I actually do basically agree with your first point. I made this stub because this is a concept frequently tossed around that I wanted people to be able to look up on LW easily… rather than because the jargon is optimal-according-to-me. In the most recent CFAR handbook the question is phrased:
“At any given time in our lives, it’s possible (though not always easy!) to answer the question, “What is the most important problem here, and what are the things that are keeping me from working on it?” We refer to this as “asking the Hamming question,” as a nod to mathematician Richard Hamming.”
And I think this is fairly importantly a different question than the one Hamming was asking. Moreover, the rationality community will actually need the original Hamming Question from time to time, referring specifically to scientific fields that you have extensive training. (Or, at least, if we didn’t need the Actual Science Hamming Question that’d be quite a bad sign). So yeah I think the terminology dilution is pretty important.
Moreover, the rationality community will actually need the original Hamming Question from time to time, referring specifically to scientific fields that you have extensive training. (Or, at least, if we didn’t need the Actual Science Hamming Question that’d be quite a bad sign).
It happens pretty frequently in the x-risk community, and I think the non-x-risk EA community although I don’t keep as close tabs on it.
(I think the question is asked both in terms of literal research done, and infrastructure-that-needs-building. The infrastructure is a bit different from research that Hamming was pointed at, but I think fits more closely within Hamming’s original paradigm than the personal development CFAR framing. I think it is fair to generalize the Hamming Question to “in my field of expertise, where I can reasonably expect myself to have a deep understanding of the situation, what are the most important things that need doing, and should I be working on them?”)
(My estimate is that there is something on the order of 10-50 people asking the question in the literal research sense in EA space. That estimate is based on a few people literally saying “I asked myself what the most important problems were and how I could work on them”, and some reading between the lines of how other people seem to be approaching problems and talking about them)
I actually do basically agree with your first point. I made this stub because this is a concept frequently tossed around that I wanted people to be able to look up on LW easily… rather than because the jargon is optimal-according-to-me. In the most recent CFAR handbook the question is phrased:
And I think this is fairly importantly a different question than the one Hamming was asking. Moreover, the rationality community will actually need the original Hamming Question from time to time, referring specifically to scientific fields that you have extensive training. (Or, at least, if we didn’t need the Actual Science Hamming Question that’d be quite a bad sign). So yeah I think the terminology dilution is pretty important.
This seems plausible. Has this happened so far?
It happens pretty frequently in the x-risk community, and I think the non-x-risk EA community although I don’t keep as close tabs on it.
(I think the question is asked both in terms of literal research done, and infrastructure-that-needs-building. The infrastructure is a bit different from research that Hamming was pointed at, but I think fits more closely within Hamming’s original paradigm than the personal development CFAR framing. I think it is fair to generalize the Hamming Question to “in my field of expertise, where I can reasonably expect myself to have a deep understanding of the situation, what are the most important things that need doing, and should I be working on them?”)
(My estimate is that there is something on the order of 10-50 people asking the question in the literal research sense in EA space. That estimate is based on a few people literally saying “I asked myself what the most important problems were and how I could work on them”, and some reading between the lines of how other people seem to be approaching problems and talking about them)