Hi. Just got here yesterday by way of a link from the “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” story, which I loved. I found the story by way of a link from David Brin’s blog (I’ve been a fan of Brin for a long time now).
Oh thanks! Quick reply, there. I don’t suppose you might know if/how
I can enable email notification of replies to stuff I say here?
I think Brin kind of has his own, what was the word he used… “blog-munity”, and he’s pretty busy on top of that (or SHOULD be, anyway) with that novel that’s supposed to be an update to “Earth”.
I’m just starting to look through the “Sequences” here. A lot of it feels very familiar to me, as I became a major Richard Feynman fan at a relatively young age myself, but I am sure I can find plenty to improve on nevertheless.
I also, more recently, became a fan of Michel Thomas, a name which is probably less likely to be familiar to people on the site.
Basically, he was a language teacher, with a rather distinct, and in my personal experience, extremely effective methodology.
So I tracked down the one book I could find on that methodology (“The Learning Revolution” by Jonathan Solity). That lead me to “Theory of Instruction” by Sigfried Engelmann and Douglas Carnine, which I have just cracked open...
The point is that they claim to have an real, actual good scientific theory (parsimonious, falsifiable, replicable, etc) of how to actually teach optimally, by doing a rational analysis of the material to be taught so that it can be conveyed to the learner in a logically unambiguous way...
Okay wait, no, the REAL point is that there’s a REALLY good way to teach ANYTHING to ANYONE so that EVERYONE could learn a hell of a lot more, way faster and way easier.
Or at least they say there is, and I’m sufficiently impressed with them so far to be saying, wow, this needs a LOT more attention.
And then, once we have this, we can start using it to teach all those things that really need to be taught better, for example these “methods of rationality”...
Hi. Just got here yesterday by way of a link from the “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” story, which I loved. I found the story by way of a link from David Brin’s blog (I’ve been a fan of Brin for a long time now).
Frankly, I’m surprised Brin hasn’t showed up here himself.
(Welcome btw!)
Oh thanks! Quick reply, there. I don’t suppose you might know if/how I can enable email notification of replies to stuff I say here?
I think Brin kind of has his own, what was the word he used… “blog-munity”, and he’s pretty busy on top of that (or SHOULD be, anyway) with that novel that’s supposed to be an update to “Earth”.
I’m just starting to look through the “Sequences” here. A lot of it feels very familiar to me, as I became a major Richard Feynman fan at a relatively young age myself, but I am sure I can find plenty to improve on nevertheless.
I also, more recently, became a fan of Michel Thomas, a name which is probably less likely to be familiar to people on the site.
Basically, he was a language teacher, with a rather distinct, and in my personal experience, extremely effective methodology.
So I tracked down the one book I could find on that methodology (“The Learning Revolution” by Jonathan Solity). That lead me to “Theory of Instruction” by Sigfried Engelmann and Douglas Carnine, which I have just cracked open...
The point is that they claim to have an real, actual good scientific theory (parsimonious, falsifiable, replicable, etc) of how to actually teach optimally, by doing a rational analysis of the material to be taught so that it can be conveyed to the learner in a logically unambiguous way...
Okay wait, no, the REAL point is that there’s a REALLY good way to teach ANYTHING to ANYONE so that EVERYONE could learn a hell of a lot more, way faster and way easier.
Or at least they say there is, and I’m sufficiently impressed with them so far to be saying, wow, this needs a LOT more attention.
And then, once we have this, we can start using it to teach all those things that really need to be taught better, for example these “methods of rationality”...
http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/387/OpenModules/Engelmann/evidence.shtml
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Cool thanks.