pan

Karma: 300

pan 6 Sep 2015 2:22 UTC
8 points
on: making notes—an instrumental rationality process.
The problem I’ve had with using physical notebooks is that I never close the loop of actually reviewing them and converting the information into a more useable format (anki, connecting related information, etc).

What I’ve settled on for the last few years is just emailing myself notes throughout the day from my phone. I empty my inbox each day so every note is moved into its appropriate location (calendar for events, files by topic for general thoughts, or to do lists for tasks).

The “sexy” factor is something I’ve noticed though. I’m regularly tempted to move back to physical notebooks because it somehow feels more legitimate. It also can feel rude sometimes to take out my phone and make a note if I’m talking to someone. All in all though I’ve found the benefits of converting the information into a digital format as quickly as possible to outweigh other factors.

pan 9 Aug 2015 14:15 UTC
1 point
on: Stupid Questions August 2015
Whenever I have free time (which is unfortunately becoming more and more rare) I have tremendous difficulty in deciding what to do with it.

This seems to be the result of a few problems:

1) I have too many goals, and so I don’t know how to properly prioritize them, making it difficult to choose a next task. 2) Once I try to prioritize goals I end up going down a black hole of trying to figure out what my values really are, what I should actually be doing with my life, what I actually care about, if moral philosophy has implications on my goals, etc etc etc until I’ve either wasted all of my free time or ended up with an entirely new set of goals.

My stupid question is, does anyone else relate to this? How do you manage to not get caught in “analysis paralysis”? Do I have the entirely incorrect approach to life by trying to base my moment to moment actions on an overall value system?

pan 17 Mar 2015 22:05 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Umbc meetup
Is there usually a LW meetup at UMBC?

pan 6 Mar 2015 4:42 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gondolinian’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
I seem to remember Roger Craig used a very systematic and rational approach to winning Jeopardy.

pan 12 Feb 2015 4:00 UTC
1 point
on: Attempted Telekinesis
This idea of ‘attempted telekenesis’ is a good label for most peoples reactions to frustrating events I think. One type of frustration seems to occur when the result of an action is not as expected and yet we try to repeat the action but with more anger and expect things to change but predictably they don’t.

I’ve had great success over the last decade or so by really reminding myself in times of frustration that it’s my actions causing the events, and that if I want events to change, I need to alter my actions accordingly.

pan 12 Jan 2015 1:14 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Alsadius’s comment on: Open thread Jan. 5-11, 2015
How did you learn to read so fast?

pan 31 Dec 2014 20:23 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 29, 2014 - Jan 04, 2015
That’s what I was trying to explain in the last paragraph: before I started using images I would get lazy and either not add cards or the ones I did add were of low quality because I was trying to do them so quickly. In the end instead of deleting large swaths of poorly made cards I just started over.

pan 31 Dec 2014 19:03 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 29, 2014 - Jan 04, 2015
I have about 300 cards in my deck right now, and I’ve had this deck for about 6 months. I try to do a few cards each morning without forcing myself to complete all cards that are due (although often I do). This is because I’m trying to build the habit into my work flow and I find if I give myself the option to quit after 3 cards if I’m really busy that it’s better than losing the habit altogether for a month.

I want to warn you that I don’t think this number (300 in a 6 month time span) very accurately represents how many cards I add when I find something interesting. I’m a PhD student and the last 6 months I’ve been mostly tweaking a program and writing my thesis (so doing things that I don’t get a lot of new knowledge to add into the system). So most of those 300 cards are from short spurts of reading interesting books, rather than what it would be if I were in the midst of researching something new. (I also usually make multiple cards for a single image that I add, asking the question in different ways that emphasize different things I think are important)

For context: I have had larger decks in the past, multiple deck systems, etc etc., but all previous attempts were eventually abandoned because of something like: it takes a long time to add new equations or transcribe text from a book by hand → therefore I slowly add fewer and fewer cards, and the ones I do are of lower quality because I would cut corners to save time → the deck becomes less useful because I’m just not adding things that are important → as the deck becomes less relevant I stop studying it → once I miss a month of studying catching up seems useless.

pan 30 Dec 2014 22:29 UTC
6 points
in reply to: btrettel’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 29, 2014 - Jan 04, 2015
These are good points I’m glad you posted it, it’s interesting to see the work flow of someone else.

We apparently have very different philosophies when it comes to SRS, you seem to be more of a ‘quality over quantity’ person. Where as I find that the biggest barrier to me using SRS at all is entry, and so all of the disadvantages you’ve mentioned still don’t outweigh the advantage of speed for me of using images. I prefer to err on the side of adding too many cards too quickly and just deleting as I go if I find they’re trivial.

Just as a side note: notational changes have never been a problem for me as long as I ask the question in the notation of the answer.

pan 30 Dec 2014 3:27 UTC
14 points
on: Open thread, Dec. 29, 2014 - Jan 04, 2015
I figured I would throw this out even though it seems exceedingly obvious in retrospect, but took me a while to figure out:

If you use Anki (or other SRS software) you can save a lot of time adding new cards by using screen shots. Not whole screen shots but selecting only important paragraphs/pictures/equations from an ebook or website. On a Mac this is command-control-shift-4 and then drag the part of the screen you want to copy to the clip board. Just paste it into Anki.

