Welcome to LessWrong. One of the most interesting parts of LessWrong for me is noticing the cognitive bias in our thought process. For example, noticing that one dislikes another solely because the other is a member of a different group. (Psychology calls this the in-group bias).
Noticing those sorts of mistakes doesn’t necessarily require all that much mathematical ability. In short, the hope in this community is that clear thinking helps you achieve your stated goals (rather than some inaccurate approximation created by unclear thinking from the imperfect brain). In short, don’t sweat the math, there’s lots of practical stuff that can be achieved without it. If you are particularly interested in improving your self-awareness, might I recommend Alicorn’s Luminosity sequence?
Thanks! I consider myself more self aware than most, largely because I have done work similar to what is proposed in the Luminosity sequence myself. Of course interesting arguments could be had about how subjective the experience is, what ‘self’ I am even trying to be aware of (would that just be semantic?), but the result was a positive net gain in my quality of life. I’m curious to try the work with different techniques, though.
It will be interesting to see if the concept I hold of myself as pretty self-aware survives around here. All part of the process, I suppose.
As far as the math… If I don’t try I definitely won’t learn it. It will be a struggle, though.
Welcome to LessWrong. One of the most interesting parts of LessWrong for me is noticing the cognitive bias in our thought process. For example, noticing that one dislikes another solely because the other is a member of a different group. (Psychology calls this the in-group bias).
Noticing those sorts of mistakes doesn’t necessarily require all that much mathematical ability. In short, the hope in this community is that clear thinking helps you achieve your stated goals (rather than some inaccurate approximation created by unclear thinking from the imperfect brain). In short, don’t sweat the math, there’s lots of practical stuff that can be achieved without it. If you are particularly interested in improving your self-awareness, might I recommend Alicorn’s Luminosity sequence?
Thanks! I consider myself more self aware than most, largely because I have done work similar to what is proposed in the Luminosity sequence myself. Of course interesting arguments could be had about how subjective the experience is, what ‘self’ I am even trying to be aware of (would that just be semantic?), but the result was a positive net gain in my quality of life. I’m curious to try the work with different techniques, though.
It will be interesting to see if the concept I hold of myself as pretty self-aware survives around here. All part of the process, I suppose.
As far as the math… If I don’t try I definitely won’t learn it. It will be a struggle, though.