Continuing the discussion from Postmortems Help Address Causes of Errors:
I want to write about this aritcle to learn more about errors. I wrote some replies already so I’ll reply to those too to compare.
Errors happen a lot. They happen when you do difficult things. They happen rarely when you’re really good at something. If you don’t run into any errors then I don’t think there’s a chance to improve that and yourself.
If you investigate the error then you may find the cause. Is that different than investigating the cause of the error?
Errors have a cause that could be investigated. That’s like being a detective and finding who was the killer. They find stuff out through clues and get to the bottom of things.
What does the cause of an error look like? Is it an idea? Is it a policy? How do you know something was the cause vs. just something that resulted? You gotta have reasons for that. I think looking up what the definition of cause would be good here.
You could change how a plan or action happens so you don’t run into the error. What’s being discussed in the quote above looks different tho.
There’s a cause that makes other errors happen not just one error. Also, you can make more than one change. It’s not just one change to prevent the errors from the same underlying cause.
You could make changes to the errors I think or you could make changes to the underlying cause. The latter sounds like less work. It may be more work to investigate the cause, but it’s more worth it.
Here’s part of my response from last time:
I think I got the wrong idea about what “prevent” means. I got a bad connotation of the word. That or I got the wrong meaning of it. You’d still want to accomplish your goal, you wouldn’t just completely give up. Now tho I think you could also think about many clear goals to choose a goal that doesn’t fail at the same error.
“This” is an idea. It’s the sentence before the quote. “This” is investigating an error’s cause and making changes to prevent the errors. I get it more now what a postmortem is. I thought it was just investigating the cause of the errors. I definitely would want to make the changes too. Otherwise, why am I investigating so much?
What are root words btw? I think I remember those from school. I remember words like suffix and prefix. I think those are root words. Imma look it up rq…Ok after looking it up I figured “post” meant after and I looked up “mort” which I found out was death. Those are the root words
What if you treat a postmortem like it’s an easy to fix when it’s hard to understand? I think you gotta for sure know what the cause was cuz you could think you did a good postmortem and the cause is unaddressed. It could be worse cuz now it’s going to be ingnored more. The postmortem “addressed” it
Can you start with easy postmortems? What kinds are those? It would be good to start there. I think tho it’s hard to for sure know if an error is going to be deep or not. Still I think you could get some practice working on the easy postmortems
If you do a quick and easy postmortem then you’ll find the cause of the error and make changes to prevent the errors. I wonder if how easy the postmortem is relates to how deep the error was.
The next sentence after the quote above:
those quick and easy postmortems don’t have to be a big deal. That or the errors aren’t a big deal. idk
I think I run into the cause of the error being hard to understand but mostly cuz I don’t get the concept of something causing an error.
What would make an error’s cause hard to understand or fix? I think hard to understand would look like getting to the bottom of what’s causing the error. Like, it may seem more than one thing is causing the error when it’s not. It would be hard to decide in that scenario. There’s a whole thing about correlation does not equal causation so that’s something important to be aware of.
How would it look like for it to be hard to fix the cause of an error? I think if you change something it could mess up other things. Like, in coding. What if the cause is really deep? I think how deep an error is is the right topic to talk about.
I’m going to write about the following paragraph:
The first sentence:
Oh ok, the way errors are connected to problems is that they’re evidence about the problem. Is that different than ‘evidence of the problem’? What’s the difference between ‘of’ and ‘about’? I’m thinking ‘of the problem’ means that you have a problem already set up. You got a specific problem in mind. If you get evidence about the problem then your mind isn’t made up yet about what the problem is. The problem can be bigger than you thought. The error could be evidence of that.
Ok, I see that the problems are described as “in our heads.” That’s a prepositional phrase describing where the problems are at. That’s significant cuz you could deal with a problem with somebody else, but your problem and their problem can be different in your heads. I don’t think they’d be so far off if it was an easy problem but it can happen. You guys could be in disagreement about what something means or how the problem is set up.
When I think about “problems in our heads.” I think about ongoing problems. Stuff that we’ve dealt with for a while already. We just haven’t been aware of them yet. Maybe we picked up a hint here or there but haven’t identified them yet.
Errors are mistakes you make. Often they come to mind cuz they result in failure at the goal. We may not know why they happen but we know there’s something to fix there. Maybe you run into too many errors and so have to probably be less ambitious with your goals. You can choose a goal that doesn’t fail cuz of an error.
Why are errors evidence about a problem? Idk but they convey information to us i think. When error x happens goal y fails. When error x does happen something else happens that looks part of the problem… Idk how to phrase that, but maybe you can learn more about the problem from that.
A problem is something that can be fixed or made better. How does that relate to an error? How does something being problematic relate to all this? Can solutions have errors in them? Or only plans or actions?
