I wish to expand on your conclusions and look for their limits. It might be more relevant to the “Go Try Things” post, but it being a kind of series of posts, I suppose it makes sense most to comment here.
So, data collection is good. But aside of getting one better at some area in which one tries to reach expertise or improvement, data collection is also good for discovering almost totally new facets of reality, territory that is outside the map’s margins.
Data collection bring to light not only known unknowns, but unknown unknowns too. There’s a risk involved, however. It seems that for the most part, the opportunity cost of researching unknown unknowns is greater than researching known unknowns:
When practicing anything, the costs and possible benefits are pretty known. You know what you have to do to get better at playing an instrument, build better robots, programming or dancing tango. You also pretty much know what are the fruits of that labor (though perhaps not entirely, especially when it is many “quantum steps” away in terms of skill expertise).
On the other hand, when you consider whether to delve into some new unknown territory, you’re less familiar with the costs (you don’t know whether you’ll enjoy “uncovering data” or not, for example) as well as with the possible utility. Let’s say some person A is invited to a salsa dancing party or class. He considers the idea but decides not to go. He thinks how It will obviously take a few hours which he could invest in more familiar activities that yield more utility than dancing; it will probably have some social costs involved, as in any new endeavor which is unfamiliar and especially one involves the moving of one’s body; even if he will enjoy it he doesn’t think he’ll have the time to invest on more such occasions, and he doesn’t think doing it once will be very useful, etc. etc. etc.
However, what if this person is unaware that salsa, if he were to try it out, will greatly benefit him? Elevate his spirit, exercise his body and provide some new kind of social interactions which will benefit him on non-dancing social occasions, and that if he decided to fully incorporate it in his life, it would provide excellent rest from his usual activity (say, his profession) and even benefit it in other ways?
So it must be benefitial to also collect data outside of the map, to explore new frontiers and horizons. But there must be a limit to this. The great many activities the world provides can probably fill a few life-times of human beings (or maybe not?). But either way, there must be some point where more exploration is actually adverse in its effects, if no activity is being engaged more than superficially. So how can one decide whether to embark on exploration or not?
Of course, there is meta-data available on activities. There is some text on the internet for probably most tried-out activities out there, friends share their experience with things they’ve done, movies and books tell us about activities unknown to us, and so on. But would such data actually help a person decide whether to engage in an activity or not, is it overwhelming enough to “change his mind” from not-doing the activity to doing it? My guess is not. Most people (as noted on “Hold off proposing solutions”) probably decide if they want to engage in the activity upon first hearing about the opportunity to engage in it, and, more than that, I suspect that their decision is based less upon the nature of the activity and more upon the nature of the “activists”, the people who are commonly engaged in that activity. Many activities produce some kind of culture around them, which hardy can be ignored. Since for an activity to exists it needs to be done, and if it is being done then someone must be doing it, so to imagine that activity one must imagine someone doing that activity, or imagine oneself as the kind of person who does that (of course, if it is taken more seriously, one can imagine the activity more “naturally”, ignoring the nature of other people who engage in that).
To actually decide whether to engage in some new activity, one needs to take the decision seriously. But then, to avoid such “paralysis analysis”, it would probably be easier just to start “doing it” instead of thinking about it (with the exception of activities with really high costs such as exploring the south pole or conceiving a child). But then again, there must be a limit to the amount of “new things” a person can do. Some people are likely (have high probability) to greatly beefit from exploration, while others are unlikely to benefit from it. How can one recognize which one she/he is?
I wish to expand on your conclusions and look for their limits. It might be more relevant to the “Go Try Things” post, but it being a kind of series of posts, I suppose it makes sense most to comment here.
So, data collection is good. But aside of getting one better at some area in which one tries to reach expertise or improvement, data collection is also good for discovering almost totally new facets of reality, territory that is outside the map’s margins.
Data collection bring to light not only known unknowns, but unknown unknowns too. There’s a risk involved, however. It seems that for the most part, the opportunity cost of researching unknown unknowns is greater than researching known unknowns: When practicing anything, the costs and possible benefits are pretty known. You know what you have to do to get better at playing an instrument, build better robots, programming or dancing tango. You also pretty much know what are the fruits of that labor (though perhaps not entirely, especially when it is many “quantum steps” away in terms of skill expertise).
On the other hand, when you consider whether to delve into some new unknown territory, you’re less familiar with the costs (you don’t know whether you’ll enjoy “uncovering data” or not, for example) as well as with the possible utility. Let’s say some person A is invited to a salsa dancing party or class. He considers the idea but decides not to go. He thinks how It will obviously take a few hours which he could invest in more familiar activities that yield more utility than dancing; it will probably have some social costs involved, as in any new endeavor which is unfamiliar and especially one involves the moving of one’s body; even if he will enjoy it he doesn’t think he’ll have the time to invest on more such occasions, and he doesn’t think doing it once will be very useful, etc. etc. etc.
However, what if this person is unaware that salsa, if he were to try it out, will greatly benefit him? Elevate his spirit, exercise his body and provide some new kind of social interactions which will benefit him on non-dancing social occasions, and that if he decided to fully incorporate it in his life, it would provide excellent rest from his usual activity (say, his profession) and even benefit it in other ways?
So it must be benefitial to also collect data outside of the map, to explore new frontiers and horizons. But there must be a limit to this. The great many activities the world provides can probably fill a few life-times of human beings (or maybe not?). But either way, there must be some point where more exploration is actually adverse in its effects, if no activity is being engaged more than superficially. So how can one decide whether to embark on exploration or not?
Of course, there is meta-data available on activities. There is some text on the internet for probably most tried-out activities out there, friends share their experience with things they’ve done, movies and books tell us about activities unknown to us, and so on. But would such data actually help a person decide whether to engage in an activity or not, is it overwhelming enough to “change his mind” from not-doing the activity to doing it? My guess is not. Most people (as noted on “Hold off proposing solutions”) probably decide if they want to engage in the activity upon first hearing about the opportunity to engage in it, and, more than that, I suspect that their decision is based less upon the nature of the activity and more upon the nature of the “activists”, the people who are commonly engaged in that activity. Many activities produce some kind of culture around them, which hardy can be ignored. Since for an activity to exists it needs to be done, and if it is being done then someone must be doing it, so to imagine that activity one must imagine someone doing that activity, or imagine oneself as the kind of person who does that (of course, if it is taken more seriously, one can imagine the activity more “naturally”, ignoring the nature of other people who engage in that).
To actually decide whether to engage in some new activity, one needs to take the decision seriously. But then, to avoid such “paralysis analysis”, it would probably be easier just to start “doing it” instead of thinking about it (with the exception of activities with really high costs such as exploring the south pole or conceiving a child). But then again, there must be a limit to the amount of “new things” a person can do. Some people are likely (have high probability) to greatly beefit from exploration, while others are unlikely to benefit from it. How can one recognize which one she/he is?
What do you think?