So for each of Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness, you might ask what kinds of things in reality are those trying to carve out? How else might you capture some of the same things?
Ok, can we take this example further? What specific things in reality ARE those trying to carve out? What does your thought process look like to find those things? Then, when you do find those things, what do you do with them and what specific insights does that help with?
I was thinking about why it wouldn’t be easy to answer this without writing a long response and I realized it’s because the concept hinges a lot on something I haven’t written up yet about types of uncertainty.
So a simpler example for now until I post that. Consider Bostrom’s ontology of types of superintelligence: speed, collective, quality. If we want more flexibility in thinking about this area we can return to the question that this ontology is an answer to: what different kinds of superintelligence might exist? or how might you differentiate between two superintelligences? and treat these instead as brainstorming cues. With brainstorming you want to optimize for quantity of answers rather than quality, then do categorization afterwards. You might also try to figure out more forms of the question that the ontology might be an answer to.
The relation back to types of uncertainty is that you can ask about the questions and answers: what kind of uncertainty do we want to reduce by answering this question?
Ok, can we take this example further? What specific things in reality ARE those trying to carve out? What does your thought process look like to find those things? Then, when you do find those things, what do you do with them and what specific insights does that help with?
I was thinking about why it wouldn’t be easy to answer this without writing a long response and I realized it’s because the concept hinges a lot on something I haven’t written up yet about types of uncertainty.
So a simpler example for now until I post that. Consider Bostrom’s ontology of types of superintelligence: speed, collective, quality. If we want more flexibility in thinking about this area we can return to the question that this ontology is an answer to: what different kinds of superintelligence might exist? or how might you differentiate between two superintelligences? and treat these instead as brainstorming cues. With brainstorming you want to optimize for quantity of answers rather than quality, then do categorization afterwards. You might also try to figure out more forms of the question that the ontology might be an answer to.
The relation back to types of uncertainty is that you can ask about the questions and answers: what kind of uncertainty do we want to reduce by answering this question?