do you have any sources you turn to specifically to help broaden your horizon from the prevailing mindset at Less Wrong?
I have for a long time used a combination of directed search, breadth-first screening, and random samples.
Directed search is when I find one article on a subject, and I check its references to find other important articles on the subject, or use google or pubmed to find new references. Or when I click through Wikipedia links.
Breadth-first is when I pick some broad source and scan all the topics that come up on it. I read the complete index of every issue of Science magazine, to get an idea what is going on in a variety of fields. When I was in high school, I worked in the library, and looked at one shelf every day. By the time I graduated I had seen the title of every book in the library, and so I knew at least what the distribution of topics was.
I do random sampling with eMule: I will sometimes search for anything being shared that has some common word, like “the”, “for”, or “when”, in it. (Hint: Avoid “behind”.)
All of these work well for science. None of them work very well with literature or music.
I have for a long time used a combination of directed search, breadth-first screening, and random samples.
Directed search is when I find one article on a subject, and I check its references to find other important articles on the subject, or use google or pubmed to find new references. Or when I click through Wikipedia links.
Breadth-first is when I pick some broad source and scan all the topics that come up on it. I read the complete index of every issue of Science magazine, to get an idea what is going on in a variety of fields. When I was in high school, I worked in the library, and looked at one shelf every day. By the time I graduated I had seen the title of every book in the library, and so I knew at least what the distribution of topics was.
I do random sampling with eMule: I will sometimes search for anything being shared that has some common word, like “the”, “for”, or “when”, in it. (Hint: Avoid “behind”.)
All of these work well for science. None of them work very well with literature or music.
runs off to test...