Are thinking problems a category of problems? It’s a kind of problem. What makes a problem a thinking problem? How do they relate to all kinds of problems? Are all problems a thinking problem? They’re in our heads so we think about them. Even if it’s subconscious or not.
Us being not aware of thinking problems is an issue. That’s something to work on. That’s what postmortems are for. I think they help us find the problem.
Also, us not being aware of thinking problems sets up the problem in two parts: There’s identifying the problem and then fixing it. If we knew all our problems then we can just get right to fixing but that’s information we don’t know about. Is learning about problems knowledge about the problem? That way it helps us solve the problem better? Karl Popper dealt with that in a way when solving induction. He had to reformulate the problem first before finding a solution for it.
It’s also important to note that the thinking problems in the quote are “important”. They may be holding us back in some ways that prevents us from reaching our goals. I think they’re related to us making many of our errors.
Discovering an error seems like you’re finding out about it for the first time. Maybe you start a new hobby or a class at school and you run into an error there. You discovered it. That makes me like errors more cuz they’re not just gonna stay there, you can learn more about them. They aren’t set in stone.
I think saying “there’s a chance” means that you may not be successful. You may not be successful in what’s described in the quoted sentence. Maybe you won’t find an important thinking error. Maybe the thinking error isn’t all that important? Or it’s not even a thinking error?
For this part: “that investigating it will help us understand an important thinking error.” that talks about the chance. The error might end up helping you find an important thinking error. You can always investigate the error but there’s a chance you might find something important.
Investigating the error is what helps you understand an important thinking error. How do you understand an important thinking error? I think you learn about the important thinking error. How does the problems in our head fit here? Idk
I’m going to write about the following paragraph:
First sentence:
What is a straightforward correction? What’s an example of that? It’s hard to think of some. I could think about typing. Are there any straightforward corrections you can make there? Maybe you can correct an error to pass a typing test. But does that address the cause of the error? You might correct the error for a specific goal but what about a wider goal? What about for correcting a word when you type something philosophical or complicated? Idk
The following describes just making a straightforward correction:
When you just make a straightforward correction, you correct the error you made in one case. You don’t correct the error made in the kinds of categories or cases described in the quote. What’s the difference between this one case vs. broader categories or patterns of cases? Idk but the straightforward correction only corrects the error in the one case; it doesn’t correct the error in a broader category. Why? What’s broader mean? What’s a broader category? I think there’s pizza and its broader category is food. Pizza is a kind of food.
Let’s say you correct the error of not remembering your left and your right while driving. You do that by looking at your left or right hand. Doing that lets you know which is right and which is left. Ok, lets say you can’t look at your hands when doing something else that requires you to know your left and your right. That’s a different case. The broader category I think here is activities that require left and right knowledge. It’s not just driving now. Driving is part of that category.
The last part of first sentence quote:
I can see how you can improve significantly. If you investigate and find out an important thinking error then you will improve way more than if you just fixed it for one case. That’s gonna help you out in the long run. How much is that improvement really tho?
I think this all relates to learning to not be a perfectionist. If you fix your errors so you can figure out easy problems automatically then you don’t have to make so many of those kinds of errors. You won’t have to focus so much attention on errors that you can easily fix now. You can focus more on the harder stuff.
Yeah, I don’t think you’ll make much intellectual progress either. Unless you’re automatically correcting so many errors already, if you don’t postmortem you’re gonna keep focusing on making small changes. You’re gonna let go the opportunity to make big changes to fix underlying errors. I think ‘underlying errors’ may be the incorrect term, but you won’t make changes to fix important thinking errors.
I think if you never postmortem it’s like the same as postmorteming rarely. I think that’s cuz doing it rarely is so close to zero. It’s like your doing it zero times. There’s not much chance to actually improve at it and you won’t be as successful cuz it may be your first time.
I think when the quote says “you shouldn’t expect to” make much intellectual progress, that means what reason do you have you’ll improve much? If you’re not really fixing errors well then what are you doing to help with that? If you do have something helping you make intellectual progress then that’s good. Doing postmortems sounds important to do tho.
Does investigating the causes of errors also mean your making changes to fix them? Investigating causes of errors sounds good in itself cuz you can set up the problem and you can get to work on it. You’re not so left out on the dark about why so many errors happen. You’ve done the research and picked up on the clues.
Also, investigating is one of the main ways to become a better thinker? That makes me think that’s how you become a rational person. You’re building up knowledge like that. You’re refuting bad ideas and getting smarter. It’s the opposite in a way to supporting all your main ideas. Trying to make your ideas be more credent.
Im going to write about the following paragraph:
The first sentence:
I was thinking lately that the underlying cause of an error could equal a thinking process, method, policy, habit or pattern you use repeatedly. The underlying cause of an error isn’t just a cause; it isn’t just an action or force. It could be a policy or habit you have. That could cause the error you ran into a specific case.
