Thanks, knowing about this game mode makes me want to play Civ again!
I was wondering if you have any thoughts on how we as individuals might act to acquire useful information effectively. A lot of information out there that we normally consume (social media/news etc) is often eye-catching or interesting but not very useful (it doesn’t change our plans or outlook in life). Personally I would guess that books might be the best bet, but it can be hard to find the right ones.
This is a very large question; a significant fraction of all the posts on LessWrong are relevant. In particular, the World Modelling tag seems like a good starting point to look for relevant ideas.
I would specifically advise against looking for information which directly impacts your plans/outlook in life, and rather try yo obtain strong general-purpose understanding of aspects of the world which are relevant to you. The reason is that it often just isn’t possible for a strong understanding to be “shallow”—you need to figure out the big picture of how a system works before it’s clear which parts are critical for you specifically.
Thanks, I agree that LW is a good place to start reading. I would add that LW can also be a good source for curated material, i.e. someone might post about the best primary and secondary sources to find out more about a topic.
I also get your point about “broad” vs “shallow”. I do wonder what a good model would look like for reading since broad understanding in itself is relatively useless—it needs to be translated into shallow, technical understanding at some point.
Thanks, knowing about this game mode makes me want to play Civ again!
I was wondering if you have any thoughts on how we as individuals might act to acquire useful information effectively. A lot of information out there that we normally consume (social media/news etc) is often eye-catching or interesting but not very useful (it doesn’t change our plans or outlook in life). Personally I would guess that books might be the best bet, but it can be hard to find the right ones.
This is a very large question; a significant fraction of all the posts on LessWrong are relevant. In particular, the World Modelling tag seems like a good starting point to look for relevant ideas.
I would specifically advise against looking for information which directly impacts your plans/outlook in life, and rather try yo obtain strong general-purpose understanding of aspects of the world which are relevant to you. The reason is that it often just isn’t possible for a strong understanding to be “shallow”—you need to figure out the big picture of how a system works before it’s clear which parts are critical for you specifically.
Thanks, I agree that LW is a good place to start reading. I would add that LW can also be a good source for curated material, i.e. someone might post about the best primary and secondary sources to find out more about a topic.
I also get your point about “broad” vs “shallow”. I do wonder what a good model would look like for reading since broad understanding in itself is relatively useless—it needs to be translated into shallow, technical understanding at some point.