People talk about sharpening the axe vs. cutting down the tree, but chopping wood and sharpening axes are things we know how to do and know how to measure. When working with more abstract problems there’s often a lot of uncertainty in:
what do you want to accomplish, exactly?
what tool will help you achieve that?
what’s the ideal form of that tool?
how do you move the tool to that ideal form?
when do you hit diminish returns on improving the tool?
how do you measure the tool’s [sharpness]?
Actual axe-sharpening rarely turns into intellectual masturbation because sharpness and sharpening are well understood. There are tools for thinking that are equally well understood, like learning arithmetic and reading, but we all have a sense that more is out there and we want it. It’s really easy to end up masturbating (or epiphany addiction-ing) in the search for the upper level tools, because we are almost blind.
This suggests massive gains from something that’s the equivalent of a sharpness meter.
I think alternating periods of cutting and sharpening is useful here, reducing/increasing the amount of sharpening based on the observed marginal benefits of each round of sharpening on the cutting.
Actual axe-sharpening rarely turns into intellectual masturbation because sharpness and sharpening are well understood.
I have met people who geeked out over sharpening. They are usually more focused on knives but they can also geek out over sharpening axes.
Is it that you have never met a person who geeked out over sharpening (maybe because those people mostly aren’t in your social circles) or do you think that’s qualitatively different from intellectual masturbation?
People talk about sharpening the axe vs. cutting down the tree, but chopping wood and sharpening axes are things we know how to do and know how to measure. When working with more abstract problems there’s often a lot of uncertainty in:
what do you want to accomplish, exactly?
what tool will help you achieve that?
what’s the ideal form of that tool?
how do you move the tool to that ideal form?
when do you hit diminish returns on improving the tool?
how do you measure the tool’s [sharpness]?
Actual axe-sharpening rarely turns into intellectual masturbation because sharpness and sharpening are well understood. There are tools for thinking that are equally well understood, like learning arithmetic and reading, but we all have a sense that more is out there and we want it. It’s really easy to end up masturbating (or epiphany addiction-ing) in the search for the upper level tools, because we are almost blind.
This suggests massive gains from something that’s the equivalent of a sharpness meter.
I think alternating periods of cutting and sharpening is useful here, reducing/increasing the amount of sharpening based on the observed marginal benefits of each round of sharpening on the cutting.
I have met people who geeked out over sharpening. They are usually more focused on knives but they can also geek out over sharpening axes.
Is it that you have never met a person who geeked out over sharpening (maybe because those people mostly aren’t in your social circles) or do you think that’s qualitatively different from intellectual masturbation?
I think doing things for their own sake is fine, it’s only masturbation with negative valence if people are confused about the goal.