Interesting. I agree we want more specific tags too for that post. Though “Problem-Solving Tactics”, actually feels pretty broad too, though a good definition/description might help give it shape. I’ll think about it, not sure if you had one in mind.
Another thing that helps is having other posts in mind too for the tag.
I can’t think of other posts, but the idea is a class of general tactics that can be applied to difficult technical problems, such as Polya’s heuristics for solving math problems: generalization, specialization, using special cases, pattern-matching to related problems, etc. There are others:
Use fresh eyes
Prove a stronger statement than needed
When there are many candidate strategies, use manual depth-first search and keep track efficiently
The tag wiki for the “techniques” tag pointed out by habryka says “set of actions (including “mental actions”) for improving one’s thinking so as to form accurate beliefs and/or make better decisions”, which I think is slightly different, but the tag wiki could be edited to encompass problem-solving tactics.
“Rationality” is part of a special class of 5 tags that are designed to be general, and be primarily used for broad filtering purposes (i.e. the 5 core tags). Agree that it would be far too broad for most tags.
Re. “Problem-Solving Tactics”: I agree that something in that space is good. We currently have the “Techniques” tag, which is pretty similar to that, so I added it to that tag. Do you think we want something again more specific than that?
I suggest “Problem-Solving Tactics” as a tag, with https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JcpwEKbmNHdwhpq5n/problem-relaxation-as-a-tactic as an example. “Rationality” is far too general for that post.
Interesting. I agree we want more specific tags too for that post. Though “Problem-Solving Tactics”, actually feels pretty broad too, though a good definition/description might help give it shape. I’ll think about it, not sure if you had one in mind.
Another thing that helps is having other posts in mind too for the tag.
I can’t think of other posts, but the idea is a class of general tactics that can be applied to difficult technical problems, such as Polya’s heuristics for solving math problems: generalization, specialization, using special cases, pattern-matching to related problems, etc. There are others:
Use fresh eyes
Prove a stronger statement than needed
When there are many candidate strategies, use manual depth-first search and keep track efficiently
The tag wiki for the “techniques” tag pointed out by habryka says “set of actions (including “mental actions”) for improving one’s thinking so as to form accurate beliefs and/or make better decisions”, which I think is slightly different, but the tag wiki could be edited to encompass problem-solving tactics.
“Rationality” is part of a special class of 5 tags that are designed to be general, and be primarily used for broad filtering purposes (i.e. the 5 core tags). Agree that it would be far too broad for most tags.
Re. “Problem-Solving Tactics”: I agree that something in that space is good. We currently have the “Techniques” tag, which is pretty similar to that, so I added it to that tag. Do you think we want something again more specific than that?