Hello, I’m Erin. I am currently in high school, so perhaps a little younger than the typical reader.
I’m fascinated by the thoughts here. This is the first community I’ve found that makes an effort to think about their own opinions, then is self aware enough to look at their own thought processes.
But, this might not be the place for this, I’m am struggling to understand anything technical on this website. I’ve enjoyed reading the sequences, and they have given me a lot to thing about. Still, I’ve read the introduction to Bayes theorem multiple times, and I simply can’t grasp it. Even starting at the very beginning of the sequences I quickly get lost because there are references to programming and cognitive science which I simply do not understand.
I recently returned to this site after taking a statistics course, which has helped slightly. But I still feel rather lost.
Do you have any tips for how you utilized rationality when you were starting? How did you first incorporate it into your thought processes? Can you recommend any background material which might help me to understand the sequences better?
You could just trying to read the posts even if you don’t explain all the jargon: over time, as you get more exposed to the terms that people use, I’d expect it to get easier to understand what the examples mean. And you might get a rough idea of the main point of a post even if you don’t get all the details. Eric Drexler actually argues that if you want to learn a bit of everything, this is the way to do it.
If you don’t understand some post at all, you could always ask for a summary in plain English. Many of the posts in the Sequences are old and don’t get much traffic, so they might not be the best places to ask, but you could do it an Open Thread… and now that I think of it, I suspect that a lot of others are in the same position as you. So I created a new thread for asking for such explanations, to encourage people to ask! Here it is.
Thank you for the link and for starting the thread.
The article made me realize that I am going about trying to understand rationality as if I have a major exam in a couple months. Reading many of the articles on here for a second time, I’m grasping them a lot better than I did before. The new thread seems like it will be immensely useful.
I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my question!
Welcome, Erin! As Adele said, even if math is not your passion, you can still learn a lot about your own thinking from what Eliezer and others wrote. For a look back by one notable LWer, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/13/five-years-and-one-week-of-less-wrong/ . Be sure to check out Scott’s other blog entries, they are almost universally eloquently written, well-researched, charitable, insightful and thought-provoking.
Thank you for the link. I’m very pleased to find another source of such interesting ideas. I anticipate the day when I too will read the sequences and be able to say “everything in them seems so obvious.”
Hi Erin, I’m Adele! It’s good to see young rationalists here. I think you might really like Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman is a well-known psychologist, and winner of the 2002 Nobel prize in Economics. In this book, he goes through different thinking processes that humans often use, and how they are often wrong. It is not very technical, and is a pretty easy read IMO. It might also help with some of the cognitive science stuff in the sequences.
It’s okay to not understand Bayes’ theorem for now, knowing the math doesn’t really make you that much better at being rational—there are easier things to do with larger gains. If you want to get the programming references, it might be worth learning to program. There are some online courses which make it relatively easy to get started. It’s also a good skill to have for when you are looking for employment.
One thing that has helped me a lot in being more rational is having friends who can point out when I am being irrational. Another good place to look at (and go if you can) is CFAR, whose point is basically to help you get better at being rational.
Thank you for the resources! Kahneman’s book looks very interesting, and luckily my library has it. I’ll check it out as soon as possible.
I am planning on taking a Java Programming class next year. Does Java have the same set up/structure/foundation as the languages that are referenced on here?
What would you say is the programming language that is most relevant to rationality (even if it isn’t a good beginning language)?
I definitely recommend learning to program in a different language before you take your Java class. Java makes things more complicated than they need to be for a beginner, so it’s good to have a conceptual foundation in a simpler language. If all you care about is being able to reason abstractly about recursion and that sort of thing, Scheme is a language that’s good for beginners and will teach you to do that. (You could download this and read this free book or this free book.) If you want to focus more on kicking butt in your Java class and building games/web applications/scripts for automating your computer, I recommend learning Python (I like this guide; here’s another free book). These are both great choices compared to the languages people typically start learning to program with. I would lean towards Python because the resources for teaching it to yourself are better (there’s a Udacity class, the community online is bigger, etc.) and it will still give you most or all of the rationality-related benefits of learning to program. Search on Google or talk to me if you run in to problems (teaching yourself is tough).
Awesome! Pretty much any language will give you enough background to understand the programming references here. I agree with John that Scheme and Python are good languages to start with. The most rational language to use depends a lot on what exactly you are trying to do, what you already know, and your personal style, so don’t worry about that too much.
Thank you both! Just starting to go through those explanations, Bayes Theorem is making a lot more sense, and I’m also starting to see why everyone is excited about it.
Hello, I’m Erin. I am currently in high school, so perhaps a little younger than the typical reader.
