You can fix a flawed underlying thought process from a postmortem investigation. Is that the only time you’re addressing multiple pieces of criticism? Like, what if you have a short investigation and fixing the error was fast? Does that mean it won’t address multiple pieces of criticism? What are those multiple pieces of criticism? Are they the criticisms you’ve had before? The criticisms may be pointing out an error that has an underlying cause. Is there always an underlying cause to every error?
I think if you address multiple criticisms like in the quote above, you probably fixed their errors. Does addressing a criticism mean that you reached a resolution? Like, the criticism doesn’t apply to the new plan/action/idea for the goal? Now the issue/problem won’t cause failure at a goal?
Next sentence:
Those many past criticisms seem like the multiple criticisms that were addressed. If you make many errors from an underlying error then it makes sense there would be multiple criticisms. If you fix that underlying error then it’s like you addressed multiple criticisms by themselves. That sounds way more effective than making a quick fix for a criticism.
Is fixing an underlying issue similar to fixing one that’s surface level? Like, you’re still error correcting but you’re not doing it for a singular goal. Are you fixing stuff for a broader goal? What would be different than fixing an issue for a small criticism? Could you see how an underlying issue relates to a lot of criticisms?
Yeah, you can tell if the criticism was addressed or not. If it was then that’s good cuz that means that your postmortem attempts have been effective. If it wasn’t then that means you haven’t fixed the underlying issue. That could be either because your changes aren’t effective or that it’s a different underlying issue you’re working on.
That is a good sign. The fact that you can recognize such a pattern and that you fixed them means your postmortems are working. I think that’s what the good sign is for. You know you’re not wasting so much time or that you’re getting somewhere. That would be a nice situation to be in.
What does a pattern of errors look like? Patterns sound useful to know about here. I don’t know why I think patterns are kind of bad. I think I read something wrong online about them. Like, just cuz a pattern happens doesn’t necessarily prove a theory or something.
Where does that pattern of errors come from? Is that what you call errors caused by an underlying cause? They all have something in common? That pattern seems like something you’re going to learn about over time. That’s if you postmortem often.
What’s “this”? Is that doing postmortems and seeing good signs about it working? If your efforts are working then you’ll see something about errors. What is that? I think errors you make, like in the present or the past. You have a pattern in mind I think about the errors you make. That pattern should fit the errors you made in the past, but not in the present. The new errors are caused by different underlying issues. Since you made many improvements to underlying issues you should see other underlying issues cause different kinds of errors. Those errors wouldn’t make sense with the pattern you’ve identified in your past.
Are biases an example of an underlying error? I think yeah, you could be favoring something in an irrational way. I don’t think I know what a bias is. It’s like favoring a political party because your family likes to.
If you make a mistake cuz of a bias then if you don’t fix it you’ll be making more mistakes later. When an issue comes up that involves what your biased for then you’re gonna make errors there. The bias I think makes you makes you see the thing working the wrong way in an issue.
It’s not very good. It’s like baking with a malformed sheet of metal. It’s gonna leave a dent in the cake, and if you just fix the dent in the cake, you’ll keep getting dents in all other cakes. The dent in the cake is an error, but the bad shape of the metal is also an error. The metal is an underlying cause. I think since we can literally see the metal’s shape, it’s easier to spot.
How often do people think about fixing biases? Idk why I think that’s a CF exclusive thing. It’s something that would look so complicated and boring to work on that no progress is made. Maybe people in fields they’re good at work on their biases somehow. They’re able to do a good job in spite of some biases. Idk
What if you had like 3 biases? Each bias makes 5 errors every hour or something. If you fix an error after an hour you’re going to have 4 other errors for a bias. I think you’ll have 14 errors to fix in total. You’re going to keep having errors to fix while the biases keep making them.
I don’t think you’re ever going to win cuz biases are going to keep creating errors. You’re only going to keep fixing those errors while the biases create more errors. It’s like cleaning up a spill caused by a leak and never fixing the leak.
