31–40 of 93 posts
All of the fast work will ideally soon be automated, leaving the fast workers with nothing to do but starve. In a righteous world, the slow workers who can change how the fast work is done will ultimately win.
This reminds of a question I had when I played chess for a couple of years. I was a lot better (as evidenced by my ELO score on chess.com) when playing long games (1 turn per day) than short games (say half an hour total). At the time, I read that everybody is better at "slow" chess. But does that explanation make sense? If everybody is better, shouldn't my ELO score have stayed the same?
For example if I were to give $1 to every person on earth, but $100 million to you, everyone would be richer but you would be a lot richer still.
This reminds of a question I had when I played chess for a couple of years. I was a lot better (as evidenced by my ELO score on chess.com) when playing long games (1 turn per day) than short games (say half an hour total). At the time, I read that everybody is better at "slow" chess. But does that explanation make sense? If everybody is better, shouldn't my ELO score have stayed the same?
The timing of this article and the submission seems to coincide (and possibly a reaction) to the other story on HN frontpage: Working quickly is more important than it seems (2015) (jsomers.net) To clarify, some are misunderstanding James Somers to be advocating sloppy low quality work, as if he's recommending speed>quality. He's saying something else: remove latencies and delays to shorten feedback loops. Faster fee…
If AI can do the OODA loop faster without getting fatigued, even though it is worse quality, like the F-86, it will win 10 out of 10 times.
EDIT:
> Boyd knew both planes very well. He knew the MiG-15 was a better aircraft than the F-86. The MiG-15 could climb faster than the F-86. The MiG-15 could turn faster than the F-86. The MiG-15 had better distance visibility.
> The F-86 had two points in its favor. First, it had better side visibility. While the MiG-15 pilot could see further in front, the F-86 pilot could see slightly more on the sides. Second, the F-86 had a hydraulic flight control. The MiG-15 had a manual flight control.
> Boyd decided that the primary determinant to winning dogfights was not observing, orienting, planning, or acting better. The primary determinant to winning dogfights was observing, orienting, planning, and acting faster.
> Without hydraulics, it took slightly more physical energy to move the MiG-15 flight stick than it did the F-85 flight stick. Even though the MiG-15 would turn faster (or climb higher) once the stick was moved, the amount of energy it took to move the stick was greater for the MiG-15 pilot.
> With each iteration, the MiG-15 pilot grew a little more fatigued than the F-86 pilot. And as he gets more fatigued, it took just a little bit longer to complete his OOPA loop. The MiG-15 pilot didn’t lose because he got outfought. He lost because he got out-OOPAed.
1. Einstein was a great student (as common sense would expect) [1]. Top in his class in ETHZ, and the supposed failed exam is because he tried to do the exam earlier than intended. He had great, although not flawless, grades all the way through. He wasn’t a mindless robot and clearly got some feathers ruffed by not showing up for classes, but his academic record is exactly what you would expect from a brilliant but somewhat nonconformist mind. He may not have been Von Neumann or Terence Tao, I suppose.
2. The main “source” of the article is an even more flawed blog post [2], which again just bashes on IQ with no sliver of proof that I can see other than waving hands in the hair while saying “dubious statistical transformations”, as if that wasn’t the only possible way to do these kinds of tests. Please prove me wrong and show me some proper study in there, I can’t see it but I’m from mobile.
Disappointing. What’s the point of it? Quote actual scientists, for example Higgs, who are on record saying that modern academic culture is too short term focused. Basically everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it in academia agrees. Might be a biased sample, but I think it’s more that everyone realizes we’ve dug ourselves into a hole that’s not so easy to escape.
[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2zwZsjlJ-G4
[2]: https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/your-iq-isnt-160-n...
I enjoyed this. At my own workplace it's a challenge to fit my team's work into the wider sprint-based methodology where every project must be refined, estimated, and broken down into items with * Come up with 5 possible approaches (2 days) * Create benchmark framework & suite (1 day) * Try out approach A, but realise that it cannot work for subtle technical reasons (2 days) * Try out approach B (2 days) * Fail to ma…
Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…
> I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It’s a simple point but an incorrect one. If you can work on it for a week, it’s no longer an IQ test. Nobody is saying that the questions on an IQ test are impossible. It’s the fact that there are constraints (time) and that everybody takes the test the same way that makes it an IQ test. Otherwise it’s just a little sheet of kinda tri…
I think the correct analogy here is that if everyone had to shoot from 3/4 court, you would likely end up with a different set of superstars than the set of superstars you get when dunking is allowed.
In other words, if the IQ test were much much harder, but you had a month to do it, you might find that the set of people who do well is different than who does well on the 1 hour test. Those people may be better suited to pursuing really hard open ended long term problems.
Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…
I used to share that doubt, especially during my first semesters at university.
However, my experience over the decades has been, that people who solved moderately difficult problems quickly were also the ones that excelled at solving hard and novel problems. So in my (little) experience, there is a justification for that and I'd be definitely interested (and not surprised) to see credible evidence for it.
This reminds of a question I had when I played chess for a couple of years. I was a lot better (as evidenced by my ELO score on chess.com) when playing long games (1 turn per day) than short games (say half an hour total). At the time, I read that everybody is better at "slow" chess. But does that explanation make sense? If everybody is better, shouldn't my ELO score have stayed the same?
And while people tend to make __better moves__ in slower time controls, their rapid/blitz ratings are usually higher than standard ratings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It’s a simple point but an incorrect one. If you can work on it for a week, it’s no longer an IQ test. Nobody is saying that the questions on an IQ test are impossible. It’s the fact that there are constraints (time) and that everybody takes the test the same way that makes it an IQ test. Otherwise it’s just a little sheet of kinda tri…
> Would you be a better basketball player if everyone else had to heave from 3/4 court but you could shoot layups? No, you’d be playing by different rules in an essentially different game. You might have more impressive stats but you wouldn’t be better. I think the correct analogy here is that if everyone had to shoot from 3/4 court, you would likely end up with a different set of superstars than the set of superstar…
Yes, if you play a different game you’ll find different high performers. That is obvious. But it is not what the blog post is saying. It is saying if you let one person play the same game but by different rules, they will look better.