Hamming questions
In his most recent newsletter, Ben James shared some “important snippets” from things that he read over the holidays. It included a post from 2019 on ‘The Hamming Question’ which I really like, and focuses the mind somewhat. I perhaps need to think about what the Hamming questions are in the areas in which I work.
Mathematician Richard Hamming used to ask scientists in other fields “What are the most important problems in your field?” partly so he could troll them by asking “Why aren’t you working on them?” and partly because getting asked this question is really useful for focusing people’s attention on what matters.
Source: LessWrong