To be clear, I wasn’t commenting at all on the disqualification of Elizabeth’s and Slider’s earlier answers. (Except to whatever extent your regretful comments about last week’s results related to those answers, which it seems clear they can’t have for Elizabeth’s since that was in an earlier week and it never occurred to me they did for Slider’s.)
I hadn’t at all understood that your comment about the tennis player was a reference to your own answer. Rereading what you wrote, it’s hard to see how I could have missed that … aha, it turns out you edited it. (It used to say “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. It felt like it went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” and now it says “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. When I did it, I felt a bit like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. I felt like I went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” (Boldface added in the three places that changed.))
I would suggest not expecting an exercise like this to be practically useful for solving problems. If you’re going to be in a boxing match and you are doing bicep curls to get stronger[1], the fact that the exercise is not knocking anyone out should not factor at all into how you feel about your progress, and trying to tweak the exercise so that it actually knocks people out would probably not be an improvement.
[1] I have no idea whatsoever whether bicep curls would in fact help you get stronger in a way that would be useful in a boxing match.
To be clear, I wasn’t commenting at all on the disqualification of Elizabeth’s and Slider’s earlier answers. (Except to whatever extent your regretful comments about last week’s results related to those answers, which it seems clear they can’t have for Elizabeth’s since that was in an earlier week and it never occurred to me they did for Slider’s.)
I hadn’t at all understood that your comment about the tennis player was a reference to your own answer. Rereading what you wrote, it’s hard to see how I could have missed that … aha, it turns out you edited it. (It used to say “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. It felt a bit too me like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. It felt like it went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” and now it says “Last week we tried a more direct babble, on solving a problem in our lives. When I did it, I felt a bit like the tennis player trying to swing their racket the same way as when they were doing a bicep curl. I felt like I went too directly at the problem, while misunderstanding the mechanism.” (Boldface added in the three places that changed.))
I would suggest not expecting an exercise like this to be practically useful for solving problems. If you’re going to be in a boxing match and you are doing bicep curls to get stronger[1], the fact that the exercise is not knocking anyone out should not factor at all into how you feel about your progress, and trying to tweak the exercise so that it actually knocks people out would probably not be an improvement.
[1] I have no idea whatsoever whether bicep curls would in fact help you get stronger in a way that would be useful in a boxing match.
(Just noting that I agree and that seems pretty right to me)