I appreciate this article very much. I read the whole thing and was disappointed when I realized Curtis Yarvin hadn’t finished the series yet. It already has many great insights and illuminating points. I’ll be digesting the implications for a while.
Diversity of approaches is important in this game. My favorite things about it is how Yarvin attacks a closely-related problem from a different perspective. In particular:
He focuses on the political economy. (I deliberately de-emphasize politics when choosing where to focus.)
He debugs things from first principles. “It is always better to debug forward.” (I prefer to debug backwards.)
I agree with almost everything he says. I disagree with his claim that it is “always” better to debug forward. Debugging forward is better when you have a small dataset, as is the case with the historic sweep of broad political ideologies (the subject of Yavin’s writing). I think when you’re dealing with smaller problems, like niche technical decisions, there’s a greater diversity of data and therefore a greater opportunity to figure things out inductively.
Debugging forward is better when you have a small dataset,
I’d say the difference is about something different (trust/belief/etc.). Maybe it’s hard to find people who, upon seeing a proof whose conclusion they disagree with, actually examine it for the flaw. (Or people who want proofs.) Experimentation may enable finding ways to improve, working through everything logically may enable finding the optimal/closed form solution, Fermi estimates enable finding the order of magnitude of an effect (though this isn’t distinct from experimentation).
I appreciate this article very much. I read the whole thing and was disappointed when I realized Curtis Yarvin hadn’t finished the series yet. It already has many great insights and illuminating points. I’ll be digesting the implications for a while.
Diversity of approaches is important in this game. My favorite things about it is how Yarvin attacks a closely-related problem from a different perspective. In particular:
He focuses on the political economy. (I deliberately de-emphasize politics when choosing where to focus.)
He debugs things from first principles. “It is always better to debug forward.” (I prefer to debug backwards.)
I agree with almost everything he says. I disagree with his claim that it is “always” better to debug forward. Debugging forward is better when you have a small dataset, as is the case with the historic sweep of broad political ideologies (the subject of Yavin’s writing). I think when you’re dealing with smaller problems, like niche technical decisions, there’s a greater diversity of data and therefore a greater opportunity to figure things out inductively.
I’d say the difference is about something different (trust/belief/etc.). Maybe it’s hard to find people who, upon seeing a proof whose conclusion they disagree with, actually examine it for the flaw. (Or people who want proofs.) Experimentation may enable finding ways to improve, working through everything logically may enable finding the optimal/closed form solution, Fermi estimates enable finding the order of magnitude of an effect (though this isn’t distinct from experimentation).