Why is that number unlimited? I think it’s cuz the bias is not fixed. The bias is free to cause mistakes. As long as you leave the bias unfixed then it’s going to keep making mistakes. It’s like leaving a code in programming on repeat. The program keeps going. The bias is an error so it keeps doing things wrong that involve it. How many things? Idk
I like using the example of biases in this article cuz now you can see that there could be other underlying causes too. It could be something else other than a bias. Also, what is a conceptual misconception? Is that different than a conception? They’re similar to biases cuz they can also cause errors too.
I think the quote is saying that having biases and other underlying problems cause many mistakes over time. It’s not just one underlying problem but more problems. Does have only biases cause less mistakes? Less than many?
It’s very enticing to work on these underlying problems. They’re the problems that I think have caused many mistakes in the past. They keep causing mistakes now. It sounds like so much work to only fix the mistakes. You’ll like never get anywhere working on those. It’d be nice to investigate your errors and fix the underlying causes. I think I have some experience investigating stuff like that and it would be nice to do that with errors.
What is the quote above a specific example of? I think it’s about underlying problems causing mistakes. That and fixing mistakes vs. causes. The political bias is the cause and believing the news source is the mistake.
What did the bias do to cause the mistake? So you’re reading a news story from your side and they’re incorrect. You believed that news story. You believed your side. You have a bias for your side that delivered the news story.
Next sentence:
This looks like something to watch out for and expect. Your own side can have pieces of incorrect information. How did your bias lead to you believing the incorrect info? Idk but if many pieces of info are incorrect then that’s a big number to watch out for. It’s not just a rare mistake that happens. It could happen with the next news story you watch. I wonder if that’s how things are in reality. I know people have political biases so that part for sure is real.
If you keep believing the incorrect pieces, then that’s going to be a lot of them. Maybe you don’t believe every piece of information. Also, you may believe a piece of correct info. It’s not like everything is wrong.
Imagine if someone else corrected each individual piece of the misinformation? That’s a lot of work. Your bias is going to keep making mistakes and keep having you believe a lot of pieces of misinformation. That person has a lot of work to do. They won’t even finish cuz that bias makes unlimited mistakes. I think in reality people would get tired at that point and start questioning things in a deeper way.
Also, it’s intuitive to me to focus on the error that was caused by the bias. Like, that thing on surface seems wrong so just fix it. That when it could be something deeper.
You don’t even see a lot of the errors you make. That’s something to expect. It seems important to investigate those errors and fixing the causes. If the example was realistic then fixing individual pieces seems like it’s never going to work. How are you going to identify them?
No it’s not good. It’s bad if you keep having the bias and believing in wrong things and you fix them individually. You won’t get anywhere. It’s like working with a flawed machine in a factory. It’s causing lots of mistakes you have to fix later. You’re causing a lot of extra work.
It’s important to look in to the underlying issue. I never really thought to see things like this. No one ever talks about this. The problem seems so invisible nobody talks about it. Imagine how well our lives would be if we took errors seriously. That or if we studied about how to fix them.
Also, I think I see how hard it is to run a philosophy forum if you’re really smart. What if people never look into the cause of their errors and you have to keep helping them fix specific cases for them. It’s like things are gonna go nowhere.
Edit: The top part of the reply is suppose to say *paragraph* not sentence.
What makes those error patterns the most important? Are they causing the most mistakes? Are they holding you back from being really smart? If you fix those you’ll be much smarter than you were before? What does it mean when something is the most important? Is that related to a goal?
Is the subtler a pattern is the harder it is to identify? In an investigation? Do you fix patterns of error? I think you would need more knowledge about the problem if a pattern of error is so subtle. Would you find less data points about subtle patterns of error? Is that part of why they’re so valuable? They’re scarce besides being the most important
What would an error pattern look like? Would it probably be a conceptual misconception? I looked up what ‘pattern’ means on Merriam Webster and I didn’t think it could mean a model.
