LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“‘Think it Faster’ worksheet” by Raemon


Listen Later

This is a succinct worksheet version of the "Think It Faster" Exercise.

You can use this worksheet either for purposeful practice, after completing some kind of challenging/confusing intellectual exercise (such as Thinking Physics or Baba is You). Or, if in your real life work you find something took a noticeably long time to figure out, or you were surprised about something you might have been able to notice.

The goal is to identify:

  • skills you can train
  • principles you can apply
  • actions you can take (either physical or mental)

…that move you to correct solutions to problems as quickly as possible.

I recommend setting the standard of "what would have been necessary for me to have figured this out with like 15 minutes of effort?". (This won't always usually be possible, but I find this frame helpful for noticing how high the skill ceiling here is. [...]

---

Outline:

(01:04) Overview

(01:08) Part 1

(01:52) Part 2

(02:51) Part I: Thinking it Faster

(02:56) Steps you actually took

(03:05) Magical superintelligence steps

(03:24) Iterate on those lists

(04:27) Part II: Thinking It Faster The First Time

(04:52) Generalizing from this exercise

(05:25) Anticipating Future Life Lessons

(06:21) Getting Detailed, and TAPs

(07:45) Part III: The Five Minute Version

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

February 8th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/skEhdgiK6T5HzMhis/think-it-faster-worksheet

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,326 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,398 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

7,868 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,107 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

87 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Your Undivided Attention

1,451 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

8,758 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

90 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

352 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,358 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,037 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

465 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

129 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

72 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

433 Listeners