getting gainful work even more difficult, and because the Public System deals so badly with PTSD, the progress I make on this front is limited. It was rough enough living here trying to complete a 15 week IT training class when I first moved in, but I earned my A+ and Network+ certificates despite constantly being woken in the middle of the night by screaming and pounding on the walls.
But right as I was interviewing with about 6 or 7 different recruiting firms, the Pandemic hit and all my job leads dried up. The last year has seen my IT skills diminished from lack of use.
So I’m looking at a large amount of downtime, with little to do, and a catalog of potential solutions to a number of systemic issues, but as I’m writing this, I’m having to listen to an argument right outside my window between a guy threatening another guy over 2 dollars, a woman yelling at someone about some boxes, and a guy with his stereo turned up to 10 so that the entire building can hear his music.
So, in short, Yes, getting into a better environment is a somewhat long term goal, but being able to put the next year to 2 years to good purpose while I’m still living where I’m at is a more realistic goal. Finances are non-existent, so even escaping for a bit to the library isn’t possible right now as I don’t have a bus pass, and while I’d love to be illustrating and diagramming some of my ideas, my mouse recently died and I’m working with Libre Office instead of the Adobe Suite or even Power Point or the Mac equivalents. Illustrating with a track pad is way too difficult, and while I am a skilled draughtsman, the camera on my $100 phone makes it difficult to get good quality images of my drawings so I can post them.
If there is one place that could seriously use some rational thinking and approaches to problem solving, where I’m at is it. So considering the above, would finding a better living environment be considered my Hamming Problem?
Here’s a description of the Hamming question.
I’m not trying to troll anybody. The three questions at the top of the OP are what you’d answer to articulate your Hamming problem, as you’ve done here. What is the most important problem you face in your life (whether practical, intellectual, or social), and why aren’t you working on it? Your HP might be finding a better living environment, or exploring your ideas, but either way, what stands in your way of working on them (more than you already are)?
As a note, the issues you’re having sound like they are probably best addressed with some combination of a social worker, counselor, and doctor. I don’t have any advice to give you on finding solutions. However, if you have not make a serious effort to connect with such people, stay connected, and change up who you work with until you find a good fit, that seems like a good place to start.
One of the issues the LW community has faced is how to field people who are experiencing profound struggles in their personal lives. As you know, those problems can be extremely severe, deep, and persistent, while strangers on the internet have zero ability to help in any deep way. So unfortunately, you are likely to find that LW is not a resource for the personal problems you face. However, we all hope that building our skills in rationality can help us overcome the thorny problems we individually face. I don’t know if that is true for sure. But I spend a lot of time at it. I hope you are able to use some of the ideas here to leverage what resources are on offer from the professional providers in your area to make some progress!
I grew up in poverty, so I’ve been a client of the Public System from birth. What this means is that I’ve been coordinating with all kinds of professionals to attempt to meet my needs for a long time. Like most domains/games/systems, the longer you are involved in/with them, the more you understand the limitations and problems of them. This is the case for me in trying to get out of poverty and homelessness.
So while I can appreciate the concern for my safety, I can assure you I’ve been connecting with health professionals and their support systems for decades.
This is also one of the main reasons why for the past 7 years I’ve been attempting to create and study a conceptual model of what I call “Cultural Lag” in a sort of “Social Physics” system, in order to better help myself help the people trying to help me. For example, the amount and variety of technical and scientific knowledge generated by academia and the like is amazing, and the amounts, varieties and quality of the knowledge is only increasing as time goes by.
But why it is that it takes so long for those cutting edge insights to make their way downstream into places like the Social Sciences and Social Services? What is it that is causing this lag in the dissemination and integration of the worlds best science (or money, or dispelling of myths and stereotypes, etc. etc.) into certain parts of society? I’m not satisfied anymore with the answer I keep getting from the people who are supposed to be helping me, namely that “The system is broken.”
This is the crux of my concern personally, socially and intellectually at this point. I seem to be in a position such that in order for me to make progress in those areas, I have to fix the parts of the system I’m ‘connecting’ with. I spend way too much time explaining to the people who are supposed to be helping me, why what they are doing hasn’t worked in the past, isn’t working now, and trying to suggest avenues for them to take.
It’s usually a year to two later that they start to actually take my suggestions, at which point I’ve wasted a couple years trying to work with someone who wasn’t equipped to help me in the first place, and in the meantime I’ve already moved onto to trying to understand my issues myself in a way which means I’m still not getting much ‘help’ from the professionals I work with. I often think I should be getting paid to teach these people an hour at a time, instead of paying them by the hour to ‘try’ to help me using outdated information.
So I understand the concept of a Hamming Question better, but I think where I’m having issues in general, is trying to understand my work (what I do—ALOT of—even though I don’t get paid to do it) and how better to define it so I can adjust my approach to doing it, and can speak more authoritatively about it.
From an Epistemic Statement perspective, I would consider myself an Independent Researcher of sorts, as I research, diagram, write and think about issues I find resonate with me. But I’m not allied with an institute of learning or research, so a lot of the resources which would be helpful aren’t available to me. Going back to school isn’t an option, and I can read all the books in the world, but it’s not my lack of curiousity or lack of motivation keeping me from being more successful. What I think I need is to be able to find some people who might be able to give me some insight into how my work can be leveraged to become something I can do to make a living.
This is why I originally came to LW after doing some research after reading an article in the New York Mag about Julia Galef and her new book. Somehow I was unable to connect with a community like LessWrong until recently despite having many of the same ideas and interests the LW community posts about. So I was heartened to find such a thriving community I somehow missed out on.
So with the aim of trying to take part in the community here online, and hopefully, maybe make some connections in the real world, I’m taking the site and people on it seriously in the belief that working for rational solutions to issues is better than the alternative.
Thanks. Unfortunately I am coming to LW trying to figure out how I can leverage the resources here to help the professional providers in my area. This is the paradox of my situation. There is a cultural myth that states that when most people fall into homelessness, there is some sort of a moral reason for it—they did something ‘wrong’ to cause their ostracization from society. This is a prevalent bias (in my opinion) of most providers in my area, if not everywhere.
It usually takes me about a year to two years to sufficiently explain to the professionals I work with that it’s not me that is the problem, that it is in fact a systemic problem. At which point I hear “The system is broken, there’s nothing I can do.” This is not the answer anyone wants to hear, but I have heard it enough to know that it’s an unacceptable answer for me. Which is why I try to study why the system is broken.
Professionals tend to only want to work with other ‘professionals’, and don’t like the idea that maybe it is them that is part of the problem. So that not having another piece of paper on my wall is both keeping me from being taken seriously by them, but in some ways is the only thing that keeps me from falling into the same irrational logic loops they’ve been educated and trained to inhabit professionally.
Which is why I came here, hoping to find some people who might take my crazy ideas seriously enough to help me prove them. I understand into everyone’s life a little shade must fall, but in my situation, considering how long I’ve been trying to solve the same problems over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion the problem isn’t me.
So I suppose my Hamming Question is “How do I get people in positions to be helpful to take me seriously enough to help?”