What Is a Model?

A model is a simplified, abstracted representation of an object or system that presents only the information needed by its user. For example, the plastic models of aircraft I built as a kid abstract away everything except the external appearance, a mathematical model of a system shows only those dimensions and relationships useful to the model's users, a control system is a model of the relationships between the stimuli and the response desired by the designer and user of the larger system being controlled (evolution as designer and organism as user in biological analogy). A control system doesn't make a model of a system, to a large degree it is the designers' model of the system it controls.

At the simplest end are one-dimensional models, that we call measurements.

The most complex models are not explicit, they are too complex to be explicitly known, much less communicated; the model of the world that each person carries within his own mind.

Risks, Actions, and Benefits

Partially a response and clarification (at least I think it's clearer) to the strategies presented in Alicorn's post on Less Wrong, The Shadow Question. One of the big problems in her discussion of strategies is the conflation of up-front costs with risks.

"First, Do No Harm": When it is as easy to make things worse as better, be damn sure you know what you're doing before you start fixing things.

"Cherry on Top": An invitation to fiddle; small changes are very unlikely to make things worse, and may help.

"Lottery Ticket": She talks about a risk of making things worse, but it looks more like (from her examples and general discussion) that she means is an upfront cost with a chance of significant benefit later.

Insurance: The other headings were hers, but the one she uses here is misleading, as is her discussion. This is related to "Lottery Ticket" in having upfront costs, but in this case it's to prevent an unacceptable risk of harm. It can be something as simple as insuring your house against fire, so you have a temporary place to live and your house gets repaired (or you get a new house if that's easier/cheaper). To actually working to make a risky future less likely (for example, working on Friendly AI).

Another strategy mentioned by Morendil in a comment is "Go for broke" (a less functional version of this would be Russian Roulette), a big risk with the chance of a big reward, like First, Do No Harm, but higher potential risk/payoff matrix.


First, Do No Harm - Use knowledge to avoid as much risk as possible while still seeking the reward

Go for broke - Straightforward acceptance of large risk with large reward

Cherry on Top - Seek benefits at minimal risk

Lottery Ticket - Pay an up-front cost for a small chance at a large benefit

Insurance - Accept an up-front cost to hedge against a risk

Adventure sports isn't a risk management strategy, I mention it here because it feels like there should be a benefit - Seek the thrill of risk, while reducing actual risks, and not getting any benefit except the thrill

If you think of any other generic strategies, please leave a mention in the comments.


As an aside:

As for the title of the original post, I had to Google "Shadow Question". I don't watch television and have never seen an episode of Babylon 5. Given the page I found that describes the show, that was no loss. But the "two questions", "Who are you?" is the Vorlon question. "What do you want?" is the Shadow question. I guess you could call the first one silliness, and the Shadow question practical.

Some Notes on Responsibility

Slightly revised version of some comments I left on lesswrong.com - Does Blind Review Slow Down Science?

First I should state that I disagree with anonymous review for the same reasons that I disagree with an unaccountable judiciary - the negative effects on responsibility.

However, there are several problems with the theory in this essay - the most important being that the editors know who the writer or researcher is and can decide to go ahead and publish on that score no matter what the reviewers say. The editors have a strong incentive to advance novel but true theories in that it will advance the reputation of the journal.

About the unaccountable judiciary, you might check out this book by Max Boot, Out Of Order: Arrogance, Corruption, And Incompetence On The Bench, a large proportion of the problems he wrote about arose from judges not being personally responsible for their actions on the bench.

Also, more generally, I am a libertarian largely because I believe that everyone is totally and completely responsible for their own actions. Even if someone is holding a gun to your head, you decide what you do in response (and are responsible for letting yourself get in that position). Or if you are drunk or drugged, you are responsible for putting yourself in that position and therefore for what you do while that way.

By "responsible", I mean that people should bear some part of the forseeable costs of their actions. I say "some part" because the actions of others also influence costs, and stress "foreseeable" because in any complex system things interact to such an extent that only very direct results can actually be attributed reliably to any one party. Most attributions of "fault" in complex systems is scapegoating or motivated by interpersonal status games.

Alarm Clocks, Scheduling, and Deadlines

It's probably better not to set goals in the first place, if you are not going to keep them, than to get in the habit of ignoring them. I make it a point now not to set my alarm clock if I don't have to be up by particular time, and if I do set it to always get up.

Similarly, I try not to set a fixed schedule for things I don't need to do at a particular time. I make a list and work on something from the list (unless something gets near a deadline). I found that having the list also helps me to avoid spinning my wheels thinking about what to work on (provided your list isn't too long, then you have to decide what to work on).

