Update: I tested snakebird on three people: one hardcore math person who delights in solving math puzzles in his head (but hadn’t done many puzzle games), one unusually mathy social science type, one generalist (who had played snakebird before). Of these, the hardcore math guy blew the others away. He picked up rules faster, had more endurance, and was much more likely to actually one shot, including after skipping 20 levels ahead.
But, also maybe more interestingly/importantly: I’m interested in having the Real Smart People walk through what their process is actually like, and see if they’re doing things differently that other people can learn. (Presumably this is also something there’s some literature on?)
Came here to comment that. It seems much more efficient to learn the cognitive strategies smart people use than to try to figure them out from scratch. Ideally, you would have people of different skill levels solve problems (and maybe even do research) while thinking out loud and describing or drawing the images they are manipulating. I know this has been done at least for chess, and it would be nice to have it for domains with more structure. Then you could catalog these strategies and measure the effectiveness of teaching the system 2 process (the whole process they use, not only the winning path) and explicitly train in isolation the individual system 1 steps that make it up.
Yeah, although notably: the goal here is to become confidently good at solving domains where there are no established experts (with the motivating case being AI alignment, though I think lots of high-impact-but-vague fields are relevant). I think this does require developing the ability to invent new ways of thinking, and check for yourself which ways of thinking apply to a situation.
I think the optimal curriculum will include some amount of learning-for-yourself and some amount of learning from others.
This might be confusing the cart with the horse though, since this doesn’t control for IQ. A person with a high IQ might be more attracted to math because of it’s relative ease and also be able to pick up specific cognitive skills faster (i.e. being able to play snakebird well). In other words, correlation doesn’t imply causation.
Update: I tested snakebird on three people: one hardcore math person who delights in solving math puzzles in his head (but hadn’t done many puzzle games), one unusually mathy social science type, one generalist (who had played snakebird before). Of these, the hardcore math guy blew the others away. He picked up rules faster, had more endurance, and was much more likely to actually one shot, including after skipping 20 levels ahead.
Reminds me of video games > IQ tests
But, also maybe more interestingly/importantly: I’m interested in having the Real Smart People walk through what their process is actually like, and see if they’re doing things differently that other people can learn. (Presumably this is also something there’s some literature on?)
Came here to comment that. It seems much more efficient to learn the cognitive strategies smart people use than to try to figure them out from scratch. Ideally, you would have people of different skill levels solve problems (and maybe even do research) while thinking out loud and describing or drawing the images they are manipulating. I know this has been done at least for chess, and it would be nice to have it for domains with more structure. Then you could catalog these strategies and measure the effectiveness of teaching the system 2 process (the whole process they use, not only the winning path) and explicitly train in isolation the individual system 1 steps that make it up.
Yeah, although notably: the goal here is to become confidently good at solving domains where there are no established experts (with the motivating case being AI alignment, though I think lots of high-impact-but-vague fields are relevant). I think this does require developing the ability to invent new ways of thinking, and check for yourself which ways of thinking apply to a situation.
I think the optimal curriculum will include some amount of learning-for-yourself and some amount of learning from others.
This might be confusing the cart with the horse though, since this doesn’t control for IQ. A person with a high IQ might be more attracted to math because of it’s relative ease and also be able to pick up specific cognitive skills faster (i.e. being able to play snakebird well). In other words, correlation doesn’t imply causation.