I first found this a while back site after googling something like “how to not procrastinate” and finding one of Eliezer’s articles. I’ve been slowly working may way through the posts ever since, and i think they are significantly changing my life.
I’ve just finished secondary education, which i found stultifying, and so i’m now quite excited to have more control over my own learning. I’ve been very interested in rationality since I was young, and have been passionate about philosophy because of this. Though, after getting into this site i’ve been exposed to some pretty damaging criticisms of the study of philosophy (at least traditional philosophy and the content that seems to be taught in most universities), and now i’m beginning to question whether i’m really interested in philosophy, and if it is valuable to study, or whether what i’m really after is something more like cognitive science.
This leads me to a problem: I’ve been offered a place at a well respected university (particularly in philosophy) for a course in which i can choose three out of five of the subjects of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neourobiology and linguistics, and i’m not sure which to choose. I’m in the process of familiarizing myself with the basics of all of these fields, and i’m writing letters to my old philosophy teachers with this article http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html attached to see how well the criticism can be answered. My problem is though that i’m quite uninformed in all of these areas, and i’m finding it hard to make a rational decision about which subjects to study. Any advice on this or generally how to make the decision would be much appreciated (eg. any recommendations for reading). My overall aim for my education is pretty well expressed by parts of less wrong—i want to become more rational, in both my beliefs and my actions (although i find the parts of less wrong about epistemology, self-improvement and anti-akrasia more relevant to this than the parts about AI, maths and physics).
Also, i found solved questions repository, but is there a standard place for problems which people need help solving—as if it exists it may be a better place for most of this post...?
Hi,
I first found this a while back site after googling something like “how to not procrastinate” and finding one of Eliezer’s articles. I’ve been slowly working may way through the posts ever since, and i think they are significantly changing my life.
I’ve just finished secondary education, which i found stultifying, and so i’m now quite excited to have more control over my own learning. I’ve been very interested in rationality since I was young, and have been passionate about philosophy because of this. Though, after getting into this site i’ve been exposed to some pretty damaging criticisms of the study of philosophy (at least traditional philosophy and the content that seems to be taught in most universities), and now i’m beginning to question whether i’m really interested in philosophy, and if it is valuable to study, or whether what i’m really after is something more like cognitive science.
This leads me to a problem: I’ve been offered a place at a well respected university (particularly in philosophy) for a course in which i can choose three out of five of the subjects of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neourobiology and linguistics, and i’m not sure which to choose. I’m in the process of familiarizing myself with the basics of all of these fields, and i’m writing letters to my old philosophy teachers with this article http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html attached to see how well the criticism can be answered. My problem is though that i’m quite uninformed in all of these areas, and i’m finding it hard to make a rational decision about which subjects to study. Any advice on this or generally how to make the decision would be much appreciated (eg. any recommendations for reading). My overall aim for my education is pretty well expressed by parts of less wrong—i want to become more rational, in both my beliefs and my actions (although i find the parts of less wrong about epistemology, self-improvement and anti-akrasia more relevant to this than the parts about AI, maths and physics).
Also, i found solved questions repository, but is there a standard place for problems which people need help solving—as if it exists it may be a better place for most of this post...?
Cheers