I just like how often not communicating is used in fiction as a false way of creating conflict, but Eliezer shows that you can still have a story (with conflict!) when people try and understand each other.
BenLowell
Karma: 370
Two months ago I said:
Learning quantum mechanics and so that I can have a better understanding of what my research group is working on. Quantum is the basis for most modern physics so it seemed the most useful/important of all the interesting physics things I wanted to learn.
This is going quite well! I’ve worked through a good amount of material on my own, and am satisfied with my progress.
Trying to break down what “physical intuition” is and creating a guide for to how to solve physics problems. I’m doing this because it seems like people get to a certain point when learning physics where their mysterious intuitions for how to set up problems do not work anymore. Many people don’t know what to do and end up stuck, with grades and learning plummeting. If I can figure out a way to teach people certain problem solving heuristics, then hopefully we can get around this. I’m reading literature, and taking ideas from here and summarizing them.
So, I’ve started writing an article related to this in collaboration with another LWer. One of my goals is that like the idea of contributing content to the site. I was also curious, and I feel that the majority of my personal curiosity is satisfied, and finishing the project by communicating what I learned to others is what is being difficult. There are several reasons for this. One is that I can always learn more, and make a better article. I’ve also realized this is a lower priority than my school/work activities, so it keeps being put off.
I was a summer camp counselor for a gifted education camp, and many of the kids there are quite lonely, so I am writing an article about keeping in touch with the friends they made there.
I have an incomplete in a class, and I have the final paper about halfway done.
Also more than halfway done with a report/presentation for work.
There are many things that I’m trying to learn on my own.
Separating work and socializing, so that I can do each more effectively. Allocating time for each. Writing this made it more apparent how I keep adding new things to do, without finishing old ones, so that right now I have so many projects that I go from one to the other, and everything seems to be at a standstill. I procrastinate by working on less important projects.
Here is an article written for you! What is Bayesianism? My personal struggle is where this differs from ‘clear-headedness.’ I think that much of this website is geared towards helping us get closer to the ideal Bayesian, though the connections are not mentioned specifically.
Can anyone give an example of where they explicitly used Bayesian reasoning? It makes sense that it is right, but … unlike other things on this website that can be transferred into skills or habits. My guess is that having a deeper understanding of Bayesian probability would help with understanding what evidence is and how much confidence should be placed in what.
A separate confusion of mine is that in Eliezer’s explanation of Bayes theorem----I was able to do the math problems correctly and so I didn’t make whatever the usual mistake was. Because of this, I have knowledge of the right way to solve probability problems (at least if I spend a long time thinking about them), buI never went down the wrong path got slapped by having an Incorrect Answer. That doesn’t mean I won’t notice a mistake, but I think that learning things the wrong way helps you understand why they are wrong later. So my confusion is that I am never very confident as to whether I am doing things the “Bayesian way” or not. I’ve found that the Law of Conservation of Expected Evidence has been the most helpful in understanding the consequences of Bayesian reasoning, beyond solving math problems.
Edited for clarity.
I see no reason for you to play games unless you wish to discuss games with these people and have something in common with them.
It makes me happy that those traits you list as what rationalists are usually thought of ----disagreeable, unemotional, cynacal, loners—are unfamiliar. The rationalists I have grown up in the past few years reading this site are both optimistic and caring, along with many other qualities.
The reason was probably that there was a large amount of material (the class included electricity, magnetism, circuits, and optics), so that I had to learn many different explanations. Each of these topics is a course by itself, and so and to explain things for an introductory course you often have to have a deeper level of knowledge. I hadn’t taken any classes other than the intro class, so acquiring the deeper explanations was a long process.
Awesome!
If you want to add more physics stuff, here is a bunch of electricity and magnetism links. The visualizations are especially nice.
https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/cobden/11503/59664
I found this list of yours on amazon helpful: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/R2BKS9X5I8D9Y and I always like more lists of good books.
I was a TA for a while and was taught to use Socratic methods. If people have some background knoweldge, you can get very far by asking people “what would happen in this situation? what about this situation? Now if you apply this situation back to this one, what happens?” It depends how much time you have, but lots of questioning interspersed with some explanations seemed to help most students the best.
If you are trying to teach someone, I think doing that is better than telling, because then when someone else has made the inferences it will become more a part of them and they will remember more. However, doing this repeatedly is also good for learning to explain, because you learn all the different things that people get hung up on—what inferential steps are most difficult to make.
Note that if you want to be really good, you’ll have to do a LOT. After a year of 4 hours a week of face-to-face TAing, I was finally able to help people through most types of problems and had reached the ‘competent/actually helpful to most people’ stage.
Explaining things is also something where there are many paths to the same goal. Different explanations will work for different people. To be the best explainer, you’ll have to learn many different explanations. Read many viewpoints on transhumanism by different people and as you read them, try to think of how you would explain it to someone else. Build up a repertoire.
Try to taboo all the relevant vocabulary so that you are forced to think about what the words and concepts mean in more precise language.
