When we want to censor an image we put a black box over it. Over the area we want to censor. In a similar sense we can purposely censor our knowledge. This comes in particular handiness when thinking about things that might be complicated but we don’t need to know.
A deliberate black box around how toasters work would look like this:
bread → black box → toast
Not all processes need knowing, for now a black box can be a placeholder for the future.
With the power provided to us by a black box, we can identify what we don’t know. We can say; Hey! I don’t know what a toaster is but it would be about 2 hours to work it out. if I ever did want to work it out, I could just spend two hours to do it. Until then; I saved myself two hours. If we take other more time-burdensome fields it works even better. Say tax.
Need to file tax → black box accountant → don’t need to file my tax because I got the accountant to do it for me.
I know I can file my own tax, but that might be 100-200 hours of knowing everything an accountant knows about tax. (It also might be 10 hours depending on your country and their tax system). For now I can assume that hiring an accountant saved me a number of hours in doing it myself. So—Winning!
Take car repairs. On the one hand; you could do it yourself and unpack the black box, or you could trade your existing currency $$ (which you already traded your time to earn) for someone else’s skills and time to repair the car. The system looks like this:
Broken car → black box mechanic → working car
By deliberately not knowing how it works; we can tap out of even trying to figure it out for now. The other advantage is that we can look at; not just what we know in terms of black boxes but more importantly what we don’t know. We can build better maps by knowing what we don’t know.
Or maybe it’s like this: (for more advanced users)
Computers:
Logic gates → flip flops → Black box CPU → black box GPU → www.lesswrong.com
The black-box system happens to also have a meme about it:
Step 1. Get out of bed
Step 2. Build AGI
Step 3. ?????
Step 4. Profit
Only now we have a name for deliberately skipping finding out how step 3 works.
Another useful system:
Dieting
Food in (weight goes up) → black box human body → energy out (weight goes down)
Make your own black box systems in the comments.
Meta: short post, 1.5 hour to write, edit and publish. Felt it was an idea that provides useful ways to talk about things. Needed it to explain something to someone, now all can enjoy!
Black box knowledge
When we want to censor an image we put a black box over it. Over the area we want to censor. In a similar sense we can purposely censor our knowledge. This comes in particular handiness when thinking about things that might be complicated but we don’t need to know.
A deliberate black box around how toasters work would look like this:
bread → black box → toast
Not all processes need knowing, for now a black box can be a placeholder for the future.
With the power provided to us by a black box, we can identify what we don’t know. We can say; Hey! I don’t know what a toaster is but it would be about 2 hours to work it out. if I ever did want to work it out, I could just spend two hours to do it. Until then; I saved myself two hours. If we take other more time-burdensome fields it works even better. Say tax.
Need to file tax → black box accountant → don’t need to file my tax because I got the accountant to do it for me.
I know I can file my own tax, but that might be 100-200 hours of knowing everything an accountant knows about tax. (It also might be 10 hours depending on your country and their tax system). For now I can assume that hiring an accountant saved me a number of hours in doing it myself. So—Winning!
Take car repairs. On the one hand; you could do it yourself and unpack the black box, or you could trade your existing currency $$ (which you already traded your time to earn) for someone else’s skills and time to repair the car. The system looks like this:
Broken car → black box mechanic → working car
By deliberately not knowing how it works; we can tap out of even trying to figure it out for now. The other advantage is that we can look at; not just what we know in terms of black boxes but more importantly what we don’t know. We can build better maps by knowing what we don’t know.
Computers:
Logic gates → Black box computeryness → www.lesswrong.com
Or maybe it’s like this: (for more advanced users)
Computers:
Logic gates → flip flops → Black box CPU → black box GPU → www.lesswrong.com
The black-box system happens to also have a meme about it:
Step 1. Get out of bed
Step 2. Build AGI
Step 3. ?????
Step 4. Profit
Only now we have a name for deliberately skipping finding out how step 3 works.
Another useful system:
Dieting
Food in (weight goes up) → black box human body → energy out (weight goes down)
Make your own black box systems in the comments.
Meta: short post, 1.5 hour to write, edit and publish. Felt it was an idea that provides useful ways to talk about things. Needed it to explain something to someone, now all can enjoy!
My Table of contents has my other writings in it.
All suggestions and improvements welcome!