The Only Way to Find Signals in the Noise

Every time one is introduced to a new topic, its fresh complexity can be daunting. It’s always tough to develop a clear enough initial understanding of a new subject simply due to the fact that you can’t separate the signal from the noise. In the book Mastery by Robert Green, he illustrates how reaching a high enough level of proficiency in a field will allow the ‘master’ to make intuitive decisions without needing significant executive function input. I’ve drawn to the interpretation that masters have trained their intuitions by exposing themselves to all the aspects of the new topic. Meaning all the stimulus including noise, signals, false positives and negatives, and failure and success cases. After enough exposure, their intuitions are able to pick up simple patterns that gradually get more holistic. In a way, they’ve jumped head first into the chaos and exercised enough patience for their intuitions to identify the signals from the noise. In the ML paradigm, they’ve had enough raw data to train satisfactorily successful models to help them ignore most things and pay attention to the few things that matter.

In short, when faced with a new challenge you don’t have much exposure to, lean into the chaos of the new challenge and be patient. Your intuition will learn gradually and help you make amazing decisions at some point in the future.