The first time I read the Sequences, I definitely didn’t understand everything. And of the things I did “understand”, I didn’t remember them all. Even after rereading different posts, it doesn’t always stick.
I have just come across the brilliant idea (sarcasm) to take notes. In particular, to try to boil each post down to its essence, and write a summary. I’ve done it for about 20 posts so far, and it seems to be really helping me understand stuff.
Furthermore, the act of having “conquered” a post (having had boiled it down to its essence and summarized it in a way that I’m confident I’d understand quickly after referencing my summary) feels really good, and being that the posts are rather bite-sized, I’ve gotten into a nice flow in writing my summaries.
All of this probably sounds obvious, and I doubt that any of you are surprised to hear that summarizing things is an effective way of learning. And I’m not sure whether other people just understand everything perfectly their first time through the Sequences.
But...
1) I doubt that people understand everything perfectly their first time.
2) Despite knowing that summarizing things is a good way to learn, I suspect that the trivial inconvenience of taking the initiative to write notes is powerful enough where most people don’t do it.
If 1 and 2 are true (for you), then perhaps it’d be a good idea to buy Rationality from AI to Zombies (can we call this RAZ please :) ) and use some sort of e-reader to highlight and take notes.
No, but I save the most ‘relevant’ of them on my phone, to reread when commuting. I seldom reread notes and indeed am more anxious that I might lose them than whether I have them within easy reach (a naturalist’s nightmare, I guess.)
The first time I read the Sequences, I definitely didn’t understand everything. And of the things I did “understand”, I didn’t remember them all. Even after rereading different posts, it doesn’t always stick.
I have just come across the brilliant idea (sarcasm) to take notes. In particular, to try to boil each post down to its essence, and write a summary. I’ve done it for about 20 posts so far, and it seems to be really helping me understand stuff.
Furthermore, the act of having “conquered” a post (having had boiled it down to its essence and summarized it in a way that I’m confident I’d understand quickly after referencing my summary) feels really good, and being that the posts are rather bite-sized, I’ve gotten into a nice flow in writing my summaries.
All of this probably sounds obvious, and I doubt that any of you are surprised to hear that summarizing things is an effective way of learning. And I’m not sure whether other people just understand everything perfectly their first time through the Sequences.
But...
1) I doubt that people understand everything perfectly their first time.
2) Despite knowing that summarizing things is a good way to learn, I suspect that the trivial inconvenience of taking the initiative to write notes is powerful enough where most people don’t do it.
If 1 and 2 are true (for you), then perhaps it’d be a good idea to buy Rationality from AI to Zombies (can we call this RAZ please :) ) and use some sort of e-reader to highlight and take notes.
Have you taken any sort of notes when reading the Sequences/RAZ?
[pollid:905]
No, but I save the most ‘relevant’ of them on my phone, to reread when commuting. I seldom reread notes and indeed am more anxious that I might lose them than whether I have them within easy reach (a naturalist’s nightmare, I guess.)