A lot of interesting replies below this comment that I won't be able to respond to individually.

I'll just leave this here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem

That seems barely related and settles nothing? Bottom line is simple, saying "you can't spec out something you have no clue how to build" is saying you cannot desire coldness unless you understand how to build a refrigerator. It's just the difference between what and how. If you don't know the difference between implementation and specifications, just try a whole day of answering "what" and "why" questions with "how" answers and see how it goes.

▲

_pdp_ an hour ago | parent [-]

Writing tests for a known solution (verification) is straightforward. But speccing out and testing something you haven't even figured out how to build yet (discovery) is a fundamentally harder problem.

Try speccing out a flux capacitor. I'll wait.

https://chatbotkit.com/reflections/verification-is-easier-th...

	▲	robot-wrangler 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Try speccing out a flux capacitor. I'll wait. One way to spec that is presumably something like "X% more efficient than current best-in-class", "made of Y,Z with no exotic materials", "takes no longer than T days to create" and so on. Anyway, being "anti" spec isn't even wrong because it's just a completely incoherent position. There's always a spec.. including any informal prompt you kick off your agents with. Call it a "structured prompt" if that soothes you and your agents, then let's move on to the interesting part where we decide how much structure is optimal