Magnus Carlsen claims that one or two signals per match from a chess AI indicating when he should think hardest would make him “almost invincible”.
— Richard Ngo (@RichardMCNgo) June 1, 2025
IMO you could boost researchers similarly with just one or two signals a year saying “think hard about the paper you just read”.
I wonder how generalizable this concept is to other fields.
“Think extra hard now”
Most things have 80-20 (Pareto) returns. If you can learn to discern when to think just a little bit extra, you can capture more of the 80%.
Interesting that Sam Altman says very much a similar thing.
Sam Altman on the biggest mistake talented and hard-working people often make
— Startup Archive (@StartupArchive_) April 13, 2025
“You should have a very high bar for doing anything but thinking about what to work on… Of course that doesn’t work all of the time. At some point, you actually have to go execute. But I often see… pic.twitter.com/rOUI4NVz4B
“You should have a very high bar for doing anything but thinking about what to work on… Of course that doesn’t work all of the time. At some point, you actually have to go execute. But I often see people who I think are really talented, work super hard, and are super product, not spend any time thinking about what they’re going to work on.”
“If I have a very hard problem or I’m a little confused about something, I still have not found anything better to do than sit down and make myself write it out… It is a super powerful thinking tool.”