I’ve been curious for a while about the stuff I’ve been coming across about rationalists ‘not seeing themselves as ’someone who can learn math.″ Aside from wondering where this comes from, where do you excel?
(What kind of things do you see yourself as someone who can learn those things?)
What got you interested in rationality?
I’m curious because in hindsight the things I’m good seem to be the things I tried because I wasn’t self conscious about, and the things I’m not good at seem to be the things I was self-conscious about, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that—to ‘heal/upgrade mental architecture’ in order to progress.
I actually think this _particular_ subproblem is because I live among rationalists.
In high school and college, I was good enough at math that I didn’t feel any sense that I “couldn’t” do it. (I wasn’t excited by it per se, but I think if I’d pushed ahead with it I’d have been fairly competent)
But, living among rationalists gave me a weird sense that “excelling at math” was something other people were better at that me.
In the years in between college and rationality-community, I didn’t do anything particularly math-related, so it’s not like there was a keen interest that the rationality community squashed. But I think there can be a response to people seeming better at a thing than me (where I have a comparative advantage at other things) that leads to me just focusing on those other things so I don’t have to compete as hard.
In my case, the “other things” included community organizing, and certain kinds of art/design stuff that led me to spearhead Solstice, etc.
(I think the math thing was… basically fine – it’s still the case that I don’t think math is my comparative advantage and I’m not sure how much it’s worth learning it for the sake of following certain conversations. But it *is* the case that, via a similar pattern, being in the rationality community stunted my strategic growth for 3 years because I kept asking other people to solve strategic problems for me)
Note that this isn’t a necessary problem. Being around people better than you doesn’t mean you’ll do this—doing a math undergrad surrounded by better mathematicians doesn’t tend to cause people to stop learning math.
It sounds like your environment wasn’t encouraging you to work on strategic problems, just get them solved, and we could change that fact if we wanted.
I’ve been curious for a while about the stuff I’ve been coming across about rationalists ‘not seeing themselves as ’someone who can learn math.″ Aside from wondering where this comes from, where do you excel?
(What kind of things do you see yourself as someone who can learn those things?)
What got you interested in rationality?
I’m curious because in hindsight the things I’m good seem to be the things I tried because I wasn’t self conscious about, and the things I’m not good at seem to be the things I was self-conscious about, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that—to ‘heal/upgrade mental architecture’ in order to progress.
I actually think this _particular_ subproblem is because I live among rationalists.
In high school and college, I was good enough at math that I didn’t feel any sense that I “couldn’t” do it. (I wasn’t excited by it per se, but I think if I’d pushed ahead with it I’d have been fairly competent)
But, living among rationalists gave me a weird sense that “excelling at math” was something other people were better at that me.
In the years in between college and rationality-community, I didn’t do anything particularly math-related, so it’s not like there was a keen interest that the rationality community squashed. But I think there can be a response to people seeming better at a thing than me (where I have a comparative advantage at other things) that leads to me just focusing on those other things so I don’t have to compete as hard.
In my case, the “other things” included community organizing, and certain kinds of art/design stuff that led me to spearhead Solstice, etc.
(I think the math thing was… basically fine – it’s still the case that I don’t think math is my comparative advantage and I’m not sure how much it’s worth learning it for the sake of following certain conversations. But it *is* the case that, via a similar pattern, being in the rationality community stunted my strategic growth for 3 years because I kept asking other people to solve strategic problems for me)
Note that this isn’t a necessary problem. Being around people better than you doesn’t mean you’ll do this—doing a math undergrad surrounded by better mathematicians doesn’t tend to cause people to stop learning math.
It sounds like your environment wasn’t encouraging you to work on strategic problems, just get them solved, and we could change that fact if we wanted.