LW - "Metastrategic Brainstorming", a core building-block skill by Raemon

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Metastrategic Brainstorming", a core building-block skill, published by Raemon on June 11, 2024 on LessWrong. I want to develop rationality training, which is aimed at solving confusing problems. Two key problems with "confusing problems" are: 1. You might feel so confused and overwhelmed that you bounce off completely. 2. You might be confused about what counts as progress, or where the most progress is possible, and accidentally work on the wrong thing. A skill that helps with both of these is "metastrategic brainstorming" - the art of generating lots of potential good approaches, and then choosing approaches that are likely to help. Different situations call for different sorts of strategies. If a problem is confusing, you probably don't have a simple playbook for dealing with it. Different people also benefit from different sorts of strategies. So, while I can tell you a list of potential mental tools, what I most want you to practice is the art of identifying what would help you, in particular, with the situation in particular in which you find yourself. My triggers for switching to "metastrategic brainstorming mode" are: I've just sat down to work on a problem I already know is hard. I've starting to feel stuck, annoyed or frustrated. I notice that I settled into the very first plan that occurred to me, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's not the best plan. ...and, I'm trying to solve a problem I expect to take at least 30 minutes (i.e. enough time it's worth spending at least a few minutes meta-brainstorming)... ...then I switch into "metastrategic brainstorming mode", which entails: 1. Open up a writing doc. 2. Ask myself "what are my goals?". If there are multiple goals, write them both down. 3. Set a 5-10 minute timer, spend it brainstorming "meta-level strategies." Don't try to solve the object level problem. Just focus on generating strategies that might help you solve the problem. 4. Look at my list of meta-strategies, and see if there's one that I feel at least reasonably optimistic about. 5. If so, try that meta-strategy. 6. If not, brainstorm more. (But: note that "take a break", "nap", and "ask a friend for help" all totally count as valid meta-strategies to try. Taking a nap is often pretty important, actually!) 7. When/if I eventually solve my problem, take note of what strategies and meta-strategies I ended up using. Ideally, write them down somewhere I'm likely to remember them again. I want to repeat emphasize "setting a real timer, for at least 5 and maybe up to 10 minutes, where you only allow yourself to generate meta-level strategies." Exploring multiple plans before committing. Partly, this is because it just takes a little while to shift out of "object level mode". But, more importantly: because your problem is confusing, your ways of thinking about it might be somewhat off track. And, even if you'd eventually solve your problem, you might be doing it using a way less efficient method. In particular, many problems benefit from going "breadth first", where instead of barreling down the first plan you came up with, you try ~3 plans a little bit and see if one of them turns out to be way better than your initial plan. Come up with multiple "types" of metastrategies. When you're doing the 5-10 minutes of brainstorming, I recommend exploring a variety of strategies. For example, there are conceptual strategies like "break the problem down into smaller pieces." There are physical/biological strategies like "take a walk, or get a drink of water". There are social strategies like "ask a friend for help." (sometimes this isn't appropriate if you're training, but is a fine strategy to use on real world tasks) Example: Writing this Blogpost Right now I'm writing a blogpost on Metastrategic brainstorming. I actually found myself a bit stuck (a few p...