Here is an article I thought would be helpful:
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2002/willingham.cfm
I’m really glad that I read Hayawaka’s Language in Thought and Action after Eliezer’s recommendations.
Physics textbooks helped me gain some insights. Reductionism is in the equations. The way that complex behavior such as masses bouncing on springs or arbitrary waves can always be broken down into sums of simpler behavior. I would look up Fourier transforms and superimposition of normal modes.
In this post and the next one, I will outline the roles in Latter-day Saint communities. In the following posts, I will draw more conclusions as to which roles would be ideal for rationalist communities.
Once a polling system is implemented, I would like to see a poll that lists all the changes with “better, worse, or neutral” so that we can get a more accurate representation of what people like and dislike. I hesitate to write my own response of “I agree to X but still like Y” whenever somebody lists multiple likes/dislikes. It would clutter the page and not help very much unless many people responded.
It would have been nice if somebody took screenshots of the old version so we could compare. Some things are much easier to tell the difference, but it is very difficult to pull up memories of how easy to read/nice to look at the old site was, when comparing things like the color scheme.
My personal preferences:
Positive dropdown menus Comment layout and visual representation: better than it was
Negative: Comment number not appearing Header: I like the old one and it’s map/territory artwork. When in the discussion section, the header is ugly (3 different fonts in 3 different colors). I would like to see a picture of how it was. I feel like this is a case of “why fix what isn’t broken? (WFWIB)” (it makes some sense if it didn’t go well with new site changes.) Hall of fame rather than top contributors WFWIB
Neutral comment icons vs. words Color scheme: background SIAI /FHI links: seems reasonable
Thanks for working hard at making the site better! The negative comments are probably rough, but we appreciate you.
Edit after a few days: I really like the new layout and graphic design. Except for the header. Not being able to delete comments is interesting, since I used to hesitate and delete what I wrote directly after writing sometimes. I was going to do that again, but wasn’t able to, and my comment got a few points, so it may have been worthwhile. An uncomfortable, but probably positive change.
Critical Thinking: Why is it so hard to teach (pdf)
People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it in any situation. Research from cognitive science shows that thinking is not that sort of skills. The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge). Thus, if you remind a student to “look at an issue from multiple perspectives” often enough, he will learn that he ought to do so, but if he doesn’t know much about an issue, he can’t think about it from multiple perspectives. You can teach students maxims about how they ought to think, but without background knowledge and practice, they probably will not be able to implement the advice they memorize.
I find “Yes and”—in the general sense of affirming and adding—to be preferable to active listening, so it might work as a good conversation tool.
The difference is that while active listening is supposed to be about repeating and reflecting, most people don’t get past the repeating part, so it gets annoying. Yes-anding both quickly affirms that you heard what the other person said and provides either a connection to new topic or further insight. This is enough to show that you are listening, and leads to more interesting conversation. This is mainly from observing others converse lately, and it seems the ‘yes ander’ gets the best response and makes others most comfortable.
Where dressing better and social skills are important is if you want to go outside of the solving problem arena and try to spread solutions to other people.
Edit: From person to person, rather than through writing.
Is it helpful I suggest that I do prefer the title?
This is where agree/disagree buttons would be useful.
It is good to know that it doesn’t work for everyone though.
Here is what I said the last time I posted (In the first thread):
I’ve been working on being more sociable. I’ve been talking to people in my classes, and doing work in the lounge for my major. I’m not as productive as when I work on my own, but I’m getting involved in small talk. I think someone here mentioned that much of small-talk is just about being enthusiastic and friendly—once I started looking at it this way it became much easier—it is actually pleasant for me now.
This has gone great! I have new friends and it’s wonderful!
I’m about halfway through reading Social Cognition by Gordon Moskowitz, which is helping me gain a better understanding of cognitive biases.
I finished reading this, and didn’t learn about cognitive biases so much, but did get a better understanding of stereotyping and attributions. Mostly general theory, and lots of specific experiments (the book gives the details on every experiment for every fact, so is actually not very information dense in terms of psychological facts).
I’ve also been writing explanations of science topics for my grandmother, among other things like “what is an internet community?”
I haven’t written anything else.
Currently:
Learning quantum mechanics and so that I can have a better understanding of what my research group is working on. Quantum is the basis for most modern physics so it seemed the most useful/important of all the interesting physics things I wanted to learn.
Trying to break down what “physical intuition” is and creating a guide for to how to solve physics problems. I’m doing this because it seems like people get to a certain point when learning physics where their mysterious intuitions for how to set up problems do not work anymore. Many people don’t know what to do and end up stuck, with grades and learning plummeting. If I can figure out a way to teach people certain problem solving heuristics, then hopefully we can get around this.
I’m reading literature, and taking ideas from here and summarizing them.
Are you a professional physicist?
Also, in some states there is the option to take college classes while in high school. Where I grew up it was called Running Start. It was possible to get 2 full years of free college if you took advantage of it fully.
What techniques do you have for reducing careless errors? How do these scale in stressful/timed situations?