What kind of errors are we talking about in the quote above? I know “Many” is modifying “errors” does that mean that some kind of thinking process or policy can cause all those errors? I think yeah since we’re talking about fixing categories of errors and not just in a single case. The thinking process can cause errors in a bunch of cases.
It’s interesting that the thinking process or habit or whatever is used repeatedly. There should be a way to notice it then. It’s not completely invisible. I think if you investigate then you can find the underlying cause of the error. Maybe it’s so automatic that it’s hard to become aware of the cause.
This sentence is connected to the last with “And”. How? Idk. Since we’re talking about errors, that includes many of the errors caused by the thinking process we use and the thinking process itself. If that thinking process is making so many errors then there’s an error in it too. At least one error.
I think the quoted sentence is setting up the problem of fixing important thinking errors. There’s not just a thinking process to fix but also many errors to identify. There may be many errors caused by a thinking process but also a majority of errors we’re unaware of. If you want to get to work on fixing the thinking process then you’re gonna have to investigate the errors you make too.
Third sentence:
Getting a limited amount of data like that sounds like math. It’s like stuff is being plot in a graph and we can know what each data point is about. Each point on the graph has some information that we can discern.
Why do we get limited amount of data?Is that data from an error? I think it’s limited cuz there’s not that much info we get when we make an error. It’s how you interpret it is what helps I think.
The following hyphen describes that limited amount of data:
So the data is in the form of known errors. It’s interesting that the data is in a certain form. That’s a kind of information I think. Also, “known errors” is described as well. It’s where we actually learn we were wrong. I don’t know what that means exactly but I think that’s answering a yes or no questions. Like “Are you wrong? Yes or no?” I think we know we were actually wrong when we’re doing a goal and then our attention comes to something that caused failure at the goal. We automatically think we’re wrong there I think. Something is going wrong.
How do you actually learn you were wrong? I think there could be a conflict that comes up or we run into a problem. Maybe when find out that we learned wrong information from a biased news sourced. We learned that we were wrong there. Ok, that’s a known error. That’s a data point you can use. For what? Idk I think for investigating underlying errors.
Ok that limited data helps us figure those underlying errors. I still don’t think I know what data means. Or limited data. But I think we don’t know many of the ways we’re wrong so there’s not much information we have that we can use to figure it out. We can use what we have to find out about deep errors.
That’s interesting that how we think could have errors. That could cause many mistakes we make. What does it mean “how we think”? How does that look like? Are they like ingrained ideas in us? What is an ingrained idea? Are they things we accepted a long time ago? Maybe they worked in the past but now they could be updated cuz there’s errors in them.
Known errors are valuable. They’re valuable data. So when you make an error I think you’ll kind of know you did. You got a data point there you can use. You can use it to help you figure out errors in your thinking. Is there something else that helps figure out those underlying errors?
It makes sense why stuff doesn’t get fixed. Like you could be making many errors on the daily that you thought look easy to you. You kind of fixed these errors in things you do, but you still encounter them while doing something else. There’s more going on than just fixing a mistake. You can get knowledge about your thinking problem so you can fix it. Mistakes aren’t just ends of the road and not something you don’t have to take seriously as much. They’re entire things you can investigate. You do that til you get to the truth.
I think we should too. It’s like a whole field of science or practice. You can learn a lot from errors. Dealing with the error and moving on as fast as possible is like dealing with an under researched science. You think you got a good idea about it so you move on and it makes it hard to make progress in life.
Im thinking when you give attention to errors you’ll get more practice to how much you give. You’re gonna learn along the way if a postmortem is easy to do or requires more investigation. I think you could be making a lot of errors right now so there’s some valuable data there to get started on. It’d be nice to start somewhere easy. I think it helps if you’re able to judge success or not.
I’m going to write about the following paragraph:
First two questions:
I think for the first question you might not know so well what an error is. Thats why there seems to be so little. It may be part of the reason. I dont think that could stop u from doing postmortems tho. Thats still a skill you can work on. You can learn more about errors doing tht too i think.
For the second question I think you may be really busy or not have much time. It would be nice dedicate a good chunk of your time to doing postmortems. How much tho? Idk i think as long as you dont get stuck too much then youre good.
Next sentence:
You dont have much data and dont often get to investigate it. That leaves with fewer opportunities to postmortem. It makes somewhat sense to me to put extra effort into those opportunities. What I get concerned about getting stuck and not making much progress. Thats a side issue tho. If you can make progress then it would be good to put extra effort.
What does it look like to put extra effort into the opportunities you do get? I think you would ask more questions. You would try to find more ways to think about the problem so you can solve it. You would take put more effort per time you spend on the postmortem. That ratio would be different than if you spent less effort with more time