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Notes on Puzzles

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Re: Notes on Puzzles

#21

Post by blueyes »

yeahwhatever10 wrote: post #5
Thoeu388 wrote: post #3

Interesting observations, I would add my own: - during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs. Deep thinking for several hours, takes huge load on body. All the logic and critical thinking, is not going to save you, if you are not fit, and your brain does not work correctly. - real life is not about solving puzzles. Real life is a rigged game where rules are not en…

I disdain this pessimism that is all over the internet.

The business ecosystem, like biological ecosystems, involves forms of collective life that have learned how to sustain themselves in competitive environments, usually by seeking moats. Those moats "rig the game". The moats tend to fail when the environment changes; e.g. due to technical innovation, social movement, external shocks. It is the central interest of any business to build moats and drawbridges.

Life is turtles all the way down and drawbridges all the way up. Anyone seeking opportunities is looking for the openings between those moats and drawbridges.

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#22

Post by Recursing »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #3

Interesting observations, I would add my own: - during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs. Deep thinking for several hours, takes huge load on body. All the logic and critical thinking, is not going to save you, if you are not fit, and your brain does not work correctly. - real life is not about solving puzzles. Real life is a rigged game where rules are not en…

> during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs.

That is obviously not true https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/s0tqcd/chess_grandma...

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#23

Post by csours »

> "What stops you, I think, is a combination of not really believing you’ll get it and not really caring. Is that too harsh – or is it somewhere close to the truth?"

This reminds me of the curse of working with really good senior engineers. They already know the answers, they've already solved the puzzles. It can be very easy to just defer to them all the time.

If you are a senior engineer who really understands a system, you need to be conscious of this effect if you ever want someone else to start learning your system.

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#24

Post by csours »

anoy8888 wrote: post #4

i am quite confused . It started saying good chess players are more careful and spent more time falsifying ideas but then he later gave startup examples which is the opposite ( not so careful with falsifying. Just jump into the water with conviction and figure things out on the way ) . Startup game is more like poker . It is very different from chess . Somehow the author drew the wrong conclusions. Very confusing

In real life, things are rarely zero-sum or have one correct answer.

Nearly all engineering is balancing different concerns - durability vs price, weight vs features, and so it goes.

Besides engineering, you also have game theory, political science, etc.

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#25

Post by mock-possum »

Thoeu388 wrote: post #3

Interesting observations, I would add my own: - during long game, chess grand masters have physiology comparable to marathon runner, while he runs. Deep thinking for several hours, takes huge load on body. All the logic and critical thinking, is not going to save you, if you are not fit, and your brain does not work correctly. - real life is not about solving puzzles. Real life is a rigged game where rules are not en…

> real life is not about solving puzzles

He says, before laying out the outline of the puzzle and giving suggestions on how to go about solving it

Everything can be about solving puzzles if you let it. Given enough time and patience you can understand anything - the only interesting question is, how to you decide what to focus on?

Navigating life is absolutely an exercise in puzzle solving, at every step you know where you’re at, you know where you want to be, and you know what resources are available to you - given all that, how do you plan your next step? If your first solution doesn’t work, you do a retro, learn your lessons, and move on to your second solution, and your third. It’s all engineering.

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#26

Post by w10-1 »

So: good (chess) players spend more time mentally countering their proposed moves before moving.

For developers or managers on HN, one outcome would be that it's best to start one's career in testing, or to respect the resumes of those who started in QA. If/since there are hundreds of ways things can break, it's a harder problem to show how it will, or prove it won't; and building a mental library of fault models helps in vetting designs and implementations.

Or, we could teach fault models directly, instead of accumulating by experience. See e.g., Robert Binder, "Testing Object-oriented Systems" (and ignore the model-driven-development gloss from later editors).

But the most important note is the aside: the author avoids chess as addictive. Should we ask ourselves: how can this be? Should that change how I think about my own work?

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#27

Post by Strilanc »

Where is the linked post getting the 4:1 vs 1:2 time-spent-on-falsification ratios that it's claiming? It's like the heart of the entire argument, but it's not sourced.

Edit: Ah, okay, it's probably in the book being discussed where he says they recorded thought process while playing ( https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Super-GM-Michael-Adams/dp/... ).

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#28

Post by nqureshi »

Strilanc wrote: post #27

Where is the linked post getting the 4:1 vs 1:2 time-spent-on-falsification ratios that it's claiming? It's like the heart of the entire argument, but it's not sourced. Edit: Ah, okay, it's probably in the book being discussed where he says they recorded thought process while playing ( https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Super-GM-Michael-Adams/dp/... ).

It’s from the book I mention right at the beginning of the essay. https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Super-GM-Michael-Adams/dp/...

Re: Notes on Puzzles

#29

Post by nqureshi »

jvanderbot wrote: post #17

The article is fine, inspirational, interesting, and all that, but one quibble: reporting ratios is potentially misleading. If grandmasters spend 4 minutes falsifying for every minute ideating, and amateurs spend .5 / 1, that's great. But what if amateurs spend 30 minutes coming up with a move vs 1 for masters? Could be the grandmaster is faster at ideation by a larger fraction than he is faster at falsification. Tha…

The primary source is the book mentioned in the post: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Super-GM-Michael-Adams/dp/...

You’re right that GMs are much faster ideating, I point this out later in the essay. But they also spend longer on falsification, even in absolute terms.

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