Planting

Planting a question is when you start trying to answer a question, enough that the question gets its hooks into your mind, and then you stop deliberately paying attention to the question.

Planting questions is a forgotten fundamental of thinking about hard problems.

Just asking the question often isn't enough. Trying to answer the question is more likely to plant the question, but also often isn't enough. Some activities that might help plant a question:

• Vary the question--e.g. try to ask an analogous question in a different domain, or ask an analogous question but about a different aspect.
• Is there some stuff that would probably answer or half-answer the question, if you knew it? Is there some other stuff that probably wouldn't?
• Can you shortcut or circumvent the question? If not, what's the core of why the question stubbornly asks itself?

See here for more.

(Note that planting applies to elements other than questions, e.g. a demand to gain a skill that's missing. Questions are a central class of cases, but another important class is wishes--a wish is a conjectured possibility and a desire; a planted wish can grow into a mission, a plan, a collaboration.)

Growing

A planted question sometimes grows. That means:

• It asks subquestions. You wonder about things related to the question.
• It recognizes things. You bump into something that informs the question.
• It makes allies. You bump into something that seems analogous--so now the question applies to and is informed by both analogands.
• It bears fruit--maybe--eventually.

Examples

• I like to avoid spoilers. When I go rock climbing, I don't want to know a correct or workable method for climbing a route--I want to figure out what does and doesn't work. If I glance at someone climb part of a route that I haven't already tried, it's fine: a glimpse of their movement or body position doesn't mean much to me, it doesn't spoil the puzzle. However, if I've already struggled with the route and gotten stuck, the even a glimpse might click something into place or collapse a bunch of uncertainty. Just a glimpse. The planted question is volatile, it increases recognition surface area, it sets up landing pads for helicopters of knowledge lol.

• From "Indiscrete Thoughts", 1997, by Gian-Carlo Rota:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

• Key elements that want to be overhauled often can't be overhauled at the outset. So questions about them have to be planted--by trying to overhaul them.
  • E.g. I always advise people who want to increase humanity's chances of making aligned AGI, to try to solve the whole problem from scratch. That's because they have to start building a reference frame for why any subquestions could possibly matter.
  • That is, you should think about big-picture questions, like strategy or alignment, until the question is planted.
  • In fact, the question being planted is the main benefit of thinking about it--the progress toward the promise of future fruit is more valuable than the present fruit (which is often scarce and therefore discouraging!).
  • That's a fraught think for me to say, because to plant the question, you have to be moving to answer the question, not trying to plant the question. Not trying to try, but rather cutting the enemy. But we are reflective ("bending-back") creatures who can reflectively see ourselves and then reflectively act on ourselves.
  • The recommendation is not just to pay attention to the problem, but to think about it and try to solve it; not just to think about the problem, but to dwell in it (invest it with general life-force); not just to dwell in it, but to do so in a way that plants the question, which is a more specific target.

Relationship with dwelling-in

Amphicausality

Dwelling in a question is likely to plant or further plant the question. When a question is planted, it's likely to later call for you to return to it--at which point you may dwell there for a time.

As a story

You dwell in a question, which plants it. You then leave: you live somewhere else, attend to other things. The question stays there (in the back of your mind, while you're in the front of your mind). You might return to the question from time to time--to help it grow, to bring something to it from elsewhere (an analogy, or a part of a solution), or because it's time to harvest (that is, to apply to some other problem whatever you've learned from investigating the question and having it incubate in the back of your mind). A well-planted question especially draws you to return to and dwell in it. When you return to the question, you might or might not dwell there more, and you might or might not plant the question more. For example, you might simply leave an analogy there, planted alongside the planted question--you didn't dwell there, but you did plant the question more. Or you might harvest applications from the question, and dwell with those applications, which is kinda in the same place but might not involve planting the question more (if, say, it has already fully fruited).

Disoverlap

Let's demarcate planting and dwelling-in.

Planting without dwelling-in

• Planting a narrow or technical question, e.g. one with an algebraic character. Think of the tetris effect, or thinking about a programming problem. Something is planted, but it's fairly narrow. It's crunchy, but not necessarily deep. Such a question probably wasn't dwelled-in (though it could be).
• Combining two planted questions.
• Planting a question in a piecemeal way. E.g. being exogenously exposed to something over and over, and asking many little questions about it, and combining those questions, building up around more central questions bit by bit, with the more central questions gaining primacy and momentum, without ever being dwelled on. (Though possibly it would be better to think of this as coming from some sort of "piecemeal dwelling"?)

Dwelling-in without planting

• Core questions might have been already resolved, leaving none to plant.
• Questions might not take root--they might be too difficult, or too alien or diasystemic, so that they don't find much to hook into.
• There may not have been much of a question in the first place. E.g. a simple skill, such as braiding hair or balancing on a beam, can be dwelled in without planting any big questions. (Though usually there's at least a possibility for planting questions.)

Some ways that people preclude themselves from planting questions

• They're deferring about background assumptions. Having a deferential frame often prevents general life-force from being invested--the unbounded creativity of general life-force shouldn't be circumscribed.
• They're avoiding it because it's too hard, there's no traction, it would take too long, there's no immediate benefit.
• They're avoiding it because if it worked, it would go on demanding life-force.

inb4

• The first stage of creativity is preparation, followed by incubation, according to Wallas's model.

• See Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field", 1945, discussing Poincare's description of mathematical work. He quotes Poincare saying he was disgusted with his failed attempts to solve a problem through deliberate work, having been stymied by blind alleyways; and further deliberate work didn't topple a central problem. But, Poincare says, although all his efforts had appeared fruitless, they weren't: they had "set going the unconscious machine", making them a but-for cause of later sudden inspiration.

• Some reasons (new) words are useful, from The possible shared Craft of deliberate Lexicogenesis:

Nucleation. Like planting a seed or nucleating a crystal, a word creates a site that begins to play a role and begins to collect material that helps to play that role.

Tentpoles. By preliminarily setting up a site that begins to play a role in thinking, a word helps set up a context where other ideas can more fully be called to play their own role. By raising one tentpole, the other tentpoles take on more meaning: together they lift the tent fabric to create more space.