Home | Search

2026-02-07

Prune depth

Disclaimer

• Quick Note

Main

• Suppose you're working on a hard problem with steep difficulty curve, poor feedback loop, etc, you often don't actually know which actions will solve the problem, and none of your actions seem sure shot.

• I seem to see life as basically a series of explore and exploit stages. First you explore some, then you exploit some, then you explore some, then exploit some, and so on.

• See also: explore versus exploit on wikipedia, babble versus prune on lesswrong

• local predictions of what will happen if you take some action

• global predictions of what will happen if you take some long series of actions

  • often you only have a fuzzy sense

• theory versus practice

• accumulate knowledge versus accumulate power

• what is literally all possible work

  • read
  • talk to people
  • think
  • write
  • code
  • physical logistics

• get local feedback - as to whether this action got an additional unit of knowledge or power or similar as expected.

• your initial resources are knowledge, power, relationships, time

• your terminal end goal might be

• many people don't try to make long-term plans at all

• some people try to make them, but then give up because they

Subscribe

Enter email or phone number to subscribe. You will receive atmost one update per month

Comment

Enter comment