Lots of really good questions here. I’ll do my best to answer.
Thinking vs reading: I think it depends on the context. Sometimes it makes sense to lean toward thinking more and sometimes it makes sense to lean toward reading more. (I wouldn’t advise focusing exclusively on one or the other.) Unjustified anchoring is certainly a worry, but I think reinventing the wheel is also a worry. One could waste two weeks groping toward a solution to a problem that could have been solved in afternoon just by reading the right review article.
Self-consciousness: Yep, I am intimately familiar with hopelessly inchoate thoughts and notes. (I’m not sure I’ve ever completed a project without passing through that stage.) For me at least, the best way to overcome this state is to talk to lots of people. One piece of advice I have for young researchers is to come to terms with sharing your work with people you respect before it’s polished. I’m very grateful to have a large network of collaborators willing to listen to and read my confused ramblings. Feedback at an early stage of a project is often much more valuable than feedback at a later stage.
Is there something interesting here?: Yep, this also happens to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any particular insight. Oftentimes the only way to know whether an idea is interesting is to put in the hard exploratory work. Of course, one shouldn’t be afraid to abandon an idea if it looks increasingly unpromising.
*Survival vs. exploratory mindset: Insofar as I understand the terms, an exploratory mindset is an absolute must. Not sure how to cultivate it, though.
Optimal hours of work per day: I work between 4 and 8 hours a day. I don’t find any difference in my productivity within that range, though I imagine if I pushed myself to work more than 8, I would pretty quickly hit diminishing returns.
Learning a new field: I can’t emphasize enough the value of just talking to existing experts. For me at least, it’s by far the most efficient way to get up-to-speed quickly. For that reason, I really value having a large network of diverse people I can contact with questions. I put a fair amount of effort into cultivating such a network.
Hard problems: I’m fortunate that my work is almost always intrinsically interesting. So even if I don’t make progress on a problem, I continue to be motivated to work on it because the work itself is so very pleasant. That said, as I’ve emphasized above, when I’m stuck, I find it most helpful to talk to lots of people about the problem.
Emotional motivators: When I reflect on my life as a whole, I’m happy that I’m in a career that aims to improve the world. But in terms of what gets me out of bed in the morning and excited to work, it’s almost never the impact I might have. It’s the intrinsically interesting nature of my work. I almost certainly would not be successful if I did not find my research to be so fascinating.
Typing speed: No idea what my typing speed is, but it doesn’t feel particularly fast, and that doesn’t seem to handicap me. I’ve always considered myself a slow thinker, though.
Obvious questions: Yeah, I think there is a general skill of “noticing the obvious.” I don’t think I’m great at it, but one thing I do pretty often is reflect on the sorts of things that appear obvious now that weren’t obvious to smart people ~200 years ago.
Tiredness, focus, etc.: Regular exercise certainly helps. Haven’t tried anything else. Mostly I’ve just acclimated to getting work done even though I’m tired. (Not sure I would recommend that “solution,” though!)
Meta: I’d like to see others answer questions 1, 3, 6, 7, and 10.
Your advice to talk to people is probably most important to me! I haven’t tried that a lot but when I did, it was very successful. One hurdle is not wanting to come off as too stupid to the other person (but there are also people who make me feel sufficiently at ease that I don’t mind coming off as stupid) and another is not wanting to waste people’s time. So I want to first be sure that I can’t just figure it out myself within ~ 10x the time. Maybe that a bad tradeoff. I also sometimes worry that people would actually like to chat more, but my reluctance to waste their time interferes with both our interest to chat. (Maybe they have the same reluctance, and both of us would be happier if he didn’t have it. Can we have a Reciprocity.io for talking about research, please? ^^)
Typing speed: Haha! You can test it here for example: https://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english. I’ve been stagnating at ~ 60 WPM now for years. Maybe there’s some sort of distinction that some brains are more optimized toward (e.g., worse memory) or incentivized to optimize toward (e.g., through positive feedback) fewer low-level concepts and other more toward more high-level concepts. So when it comes to measures of performance that have time in the denominator, the first group hits diminishing marginal returns early while the second keeps speeding up for a long time. Maybe the second group is, in turn, less interested in understanding from first-principles, which might make them less innovative. Just random speculation.
