Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

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Absolutely - also it’s unclear if you are allowed to remove things what solutions would be allowed / disallowed.

For instance do I have to have a roof? Could I just balance the brick on the structure?

Can I remove the whole structure, put the roof on the floor next to the person, and just put the brick on that?

If not, Can the guy lie down to clear extra space so I can remove another layer?

Could I just have the guy lie down and surround him with one layer of bricks and then put the roof on that?

It’s not immediately obvious to me that all the above solutions would be allowed as an answer, because the question is to put a brick on “the structure”, so surely if I remove some of “the structure” then that’s hardly putting a brick on “the structure”, it’s putting a brick on “a structure”.

I assume by the time you have put the guy in effectively a coffin buried under a brick then someone would argue that the purpose of the structure is lost, but you could also argue that somewhat if you removed the roof height (a higher roof could be a feature).

Becoming aware that people "by default" think like you describe — plus reflecting about if it's appropriate, and maybe doing something about it — is a bit the point with the article?

Look at the last paragraph:

> policymakers and organizational leaders could explicitly solicit [...] proposals that reduce rather than add

I disagree with their conclusion, because if you changed the question to say “the structure must be at least 3 Lego blocks high” without telling people to subtract blocks then I think it would probably solicit similar results.

Their conclusion is that people will add rather than take away, so you should tell people to take away. My conclusion is that people will add rather than take away if not provided enough information about the problem space. I think the solution is to better define the problem, otherwise you can come up with lots of proposals that aren’t suitable.

If I don’t know if making the guy lie down is allowed I’m going to have to make an assumption and either under-optimise or over-optimise.

My view is saying you can remove bricks implies that roof height isn’t important, which changes the users assumption on requirements. The learning should be more clarity on requirements, rather than just “ask people to reduce rather than increase”.

Additionally, if you changed the rule and said “participants will be scored based on the number of blocks removed”, I assume you would also get people creating silly scenarios like the ones I described and wholly unsuitable designs. This is more realistic in the real world where less material = less cost.

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