Do you wait a bit before fixing the underlying cause? You haven’t understood it fully so don’t make a big change about it yet? It seems like you should investigate it a bit before you make a change.
Not being able to quickly guess what kind of underlying cause of an error is similar to being good at a skill. If you understood something well then you have it automatized and don’t make much errors. Do you get good at identifying the cause of an error?
Also, I see that you can guess the “kind” of underlying error. Kind means stuff like a bias or conceptual misconception I think. I don’t think you know about it exactly yet cuz you haven’t investigated a lot. I think if you were writing about politics and made a mistake, you could probably quickly guess that you have a bias going on. That vs. another issue.
Is the quote above assuming that you got a handle on the types of underlying causes? Idk but I think if you can’t quickly guess the cause then it seems you got something good going on. You could have leads on an important error you don’t know about.
What does “a better potential” mean? That’s what the underlying cause has that you can’t guess quickly. Is that about chance? Idk but maybe you’ve had some issues going on that you haven’t been able fix well. If you find a cause with a better potential, you might find the cause of those issues you’ve had. I think that’s why it’s important. You can find an underlying error that was making many of your mistakes.
Is there something good about finding a cause “that isn’t so well known.”? Well, you for sure found an error and you weren’t able to quickly guess the kind of cause. Maybe this cause has been causing many of your errors in the past. It would be good to investigate it.
I don’t know what those high standards are. I read already read ahead and I think it has to do with you doing the postmortem.
I think I’ve been doing superficial ones cuz I did a postmortem recently where I felt I was learning more about the problems than the actual fix to them. Like, what was the cause of the error? Can I confidently answer that? No? Ok, what is that about? It was learning more about what I didn’t know. I didn’t post it but it was when I was making a mini-project about video games.
What is “some kind of explanation of the error”? Does that talk about why the error happened? It seems like the explanation isn’t all that grounded. If the postmortem was superficial then it would be hard to find an explanation about why the error happened. It would be hard to talk about its underlying cause. You didn’t investigate enough to find the underlying cause let alone make a fix for it.
When the quote above says: “and then want to move on.” That makes things seem resolved when there’s still questions that linger. I think it would be better if you would conclude you couldn’t find answer. That shows that you can have a better investigation next time. There’s more to learn about your errors than you thought. Would it be good to assume, as a beginner, that you won’t find the cause all that easily? You should try to achieve goals you know are challenging enough to do.
@Dface I have a cold and I’m way behind on reading this stuff (and probably won’t read all of it) but I’m glad to see you posting a bunch.
In general, I’m happy to read some of your posts but I’m not sure which ones would be best for me to read. So here’s an idea. How about you tag me when you most want me to see something, but only do it for one post out of ten or less, and only if you’re still posting frequently. You can also put one question in bold in the tagged posts for me if you want.
I’m happy to hear. I think in making some kind of progress
So I can @ you when Id really want u to see something. Thats for only for 1 post out of ten or a little less. I also gotta still be posting frequently to do that.
Also, I can put a question in bold to give it more attention. That is a question in the tagged post.
I was thinking about tagging a post after many of them are made. I could edit it or reply to it to tag it. I could quote one of my questions in that post in bold.
That explanation is of the error? That explanation is about a well-known idea? I thought postmorteming was about finding about the kinds of errors you make. I think that’s something that wouldn’t be so well-known. Who is it well-known by? Everybody including the person postmorteming? I was thinking if it was well-known then the person is just applying stuff that is well-known in society to his situation. They would be wrong cuz they didn’t really figure out the underlying cause of their error. Maybe the well-known idea gave them some knowledge about their situation.
