I had a problem I was trying to work out. I thrashed about on it for a long time without making apparent progress. I decided I could ask a forum of people more experienced in this.
So I began I composing the question. I didn’t want to seem like a total noob, so I set about forestalling the obvious suggestions by explaining what hadn’t worked. I sort of set up an imaginary interlocutor and had it suggest things. Eventually, it suggested something and instead of my showing why it didn’t apply to my situation, I showed that it did. So I copied the solution out of the forum post box and closed the browser window.
Now, the process of composing this question wasn’t exactly quick or easy, but it did take a lot less time than I’d been using before.
I wonder if I can replicate this on purpose. I imagine writing to (or start writing to) someone more knowledgeable than me whom I don’t want to seem stupid to, and explain the problem. It seems a lot like just writing a summary of the question for myself, but by giving it that additional purpose, it became more focused and self-critical.
Or maybe there’s nothing to it, and I got lucky that I happened to be sitting on everything I needed and was one inference away from the answer.
Similar experience here. When I was doing my grad research and hit a snag, my first reaction was to ask my supervisor if I was unable to make any progress for a few days. I did it a few times, and sometimes the feedback was unexpected and based on the experience, skills and knowledge I simply didn’t have at the time. But quite often, to my embarrassment, the useful reply was well within my capabilities. That made me uncomfortable and the look I got from my supervisor didn’t make me feel any better. So eventually I started imagining asking the question and getting a reply, as per my model of the interlocutor. That cut down on stupid questions significantly at the actual meetings, saved me time waiting for them, and (eventually) improved my supervisor’s opinion of me.
I rarely face similarly challenging issues while writing software, so simply clearly writing down the issue I am facing tends to be enough to see possible solutions.
You’re supposed to have the rubber duck ask these questions too.
The difference here was that I was actually writing a letter / forum post that other people could have seen. I was doing this with the urgency of ‘If there’s an obvious solution to this, I’m going to look like a moron’. In contrast, a rubber duck, well… it’s just me.
I think the distinction you drew in the other branch of this conversation is more important. Getting a little skin in the game of ‘get this right now (or satisfy yourself that it’s genuinely hard)’.
I had a problem I was trying to work out. I thrashed about on it for a long time without making apparent progress. I decided I could ask a forum of people more experienced in this.
So I began I composing the question. I didn’t want to seem like a total noob, so I set about forestalling the obvious suggestions by explaining what hadn’t worked. I sort of set up an imaginary interlocutor and had it suggest things. Eventually, it suggested something and instead of my showing why it didn’t apply to my situation, I showed that it did. So I copied the solution out of the forum post box and closed the browser window.
Now, the process of composing this question wasn’t exactly quick or easy, but it did take a lot less time than I’d been using before.
I wonder if I can replicate this on purpose. I imagine writing to (or start writing to) someone more knowledgeable than me whom I don’t want to seem stupid to, and explain the problem. It seems a lot like just writing a summary of the question for myself, but by giving it that additional purpose, it became more focused and self-critical.
Or maybe there’s nothing to it, and I got lucky that I happened to be sitting on everything I needed and was one inference away from the answer.
Similar experience here. When I was doing my grad research and hit a snag, my first reaction was to ask my supervisor if I was unable to make any progress for a few days. I did it a few times, and sometimes the feedback was unexpected and based on the experience, skills and knowledge I simply didn’t have at the time. But quite often, to my embarrassment, the useful reply was well within my capabilities. That made me uncomfortable and the look I got from my supervisor didn’t make me feel any better. So eventually I started imagining asking the question and getting a reply, as per my model of the interlocutor. That cut down on stupid questions significantly at the actual meetings, saved me time waiting for them, and (eventually) improved my supervisor’s opinion of me.
I rarely face similarly challenging issues while writing software, so simply clearly writing down the issue I am facing tends to be enough to see possible solutions.
This is called rubber ducking or the teddy bear technique.
Not quite. Conversing with an imaginary intelligent interlocutor is more advanced than simple rubber ducking.
You’re supposed to have the rubber duck ask these questions too.
The difference here was that I was actually writing a letter / forum post that other people could have seen. I was doing this with the urgency of ‘If there’s an obvious solution to this, I’m going to look like a moron’. In contrast, a rubber duck, well… it’s just me.
I think the distinction you drew in the other branch of this conversation is more important. Getting a little skin in the game of ‘get this right now (or satisfy yourself that it’s genuinely hard)’.
Even so, finding a way to make the missing inference is not necessarily trivial.