I care very much about phenomenology. At the moment I’m writing an Android app that’s supposed to teach the user to perceive phonemes that he didn’t perceive at first. It uses the spaced repetition principle but optimizes the algorithm for multiple choice questions.
I see that I do have weaknesses perceiving those phonemes in the English language that are generally hard to perceive for Germans (which is my native language). I learned a lot of my English on the internet via the medium of text and generally feel really comfortable about the language, so it’s interesting to tackle that issue.
In another project spaced repetition project I used Anki to learn to distinguish color that he didn’t distinguish beforehand.
I do not at all mean to say that you should go read Husserl and Heidegger. Despite their apparent potential for unprecedented clarity, the phenomenologists, without exception, seem to revel in obfuscation.
If you train yourself in perception you start to be able to make distinctions that you couldn’t make beforehand. If you express yourself and speak about those distinctions to a person who’s not able to make those distinctions he can’t understand you and it might seem like you are engaging in obfuscating.
On that topic I can recommend reading about phenomenological primitives. The term comes from people thinking about teaching physics and those people generally speak in a language that should be easy to understand for someone with LW background. http://edutech.csun.edu/eduwiki/index.php/DiSessa,_1983 is very much worth reading.
Somatics is another field that full of phenomenological investigation. It’s about noticing what goes on in your body.
Being able to notice that a given thought triggers a fear based freeze reaction in yourself that makes your breathing shallow
is very useful. It allows you to return to normal breathing before you think more about the thought.
Somatics also has a lot of prior art that’s interesting when you want train your abilities of perception.
See, this “noticing” thing sounds boringly simple at first, and not worth much consideration in the art of rationality.
Want concepts to be exiting instead of boring is a classic failure mode of a lot of rationalists. It’s a key to understand that just because something isn’t exciting doesn’t mean that it’s useless.
“Boringly simple” also often means: I think I understand topic X and I feel really uncomfortable about investigating the issue further.
Simple knowledge is good knowledge because you can build on it. It’s reliable. Complex intellectual arguments are usually not very reliable. On the other hand engaging in them is much more entertaining and for a lot of rationalists engaging in intellectual debates is their favorite form of entertainment. There’s also nothing wrong about debating ideas for entertainment but you shouldn’t let it keep you from also looking at the issues that feel uncomfortable and that aren’t entertaining.
In another project spaced repetition project I used Anki to learn to distinguish color that he didn’t distinguish beforehand.
I think I managed to do this when learning flags, with Chad and Romania. It seemed like I got to the point where I could reliably distinguish their flags on my phone, whereas when I started, I did no better than chance. I did consciously explain this to somebody else as something interesting, but now that I think about it, I failed to find it as interesting as I should have, because the idea that seeing a card a few times on Anki can increase my phenomenal granularity or decrease the amount of phenomenal data that my brain throws away, is pretty amazing.
A while ago I also learned country flags via Anki. While the flags in Wikipedia are different I’m not sure that the flags of Chad and Romania are different in reality. German law for example simple says that the colors of the flag are red, gold and black. It doesn’t specify the exact shade of red and different flag producers might produce slightly different shades of red.
Having phenomenal granularity for distinguishing different flags is also not that useful in real life. I think the key question is: “What are areas where having more phenomenal granularity actually matters?”
Examples that I have found are:
Audio: Phonemes, pitch of musical notes, duration of musical notes
Visual: Colors, Speed Reading
Kinesthetic: A lot of interesting stuff in somatics. Apart from that heartrate, breathing rate and things that are more difficult to label. Emotions are very important because noticing your emotions affect your reasoning, whether or not you are aware of them.
Taste: Recognise different spices. Tim Ferriss writes about training that skill in 4-Hour Body.
I care very much about phenomenology. At the moment I’m writing an Android app that’s supposed to teach the user to perceive phonemes that he didn’t perceive at first. It uses the spaced repetition principle but optimizes the algorithm for multiple choice questions.
I see that I do have weaknesses perceiving those phonemes in the English language that are generally hard to perceive for Germans (which is my native language). I learned a lot of my English on the internet via the medium of text and generally feel really comfortable about the language, so it’s interesting to tackle that issue.
In another project spaced repetition project I used Anki to learn to distinguish color that he didn’t distinguish beforehand.
If you train yourself in perception you start to be able to make distinctions that you couldn’t make beforehand. If you express yourself and speak about those distinctions to a person who’s not able to make those distinctions he can’t understand you and it might seem like you are engaging in obfuscating.
On that topic I can recommend reading about phenomenological primitives. The term comes from people thinking about teaching physics and those people generally speak in a language that should be easy to understand for someone with LW background. http://edutech.csun.edu/eduwiki/index.php/DiSessa,_1983 is very much worth reading.
Somatics is another field that full of phenomenological investigation. It’s about noticing what goes on in your body. Being able to notice that a given thought triggers a fear based freeze reaction in yourself that makes your breathing shallow is very useful. It allows you to return to normal breathing before you think more about the thought.
Somatics also has a lot of prior art that’s interesting when you want train your abilities of perception.
Want concepts to be exiting instead of boring is a classic failure mode of a lot of rationalists. It’s a key to understand that just because something isn’t exciting doesn’t mean that it’s useless. “Boringly simple” also often means: I think I understand topic X and I feel really uncomfortable about investigating the issue further.
Simple knowledge is good knowledge because you can build on it. It’s reliable. Complex intellectual arguments are usually not very reliable. On the other hand engaging in them is much more entertaining and for a lot of rationalists engaging in intellectual debates is their favorite form of entertainment. There’s also nothing wrong about debating ideas for entertainment but you shouldn’t let it keep you from also looking at the issues that feel uncomfortable and that aren’t entertaining.
I think I managed to do this when learning flags, with Chad and Romania. It seemed like I got to the point where I could reliably distinguish their flags on my phone, whereas when I started, I did no better than chance. I did consciously explain this to somebody else as something interesting, but now that I think about it, I failed to find it as interesting as I should have, because the idea that seeing a card a few times on Anki can increase my phenomenal granularity or decrease the amount of phenomenal data that my brain throws away, is pretty amazing.
A while ago I also learned country flags via Anki. While the flags in Wikipedia are different I’m not sure that the flags of Chad and Romania are different in reality. German law for example simple says that the colors of the flag are red, gold and black. It doesn’t specify the exact shade of red and different flag producers might produce slightly different shades of red.
Having phenomenal granularity for distinguishing different flags is also not that useful in real life. I think the key question is: “What are areas where having more phenomenal granularity actually matters?”
Examples that I have found are:
Audio: Phonemes, pitch of musical notes, duration of musical notes
Visual: Colors, Speed Reading
Kinesthetic: A lot of interesting stuff in somatics. Apart from that heartrate, breathing rate and things that are more difficult to label. Emotions are very important because noticing your emotions affect your reasoning, whether or not you are aware of them.
Taste: Recognise different spices. Tim Ferriss writes about training that skill in 4-Hour Body.
Mental: Credence, time intervals