When the quote says: “or else a denial that there’s anything important going on” If the error isn’t explained by some well-known idea then the person will deny anything important is going on. There isn’t any pattern of error going on that’s causing many mistakes. What about dealing with stuff that isn’t well known? What if you’re not able to explain that stuff? You either have to investigate or avoid the problem
You make the claim above when denying anything important is going on when making an error. If you make a claim you can be wrong. If you make the claim above that seems pretty black or white. Just cuz you weren’t able to explain using a well-known idea doesn’t mean that there’s nothing going on. I think you would just have less tools to solve your problem. How often are errors really caused by random? If you do deny anything meaningful going on often then that seems like a problem. How much do you know about that?
You could aim to use well-known ideas to explain errors or deny anything meaningful is going on. The benefit to that is that you don’t have to investigate all that much and you can move on to other errors. What if you find a lot of errors are the same that you brushed aside tho? Those are random too? Or they’re not really explainable? There’s a cap to this approach.
What’s in the quote above is what you should aim for. What is it? One part is to “actually understand what’s going on in more depth”. That’s learning about an underlying issue. You can understand that an error is caused by another underlying error. You can investigate to find that you might have a bias or conceptual misconception. You may find that a thinking process is causing unlimited mistakes. If you didn’t understand what was going on in depth, then I think you wouldn’t get some processes used involved in your error.
That part of the approach sounds like more work, but it has a bigger payoff. It’s something to be more knowledgeable about. There’s more to learn about. Postmortems seem like one of the only ways to engage with underlying lying errors. It’s one of the ways to understand causes of mistakes and fixing them a lot of them.
The last part of the quote about what you should aim for is “and fix it in a lasting, effective way.” Fixing what’s going on in a lasting, effective way sounds good. Postmortems are lasting cuz you addressed the cause of some of your mistakes. You literally get why you made many of your mistakes and now you resolved the reason you make them. That’s gonna last for sure. Also, I think you should aim for effective changes cuz you could be focusing on the small stuff too much and not make any progress. This could lead one to quit.
This reminds me about the problem of induction. It seems like induction kind of works cuz knowledge creation is still happening, but induction is not how knowledge is created. It’s similar to aiming to understand your errors and fixing cuz you’re actually getting a grasp of the problem there and fixing it. I don’t think using induction and trying to fix it does that.
Why would it be hard to understand your errors problem in a deep way? I think it’s hard cuz you gotta get a track record of being successful. If you’re not really successful with things like this you’re gonna struggle. I don’t think that means you shouldn’t start tho. Also, investigating errors and fixing them involves thinking and philosophy so there’s not a lot of resources on this. There’s not a lot of good philosophers breaking things down like with good cooks.
How long does it take to understand your errors in a deep way and fix them? It might be a while. Maybe if you want a good grasp of them and want to fix them, then it might take a year or more. It may depend on you.
Also, how is it efficient overall? I think that has to do with how much work you’re putting in and getting reward out. Like, you might focus on local optima too much that you won’t change much about your situation.
You can keep doing postmortems to be better at thinking? How do they make you better at thinking? I think since there’s errors involved in thinking you’ll make less of them. You won’t make so many while learning something new. Like, you won’t have the same underlying causes making so many errors there. I think it may be easier to get good at something.
What does thinking involve? I think the activities you do with thinking will be better. Like, you’ll have more success with them. Thinking includes stuff like making decisions, learning, brainstorming, and other stuff. You’ll be better at those things.
How is the hyphen related to getting better at thinking? I think the quote above are the benefits to doing postmortems. I think you’ll save more time cuz you’ll understand how you make errors and so don’t have to get stuck not fixing underlying causes. Idk how you’ll be more successful in the long run, but you dealing with errors well will help you a lot. You’re gonna keep making errors in the future when you do philosophy. If you have a system to understand them and fix them then that’s going to aid you.
If you don’t really fix those errors, then when you take on some new project, you’ll have to take the time to fix the errors for the goals there. I think you can do a quick fix so the errors don’t cause too many problems for the project, but then you’ll have to keep doing that for new projects. That and what if you’re working on a complex project? Errors limit how much success you can have. I think that’s from knowledge skyscrapers. If you build on an error then, at some point, on a higher floor, you’ll be messing up a lot. I forgot what knowledge skyscrapers was about but it was something like that.