Making arbitrary "deadlines" for yourself, then ignoring them, increases rather than decreases your procrastination.

General Method of Problem Solving

1. Become conscious of problem
Identify opportunities to improve situation.
Identify opportunities for innovation.

2. Recognize and define problem.

3. Define the goal.

4. Search for and develop alternative solutions.
Explore possible strategies for achieving goals.
Formulate hypotheses.

5. Select alternative solution or strategies. Anticipate the precise outcome. Choose the hypothesis to test.

6. Implement solution or strategy. Act on it. Commit through action. Test the hypothesis (do the experiment).

7. Gain feedback and compare to anticipated outcome. Refine the solution.


Trying too hard to avoid complications often creates them.

When in total ignorance, try anything, at the least you will learn something that doesn't work. And watching how it fails should teach you a lot more than that. Seeing to what extent it looked like it could work before it finally failed should reveal interesting data also.

Edited to Add References: I was in a hurry yesterday when I posted the above and didn't have time to lokk these up in Amazon.

The greatest source for the above is The Ideal Problem Solver: A Guide to Improving Thinking, Learning, and Creativity by John D Bransford and Barry S Stein. The IDEAL in the title is an acronym for a five-step process, similar to the 7 steps I listed above.

Next was Wayne A Wickelgren's How to Solve Mathematical Problems, the most complete view of problem solving techniques and heuristics I have seen. Some of the techniques don't work well on less well defined types of problems, but most do.

Polya's How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library) had a significant impact when I read it, but that was more than 15 years ago. I strongly recommend this to anyone interested in math or general problem solving, before reading Wickelgren's book.

Two more books that made a significant impression on me at the time I read them, but that I didn't actually refer to for this are Thinking Better by David Lewis and James Greene and an earlier edition of Problem Solving & Comprehension.

I am currently reading Thinking and Deciding by Jonathan Baron. It is a more difficult read, and more psychologically oriented than the others. The author's claim that effectively all thinking, deciding, problem solving, creativity are a combination of search and selection is interesting and looks very useful.

Effectiveness

Working More Effectively
Stop worrying, straining, trying, and just do it and you will probably do it better. Relax and you can be faster, more powerful, and more accurate.

Worrying about anything will interfere with doing it. To do something well, focus on what you are doing, set your emotions aside. Emotions are necessary to doing - as motivation to do anything in the first place and as further motivation to do it well. But emotion while you are working is a distraction and will interfere with doing first class work.

You need to prepare and learn in advance to do something well, all worrying when you are trying to do it does is interfere with your actions. No matter how poorly you may have prepared, when it comes time to act, then act without worrying, because worrying will only reduce your effectiveness even further.

Efficiency amounts to being effective using as few resources as possible.

Effective Ends
Effectiveness is most often used in relation to activities and processes and to how well they lead to achieving your goals. But it can also be used about the goals themselves. A more effective goal is one that contributes more to your highest Values; less effective, or even ineffective, goals only satisfy themselves and momentary interests or pleasures.

You should consider the effectiveness of your goals before investing too much time and resources in them.

Physical Effectiveness (capacity & capabilities) is more or less obvious, but I may do a post on this later.

Creativeness

When you come up with a new idea, review how you came up with it, maybe you can improve it, or do better next time, or learn how to come up with even more ideas.

Spend time thinking - not reading or studying or talking. To get away from my normal "background" I do much of my creative thinking while walking. I keep a notepad in my pocket to write down my ideas so they're not forgotten. The changing, more random, background helps trigger new ideas and new ways of looking at old ideas. And sometimes reminds me of older ideas I had forgotten.

Browsing the web, especially when I push myself to follow links rather than reading more intensively, also has some of the same effects, though it's not as effective as walking - but sometimes the weather is too bad for writing down any ideas I get, either raining or snowing.

You must write down your ideas or you WILL forget them.

Play with ideas, explore unusual or random juxtapositions of ideas. Exploit ambiguity and metaphors to open up new ideas or approaches. Look for **more** solutions or ideas that could lead to solutions. Try changing one of the rules or constraints and see what happens.

Avoid premature evaluation - ideas that don't work can still lead you to ones that can - but only if you keep exploring them.

I prefer "creativeness" to the conventional "creativity", because the latter is too often reified into something in itself. Creativeness (or creativity) is actually a description of the originality of choices that we make - in design and in making decisions.

Knowing Lots of Facts

Knowing lots of facts absolutely matters in the real world. Having a good theoretical framework to organize them and logic (formal, informal, probablistic, or otherwise) to manipulate them help too - but not without real facts. Facts alone are worthless, you need good judgement too, but you cannot function at all without facts.