I’m fascinated by the thoughts here. This is the first community I’ve found that makes an effort to think about their own opinions, then is self aware enough to look at their own thought processes.
But, this might not be the place for this, I’m am struggling to understand anything technical on this website. I’ve enjoyed reading the sequences, and they have given me a lot to thing about. Still, I’ve read the introduction to Bayes theorem multiple times, and I simply can’t grasp it. Even starting at the very beginning of the sequences I quickly get lost because there are references to programming and cognitive science which I simply do not understand.
I recently returned to this site after taking a statistics course, which has helped slightly. But I still feel rather lost.
Do you have any tips for how you utilized rationality when you were starting? How did you first incorporate it into your thought processes? Can you recommend any background material which might help me to understand the sequences better?
You could just trying to read the posts even if you don’t explain all the jargon: over time, as you get more exposed to the terms that people use, I’d expect it to get easier to understand what the examples mean. And you might get a rough idea of the main point of a post even if you don’t get all the details. Eric Drexler actually argues that if you want to learn a bit of everything, this is the way to do it.
If you don’t understand some post at all, you could always ask for a summary in plain English. Many of the posts in the Sequences are old and don’t get much traffic, so they might not be the best places to ask, but you could do it an Open Thread… and now that I think of it, I suspect that a lot of others are in the same position as you. So I created a new thread for asking for such explanations, to encourage people to ask! Here it is.
Thank you for the link and for starting the thread. The article made me realize that I am going about trying to understand rationality as if I have a major exam in a couple months. Reading many of the articles on here for a second time, I’m grasping them a lot better than I did before. The new thread seems like it will be immensely useful. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my question!
Glad I could help. :)
Welcome, Erin! As Adele said, even if math is not your passion, you can still learn a lot about your own thinking from what Eliezer and others wrote. For a look back by one notable LWer, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/13/five-years-and-one-week-of-less-wrong/ . Be sure to check out Scott’s other blog entries, they are almost universally eloquently written, well-researched, charitable, insightful and thought-provoking.
Thank you for the link. I’m very pleased to find another source of such interesting ideas. I anticipate the day when I too will read the sequences and be able to say “everything in them seems so obvious.”
Hi Erin, I’m Adele! It’s good to see young rationalists here. I think you might really like Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman is a well-known psychologist, and winner of the 2002 Nobel prize in Economics. In this book, he goes through different thinking processes that humans often use, and how they are often wrong. It is not very technical, and is a pretty easy read IMO. It might also help with some of the cognitive science stuff in the sequences.
It’s okay to not understand Bayes’ theorem for now, knowing the math doesn’t really make you that much better at being rational—there are easier things to do with larger gains. If you want to get the programming references, it might be worth learning to program. There are some online courses which make it relatively easy to get started. It’s also a good skill to have for when you are looking for employment.
One thing that has helped me a lot in being more rational is having friends who can point out when I am being irrational. Another good place to look at (and go if you can) is CFAR, whose point is basically to help you get better at being rational.
Thank you for the resources! Kahneman’s book looks very interesting, and luckily my library has it. I’ll check it out as soon as possible. I am planning on taking a Java Programming class next year. Does Java have the same set up/structure/foundation as the languages that are referenced on here? What would you say is the programming language that is most relevant to rationality (even if it isn’t a good beginning language)?
I definitely recommend learning to program in a different language before you take your Java class. Java makes things more complicated than they need to be for a beginner, so it’s good to have a conceptual foundation in a simpler language. If all you care about is being able to reason abstractly about recursion and that sort of thing, Scheme is a language that’s good for beginners and will teach you to do that. (You could download this and read this free book or this free book.) If you want to focus more on kicking butt in your Java class and building games/web applications/scripts for automating your computer, I recommend learning Python (I like this guide; here’s another free book). These are both great choices compared to the languages people typically start learning to program with. I would lean towards Python because the resources for teaching it to yourself are better (there’s a Udacity class, the community online is bigger, etc.) and it will still give you most or all of the rationality-related benefits of learning to program. Search on Google or talk to me if you run in to problems (teaching yourself is tough).
Awesome! Pretty much any language will give you enough background to understand the programming references here. I agree with John that Scheme and Python are good languages to start with. The most rational language to use depends a lot on what exactly you are trying to do, what you already know, and your personal style, so don’t worry about that too much.
Hello and welcome!
I don’t know about the sequences in general, but for Bayes’ Theorem you could try Luke’s An Intuitive Explanation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem.
I’ll throw in a couple more explanations as well. (It’s hard to know in advance which one might make the idea click neatly into place!)
Thank you both! Just starting to go through those explanations, Bayes Theorem is making a lot more sense, and I’m also starting to see why everyone is excited about it.