Idk how not fixing your errors seriously takes up a lot of time and energy. If you continue make those errors is that what takes up a lot of time and energy? Or is it fixing them? Fixing wasn’t mentioned so I don’t know. I think making errors literally takes time and energy. A lot? Idk but let’s say you try to come up with doing a goal in a non error way? You’re going to keep using time and energy to do an activity. Like, you could read a philosophy quote but it takes you so long to understand it cuz you’re making so many errors trying to do that. You’re taking way more time and energy than if you fix the the cause of those errors.
Why do those errors you keep making cause failure at goals you have? What are those goals? Like, big goals? Any goal you have? I think if you keep making the errors from unchecked causes then that’s going to cause failure at your goals. It’s going to make things hard to do that you mess up doing a goal. Idk
The paragraph above is similar to the one that comes before it. Especially this part:
They’re similar cuz both don’t involve doing a good postmortem. One postmortem is done superficially and the other one seems to not even happen. One party tries to fix the error quickly and the other tries to do a quick understanding of the error. Both want to move on without much effort to understand the problem.
Here’s the first sentence of the top quote:
I think I for sure do this kind of fix. I think update means to fix a problem. Idk what’s being updated. I think if you want to move on without much investigation then you’ll want to fix the error quickly and move on. The way you’re doing is something is flawed and you just update it to do your goal well.
I think I’m as eager as described in the quote cuz I like just fixing the error quickly so I can move on to do a goal. Like, it seems enticing to fix everything you notice cuz then you can probably do the goal afterwards. What if you’re doing something hard? I don’t think just updating like that will help.
I didn’t think that making an error warranted an investigation or discussion of the error. I kind of did but I thought if it was something that could get a quick manageable fix, then just do that and learn about it another time. A part of me thinks tho that a lot of the kinds of errors I make are the same. What’s the fixing for if you’re going to keep making the same errors later?
It’d be nice to learn how to do a substantial investigation or discuss an error. What’s substantial mean? You could learn about your error and what’s the underlying cause. That way you can have something to compare to when you just quickly fix the errors.
I’ve done this so many times. I try to learn something real quick and “fix” the errors I see. I notice things get noticeably harder and harder that it’s difficult to even progress. I thought I was learning something quickly and being rational about it, but there’s more than what you see on the surface. I think if you want to take a hobby or career path seriously and want to build complex knowledge, then quick fixes won’t help you in the long run. Will the underlying error still be present tho you did a quick fix? Like, will that make it harder to learn a career path?
What are some examples of quick fixes? Idk I think it can happen while learning to type, playing video games, learning philosophy, and playing a sport. I think you can make one while you play an instrument. You can mess up a few keys on one hand while playing the piano. You quickly fix that by looking at that hand so you hit the right keys. This now increases the number of things you look at to not mess up. What if you look at so many things at once that it strains your eyes?
They’re usually errors too? How? That’s interesting cuz you would think you’re doing the opposite of an error, like you’re making things better. But quickly fixing an error can be a mistake too? I think it helps to know what an error is to understand why. Errors are things that result in failure at a goal. If the error you fix doesn’t result in failure at a goal then fixing it is resulting in failure somewhere else. I think it has to do with bigger goals. Like, if you want to build a knowledge skyscraper.
I think local and global optima are related. Since an underlying cause is making many mistakes over time, quick fixes can be errors. You’re focusing on local optima. There’s a thinking process you’re using to build up knowledge; if that’s broken and you’re not fixing it then I think you’re wasting time and fighting an uphill battle.
@Elliot I tagged the reply. This is also the question in bold:
I think I’m ok with you or anyone pointing out any kind of error. Like, why im even replying to something. Also, if I need to rephrase or find a better question that’s fine too
Edit: Also im ok with someone else that can answer the question. Like, someone else who wants to answer or is assigned. For practice
I’m happy to hear. I think in making some kind of progress