Obvious questions: Yeah, I’ve been wondering how it can be that now a lot of people come up independently with cases for nonhuman rights and altruism regardless of distance, but a century ago seemingly almost no one did. Maybe it’s just that I don’t know because most of those are lost in history and those that are not, I just don’t know about (though I can think of some examples). Or maybe culture was so different that a lot of the frameworks weren’t there that these ideas attach to. So if moral genius is, say, normally distributed, then values-spreading could have the benefit that it increases the number of people that use relevant frameworks and thereby also increases the absolute number of moral geniuses who work within those frameworks. The values would have to be sufficiently cooperative not to risk zero-sum competition between values. I suppose that’s similar to Bostrom’s Megaearth scenario except with people who share certain frameworks in their thinking rather than the pure number of people.
Getting work done when tired: Well, to some degree I noticed that I over-update on tiredness, and then get into a negative feedback loop where I give up on things too quickly because I think I’m too tired to do them. At that point I’m usually not actually particularly tired.
Regarding talking to people to get early feedback, get up to speed in a field, etc., you might find this post useful (if you haven’t already seen it).
I also sometimes worry that people would actually like to chat more, but my reluctance to waste their time interferes with both our interest to chat.
I find this relatable. Relatedly, in the above-linked post, Michelle Hutchinson (the author) wrote:
Try to make the conversation concise, and to avoid going over the time allocated. I really appreciate when people do this when I’m talking to them, because it means I can focus on thinking through the ideas rather than also making sure that we’re sticking to the agenda and get to everything.
I commented that I’d slightly push back on that passage, saying:
I think it makes sense for this to be the default way one approaches conversations in which one is seeking advice. But I think a decent portion of advice-givers would either be ok with or actually prefer a more loose / lengthy / free-wheeling / non-regimented conversation.
There have been a few times when I’ve arranged to talk to someone I perceived as very busy and important, and so I’ve tried to be very conscious of their time and give them opportunities to wrap things up, but they repeatedly opted to keep talking for a surprisingly long time. And they seemed genuinely happy with this, and I ended up getting a lot of extra value out of that extra time.
So I think it’s probably good to be open to signs that one’s conversation partner is ok with or prefers a longer conversation, even if one shouldn’t assume they are.
Thanks! Yeah, I sometimes wonder about that. I suppose in rationality-adjacent circles I can just ask what someone’s preference is (free-wheeling chat or no-nonsense and to the point). Maybe that’d be a faux pas or weird in general, but I think it should be fine among most EAs?
Hi Denis,
Lots of really good questions here. I’ll do my best to answer.
Thinking vs reading: I think it depends on the context. Sometimes it makes sense to lean toward thinking more and sometimes it makes sense to lean toward reading more. (I wouldn’t advise focusing exclusively on one or the other.) Unjustified anchoring is certainly a worry, but I think reinventing the wheel is also a worry. One could waste two weeks groping toward a solution to a problem that could have been solved in afternoon just by reading the right review article.
Self-consciousness: Yep, I am intimately familiar with hopelessly inchoate thoughts and notes. (I’m not sure I’ve ever completed a project without passing through that stage.) For me at least, the best way to overcome this state is to talk to lots of people. One piece of advice I have for young researchers is to come to terms with sharing your work with people you respect before it’s polished. I’m very grateful to have a large network of collaborators willing to listen to and read my confused ramblings. Feedback at an early stage of a project is often much more valuable than feedback at a later stage.
Is there something interesting here?: Yep, this also happens to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any particular insight. Oftentimes the only way to know whether an idea is interesting is to put in the hard exploratory work. Of course, one shouldn’t be afraid to abandon an idea if it looks increasingly unpromising.
*Survival vs. exploratory mindset: Insofar as I understand the terms, an exploratory mindset is an absolute must. Not sure how to cultivate it, though.
Optimal hours of work per day: I work between 4 and 8 hours a day. I don’t find any difference in my productivity within that range, though I imagine if I pushed myself to work more than 8, I would pretty quickly hit diminishing returns.
