(I decided not to share details of my attempt to solve this exercise unless asked. I don’t think that my perspective is so valuable and anchoring would be bad.)
I think it would be good. It narrows down the issues required for the response. And it demonstrates effort to solve the problem on your part.
To be brief—“explain this to me, but I won’t show any evidence of making the effort myself or attempting to make it easier for you to respond to me”—doesn’t feel so respectful of the effort your asking of others, and it’s so broad that I don’t expect great bang for the buck with the effort required.
If you’ve got a question, make the issue as clear as you can make it, instead of treating us like guinea pigs in your experiment where you’re trying to avoid bias.
I don’t mean this in a big negative way (I don’t do the emotion free writing tone so popular here). I see that you’ve spent effort detailing your question, are asking an honest one, and have a reasonable reason besides laziness not to elaborate further (avoid bias).
But asking for input is asking for a favor, and I tend to expect people asking for favors to make my fulfillment of their needs as easy and productive for me as possible.
Another way to express it, is that I’d be writing expressly in the dark of what the real issue is. Maybe it’s a control thing. “Do this so I can analyze the results” doesn’t have a lot of appeal.
I guess I wasn’t brief. It’s an interesting question, but as posed, it left me with a shrug.
In my defence, I will say that I decided not to share my approach not because of “we should reduce bias no matter what” reasoning, but because I truly think that my approach is (a) wrong and (b) attractive, and (c) the problem is difficult; hence, the information about can be dangerous.
But it makes sense to post this sort of information in comments anyway, so I did.
I think it would be good. It narrows down the issues required for the response. And it demonstrates effort to solve the problem on your part.
To be brief—“explain this to me, but I won’t show any evidence of making the effort myself or attempting to make it easier for you to respond to me”—doesn’t feel so respectful of the effort your asking of others, and it’s so broad that I don’t expect great bang for the buck with the effort required.
If you’ve got a question, make the issue as clear as you can make it, instead of treating us like guinea pigs in your experiment where you’re trying to avoid bias.
I don’t mean this in a big negative way (I don’t do the emotion free writing tone so popular here). I see that you’ve spent effort detailing your question, are asking an honest one, and have a reasonable reason besides laziness not to elaborate further (avoid bias).
But asking for input is asking for a favor, and I tend to expect people asking for favors to make my fulfillment of their needs as easy and productive for me as possible.
Another way to express it, is that I’d be writing expressly in the dark of what the real issue is. Maybe it’s a control thing. “Do this so I can analyze the results” doesn’t have a lot of appeal.
I guess I wasn’t brief. It’s an interesting question, but as posed, it left me with a shrug.
Your point of view makes sense. Hence, I’ve written about my partial results: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h54/i_need_help_device_of_imaginary_results_by_i_j/8pow
In my defence, I will say that I decided not to share my approach not because of “we should reduce bias no matter what” reasoning, but because I truly think that my approach is (a) wrong and (b) attractive, and (c) the problem is difficult; hence, the information about can be dangerous.
But it makes sense to post this sort of information in comments anyway, so I did.