While obviously both heuristics are good to use, the reasons I think asking “which chains-of-thought was that faster than?” tends to be more epistemically profitable than “how could I have thought that faster?” include:
It is easier to find suboptimal thinking-habits to propagate an unusually good idea into, than to find good ideas for improving a particular suboptimal thinking-habit.
Notice that in my technique, the good ideais cognitively proximal and the suboptimal thinking-habits are cognitively distal, whereas in Eliezer’s suggestion it’s the other way around.
A premise here is that good ideas are unusual (hard-to-find) and suboptimal thinking-habits are common (easy-to-find)—the advice flips in domains where it’s the opposite.
It relates to the difference between propagating specific solutions to plausible problem-domains, vs searching for specific solutions to a specific problem.
The brain tends to be biased against the former approach because it’s preparatory work with upfront cost (“prophylaxis”), whereas the latter context sort of forces you to search for solutions.
Made a post with my reply:
While obviously both heuristics are good to use, the reasons I think asking “which chains-of-thought was that faster than?” tends to be more epistemically profitable than “how could I have thought that faster?” include:
It is easier to find suboptimal thinking-habits to propagate an unusually good idea into, than to find good ideas for improving a particular suboptimal thinking-habit.
Notice that in my technique, the good ideais cognitively proximal and the suboptimal thinking-habits are cognitively distal, whereas in Eliezer’s suggestion it’s the other way around.
A premise here is that good ideas are unusual (hard-to-find) and suboptimal thinking-habits are common (easy-to-find)—the advice flips in domains where it’s the opposite.
It relates to the difference between propagating specific solutions to plausible problem-domains, vs searching for specific solutions to a specific problem.
The brain tends to be biased against the former approach because it’s preparatory work with upfront cost (“prophylaxis”), whereas the latter context sort of forces you to search for solutions.