I definitely agree with this last point! I’ve been on the providing end of similar situations with people in cybersecurity education of all sorts of different technical backgrounds. I’ve noticed that both the tester and the “testee” (so to speak) tend to have a better and safer experience when the cards are compassionately laid out on the table at the end. It’s even better when the tester is able to genuinely express gratitude toward the testee for having taught them something new, even unintentionally.
JMiller
Karma: 248
Hey Ben, thanks for this! I especially appreciate the section on Slack norms; I’ve found that teams have a tendency to default to DMs without explicit, mindful management of channels, channel membership and expectation-setting.
One dynamic I’ve noticed: when team members get really into a conversation and it becomes a “centithread”, it often benefits from outsider-nudging to remind folks that they’d be better off jumping in a call, and then summarizing the discussion.
Awesome, I’ll be checking this out for sure. I recently began studying computer security; do you have any more recommendations?
I appreciate the initiative to send meta-sources rather than single pieces.
Added to my reading list, thanks!
Thanks Gunnar. Luke may not have linked his thread, because I did so in the OP.
Thanks, Luke. I’ll be checking your physics recommendations out soon.
Best Explainers on Different Subjects
If you are often travelling over bridge by car, having a car-knife could be handy in case you go over. The device generally comes equipped with a seat belt cutter, pressurized hammer, and flashlight.
Some policy issues affected by media in democratic countries: Daniel Komo argues that people hear about trade policy (I imagine this is extensible to other kinds of policy) largely because oppositions have incentive to attack government trade initiatives. But because propagating information is expensive, often opponents will focus attacks on simpler, easier to explain policy decisions, rather then ones that are more complex, since efficient use of space is cheap. He concludes that democratic political competition may lead to what I might call a kind of “reverse” conjunction fallacy: simpler policy decision tend to get more prime-time, coverage, and critism than more complex decisions.
Awesome, thanks so much! If you were to recommend one of these resources to begin with, which would it be?
I’m not. The reason I picked it up was because it happens to be the book recommended in MIRI’s course suggestions, but I am not particularly attached to it. Looking again, it seems they do actually recommend SICP on lesswrong, and Learnyouahaskell on intelligence.org.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I am not sure if this deserves it’s own post. I figured I would post here and then add it to discussion if there is sufficient interest.
I recently started reading Learn You A Haskell For Great Good. This is the first time I have attempted to learn a functional language, and I am only a beginner in Imperative languages (Java). I am looking for some exercises that could go along with the e-book. Ideally, the exercises would encourage learning new material in a similar order to how the book is presented. I am happy to substitute/compliment with a different resource as well, if it contains problems that allow one to practice structurally. If you know of any such exercises, I would appreciate a link to them. I am aware that Project Euler is often advised; does it effectively teach programming skills, or just problem solving? (Then again, I am not entirely sure if there is a difference at this point in my education).
Thanks for the help!
Can you please explain more about “Thinking for five minutes of plans that can be executed in five minutes?”
Thanks!
I’m not sure how comment notification works here, and whether you will auto-see what I say in other comments, but I am considering a career in software, but not as a programmer necessarily. I want to be more of an administrator/motivator, but I’m floundering in the dark as to how to go about gathering the necessary skills. Hence, I sort of defaulted to more school, since in Montreal university is really cheap. I’m still figuring things out :)
Thanks so much for the post.
Perhaps you are right wrt my belief that I understand concepts. An example of what I meant is; while explaining what a derivative is in class today, I understood rather easily what it is used for and how it works. However, as soon as numbers were put on the board, it was harder for me to interpret what was going on.
As I mentioned in another comment, I am not necessarily looking to become a programmer. I am more interested in big-picture design and management, but I figured that I ought to get as good fundamentals as possible first.
I said software, but I don’t think I meant programming. I intend to be in some sort of quarterbacking/ management capacity. I think my comparative advantage lies in the intersection between technical work and leadership/social skills. I figured it would be best to learn as much as I can first.
That’s a good idea. Thanks a lot.
I really enjoyed this post, Richard! The object level message is inspiring, but I also found myself happily surprised at the synthesis of three books which, on their surface, are about quite different subjects! Just throwing my +1 here as someone interested in reading more posts like this.