Learning a new field: I can’t emphasize enough the value of just talking to existing experts. For me at least, it’s by far the most efficient way to get up-to-speed quickly. For that reason, I really value having a large network of diverse people I can contact with questions. I put a fair amount of effort into cultivating such a network.
Hard problems: I’m fortunate that my work is almost always intrinsically interesting. So even if I don’t make progress on a problem, I continue to be motivated to work on it because the work itself is so very pleasant. That said, as I’ve emphasized above, when I’m stuck, I find it most helpful to talk to lots of people about the problem.
Emotional motivators: When I reflect on my life as a whole, I’m happy that I’m in a career that aims to improve the world. But in terms of what gets me out of bed in the morning and excited to work, it’s almost never the impact I might have. It’s the intrinsically interesting nature of my work. I almost certainly would not be successful if I did not find my research to be so fascinating.
Typing speed: No idea what my typing speed is, but it doesn’t feel particularly fast, and that doesn’t seem to handicap me. I’ve always considered myself a slow thinker, though.
Obvious questions: Yeah, I think there is a general skill of “noticing the obvious.” I don’t think I’m great at it, but one thing I do pretty often is reflect on the sorts of things that appear obvious now that weren’t obvious to smart people ~200 years ago.
Tiredness, focus, etc.: Regular exercise certainly helps. Haven’t tried anything else. Mostly I’ve just acclimated to getting work done even though I’m tired. (Not sure I would recommend that “solution,” though!)
Meta: I’d like to see others answer questions 1, 3, 6, 7, and 10.
Your advice to talk to people is probably most important to me! I haven’t tried that a lot but when I did, it was very successful. One hurdle is not wanting to come off as too stupid to the other person (but there are also people who make me feel sufficiently at ease that I don’t mind coming off as stupid) and another is not wanting to waste people’s time. So I want to first be sure that I can’t just figure it out myself within ~ 10x the time. Maybe that a bad tradeoff. I also sometimes worry that people would actually like to chat more, but my reluctance to waste their time interferes with both our interest to chat. (Maybe they have the same reluctance, and both of us would be happier if he didn’t have it. Can we have a Reciprocity.io for talking about research, please? ^^)
Typing speed: Haha! You can test it here for example: https://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english. I’ve been stagnating at ~ 60 WPM now for years. Maybe there’s some sort of distinction that some brains are more optimized toward (e.g., worse memory) or incentivized to optimize toward (e.g., through positive feedback) fewer low-level concepts and other more toward more high-level concepts. So when it comes to measures of performance that have time in the denominator, the first group hits diminishing marginal returns early while the second keeps speeding up for a long time. Maybe the second group is, in turn, less interested in understanding from first-principles, which might make them less innovative. Just random speculation.
Obvious questions: Yeah, I’ve been wondering how it can be that now a lot of people come up independently with cases for nonhuman rights and altruism regardless of distance, but a century ago seemingly almost no one did. Maybe it’s just that I don’t know because most of those are lost in history and those that are not, I just don’t know about (though I can think of some examples). Or maybe culture was so different that a lot of the frameworks weren’t there that these ideas attach to. So if moral genius is, say, normally distributed, then values-spreading could have the benefit that it increases the number of people that use relevant frameworks and thereby also increases the absolute number of moral geniuses who work within those frameworks. The values would have to be sufficiently cooperative not to risk zero-sum competition between values. I suppose that’s similar to Bostrom’s Megaearth scenario except with people who share certain frameworks in their thinking rather than the pure number of people.
Getting work done when tired: Well, to some degree I noticed that I over-update on tiredness, and then get into a negative feedback loop where I give up on things too quickly because I think I’m too tired to do them. At that point I’m usually not actually particularly tired.
(Sorry for barging in on this thread :D)
Regarding talking to people to get early feedback, get up to speed in a field, etc., you might find this post useful (if you haven’t already seen it).
I find this relatable. Relatedly, in the above-linked post, Michelle Hutchinson (the author) wrote:
I commented that I’d slightly push back on that passage, saying:
Thanks! Yeah, I sometimes wonder about that. I suppose in rationality-adjacent circles I can just ask what someone’s preference is (free-wheeling chat or no-nonsense and to the point). Maybe that’d be a faux pas or weird in general, but I think it should be fine among most EAs?