“Put numbers on stuff, all the time, otherwise scope insensitivity will eat you” by habryka

Context: Post #6 in my sequence of private Lightcone Infrastructure memos edited for public consumption.

In almost any role at Lightcone you will have to make prioritization decisions about which projects to work on, which directions to take a project in, and how much effort to invest in any aspect of a project. Those decisions are hard. Often those decisions have lots of different considerations that are hard to compare.

To make those decisions you will have to make models of the world. Many models are best expressed as quantitative relationships between different variables. Often, a decision becomes obvious when you try to put it into quantitative terms and compare it against other options or similar decisions you've recently made. One of the most common errors people make is to fail to realize that one consideration is an order of magnitude more important than another because they fail to put the considerations into quantitative terms.

It is extremely valuable if you can a concrete number onto any consideration relevant to your work. Here are some common numbers related to Lightcone work that all generalists working here should be able to derive to within an order of magnitude (or within [...]

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First published:
November 16th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sdvBcPSR7p5mKhB7b/put-numbers-on-stuff-all-the-time-otherwise-scope

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.