"How emotionally entangled are you with your point of view? Test yourself - defend an opposing view, believing your life depends upon it."
-- Marc Stiegler, David's Sling

This is really only useful for non-factual arguments, where your emotions are more likely to interfere. You can prove ANYTHING if you can ignore disconfirming evidence. It reminds me of a point in decision making - almost all of our choices are over-determined; that is, there are always good reasons to do almost anything we may want to; to make a good decision we also have to balance the reasons not to choose particular things.

"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" -- what are the facts and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
-- Robert A Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long and Time Enough for Love

One must be ready to discard his own ideas and theories if new facts overturn them. I think knowing lots of facts is the simplest way to notice and correct for your own biases. You are more likely to notice a contradiction between what you have just decided and a previously known fact than you are to directly notice a bias in your thinking; even after setting the decision aside and coming back to it you are still more likely to notice a contradiction than a bias.

Why Learning

"Begin at once - not today, or tomorrow, or at some remote indefinite date, but right now, at this precise moment - to choose some subject, some concept, some great name or idea or event in history on which you can eventually make yourself the world's supreme expert. Start a crash program immediately to qualify yourself for this self-assignment through reading, research, and reflection.

"I don't mean the sort of expert who avoids all the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. I mean one who has the most knowledge, the deepest insight, and the most audacious willingness to break new ground."

-- Max Schuster, quoted in Ron Gross, The Independent Scholar's Handbook, p.xiv


Curiosity and Learning in Advance of need AND
Generality of Knowledge and Abilities LEAD TO
Flexibility of Means and the Ability to Make
Better Choices in the Future


The more you know, the more alternative courses of action are available to you.

Learn to broaden your capabilities, strengthen your weaknesses, and hone your strengths.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert A Heinlein, Time Enough for Love


And in fact, I can do most of these, and many more.

As I become increasingly accomplished my ability to earn, pay, and create increase.

Knowledge is nothing without judgement - how it relates to other knowledge, how it can be used, what kinds of side effects (consequences) its use may have. Wisdom commonly refers to the ability to make good judgements.

Commitment

Commitment is emotional investment

"A real decision is a ... personal commitment to a choice or option, or a group of them."
Theodore Isaac Rubin, Overcoming Indecisiveness: The Eight Stages of Effective Descision-Making, p.10

Commitments, things you have already committed to, also known as duties and responsiblities, make it easier to come to decisions which will support those pre-existing commitments. Contending or competing commitments make it harder, which makes a strong case against taking on too many commitments.

"In very few instances is one decision actually better than another."
Rubin, Overcoming Indecisiveness: The Eight Stages of Effective Descision-Making, p.70

Most actually "bad" choices are discarded early in the process, before you start consciously evaluating your options. Commitment to seeing your decision through is what makes it work. If you get actual evidence that you have made a bad choice or that the situation changed enough to make a different option substantially better than your current choice, THEN you can (and should) change it.

Maintaining Momentum: Motivation & Enthusiasm

You need to make a vigorous start. Enthusiasm is a motivation to get started, one of the best in fact, but without the determination to finish, won't get you very far. Your commitment to the project is what will keep you going as your enthusiasm flags. If your project is substantial, taking any significant time to complete, your enthusiasm will flag and return several times during its course - provided you can keep going between times.

Commit through Action: Do It!

Commitment can keep you going, but the best way to stay commited is to just keep going. Do something on your project, no matter how small, to help get you moving when you don't quite feel like it right now. If you let that feeling keep you from working, you will usually find yourself working less and less as time goes on. That is one reason most people cannot successfully work for themselves or study without schools. They just don't have the self-discipline to keep at things even when they don't feel like it.

Decisiveness, Perseverence, and Fortitude are slightly different aspects of the resolution to accomplish goals you have planned, except when you consciously change them for a good reason.

Environment can be hindering, so you need to work through periods when your environment is not helping you. And you need to change the environment to reduce hindering effects, because it will wear you down and reduce your effectiveness.

Commitment to Ends

The more distant and general ends (such as your Values) you commit to will allow you to be more flexible in your responses to changing circumstances. And therefore more likely to actually benefit from your commitment. Working toward a more distant goal can help reduce stress by reducing or softening deadlines. A sense of play about the goal will also help reduce stress and maintain commitment.

Avoid commitment to means. Ends are primary and you may need to change means several times to get there. Paul Graham funds startups and has written many essays on how to operate in one - one of his most consistent themes is the need to be open to changing direction - that most successful startups had to change their plans substantially at some point as they learned more about their potential customers and the product they were creating. (I linked to his homepage rather than any particular essay, because so many bear on these ideas. Also, most of the essays are very readable and interesting even when they don't.)