81–90 of 93 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a "righteous world", no one would starve, regardless of their work style and performance.
Yes, although the fast workers currently intentionally make their slower coworkers starve (also while compromising on quality and innovation), so how about that. They have done this for years. Payback is a part of righteousness.
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…
> * Come up with 5 possible approaches (2 days)
Even that gives you something to talk about, that looks "solution-oriented" in the way managers like; in deep work the first steps can actually be:
* Break down the existing approach into its fundamental assumptions and components (3 days)
* Try to build a few approaches challenging some assumptions in a useful way, and fail (2 days)
* Get a clearer picture of the cloud of possibilities that are more likely to work, and start assembling the pieces from that cloud (3 days)
and so on. This is the kind of stuff that's really hard to communicate, and often sounds like you're doing nothing at all in the initial stages, even though that time pays for itself many times more once(/if) you get to take it to completion instead of doing patchwork upon patchwork on a design based on outdated assumptions.
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…
"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." 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…
What we do know is "not smart -> slow", because if you are dumb, you will be (infinitely) slow to answer correctly. But note this might indicate that the first proposition is a common logical fallacy where the modus tollens is applied incorrectly.
The slow but brilliant thinker wouldn't perhaps show up for solving a hard and novel problem, as they might have learned they are stupid, and they might still be slogging trough other problem sets. Other excuses are found in https://almossawi.substack.com/p/slow-and-fast-learners-3-qu...
If you want to test pure ability for deep thought, it will be very difficult to control all variables that affect slow people.
I like this post. It reminds me of contemporary programming language research. There are precious few people actually doing interesting stuff in PL research these days that are actually trying to uncover new paradigms that aren't just the same old "we discovered how to do X in Y type system" or "novel technique to generate objects with blah blah constraints". People doing actually interesting stuff can't get funding,…
The classic military maxim… slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
For anyone interested in the history of IQ tests and how broken they are check out The Mismeasure of Man [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
For anyone interested in the history of IQ tests and how broken they are check out The Mismeasure of Man [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
Ehhhhhh careful, Mismeasure hasn't held up well, and there are better arguments.
There are two kinds of slowness. One is trying hard while getting no visible result. Another is procrastination. The article refers to the first
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ehhhhhh careful, Mismeasure hasn't held up well, and there are better arguments.
Oh interesting, can you share any links or books?
I don't have offhand good links to critiques of Gould that are on any site I would recommend you read.