This saves me so much time when making cards out of books/papers that I almost exclusively read on my computer now.

pan 10 Nov 2014 3:10 UTC
11 points
on: Open Thread: What are your important insights or aha! moments?
1) You haven’t learned from a mistake until your behavior actually changes in a measurable way. For too long I would think rationally about my life but was missing the important next step: action. (Meta: after this realization a while back I’ve been tracking ‘mistakes’ I make and the conclusions I can make from them and have found the exercise very useful).

2) Something more directly LW related: For most of my life I had thought we were beyond the reach of God, but not until I read Eliezer’s thoughts on the matter did it really ‘click’ with me how far reaching and terrifying of an idea it really is. I guess what really clicked was how much the idea that ‘everything will work out eventually’ is leftover in my thinking from childhood religion and movies where the virtuous prevail.

3) That even the most scientific and rational practices can very easily become empty rituals.

pan 4 Nov 2014 1:50 UTC
4 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014
I’d be happy to work in Silicon valley or finance, and I’ve applied to the big ones like Google and Microsoft but it’s kind of tough to find companies to apply to. Another commenter recommended the HN monthly hiring post, which is a good resource but very focused on programming.

pan 4 Nov 2014 1:24 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Punoxysm’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014
I’m not at all wedded to doing physics in my next job, I’d be happy to switch to something more engineering/computer based or even (slightly less so) financial.

Skills wise I try to stress that I have multiple first authored publications (so I’m decent at writing) and several presentations at conferences and to funding agencies (good at speaking). Outside of that though I am very proficient at Mathematica and have what I’d call ‘hobbyist’ knowledge of python (I can write small scripts and programs, use libraries like SciPy).

This leaves me in a spot where I’m almost qualified for data science positions but not quite what they’re looking for because I don’t have enough programming experience.

Thanks for the tips, I hadn’t thought about approaching other professors besides my advisor for networking purposes.

pan 3 Nov 2014 15:54 UTC
6 points
in reply to: iarwain1’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014
The problem with many of the government labs is that they want post docs and not employees, and I’d rather just skip that and start as an actual employee somewhere.

In addition many of the places I’ve applied (many of which you listed) have very long application processes (months) which means I’m in the dark as to whether I’ll get zero offers or an offer from every place which I applied. Therefore I’d like to be cautious and cultivate as many options as possible.

Lastly, I tend to get into situations like these (ones with big decisions and many unclear options) and end up realizing in retrospect that there were more interesting opportunities available than the one I took, but that I panicked and didn’t properly explore the options. So I’m trying to make a serious effort of looking for and apply to ‘out of the box’ employment options.

pan 3 Nov 2014 15:31 UTC
10 points
on: Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014
I’m going to be graduating with my PhD in physics (theory) this coming spring and am beginning to look for jobs.

Any tips? Any mistakes you made when looking for jobs that you can tell me about? For those already with jobs in the technology industry: if you could go back in time what would you change about the way you searched for jobs?

Less likely but still worth asking: if you happen to know of a job in either the Baltimore/Washington/Virginia area or in the Bay area that I might be qualified for don’t hesitate to tell me about it.

pan 21 Oct 2014 19:25 UTC
14 points
on: Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014
In an old article by Eliezer we’re asked what we would tell Archimedes through a chronophone. I’ve found this idea to actually be pretty instructive if I instead ask what I would tell myself through a chronophone if I could call back only a few years.

The reason the chronophone idea is useful is because it forces you to speak in terms of ‘cognitive policies’ since if you use anything relevant to your own time period it will be translated into something relevant to the time period you’re calling. In this way if I think about what I would tell my former self I think: 1) what mistakes did I make when I was younger? 2) what sort or cognitive policies or strategies would have allowed me to avoid those mistakes, and finally 3) am I applying the analogue of those strategies in my life today?

pan 16 Oct 2014 22:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 13 - Oct. 19, 2014
Relavent: Pinker’s lecture at Google on this book.

pan 16 Oct 2014 21:33 UTC
6 points
in reply to: hydkyll’s comment on: What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?
I think that when you start reasoning about quantum foundations it should be remembered that you’re leaving the boundary of testable physics. This is to say that even if you’ve concluded that many-worlds is most likely to be correct with your current information, that there should remain a pretty high degree of uncertainty in your conclusion.

pan 24 Jun 2014 14:35 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open thread, 23-29 June 2014
Can you link me to the blog post?

pan 23 Jun 2014 21:15 UTC
8 points
on: How do you take notes?
I take notes in text files that I have named by topic and all in one big folder. This allows me to search all of the files easily at once and gives me ease of mind that text files will never become obsolete and I should still be able to read them in 30 years. I’ve been doing this for quite sometime and have files going back at least 10 years.

An important step however is that I occasionally copy the entire directory as a backup into a new folder and name it by the date of the backup. I then never alter that archived version. The purpose of this is that I now feel free in my working directory to be liberal with edits and deletes so that I can keep the amount of notes down to a relatively small amount only including important topics at any one time, but have the ability to search through old iterations at the same time.

I never scan notes I take by hand, and only take notes by hand if I’m somewhere that it’s socially unacceptable to have a computer/phone. If I do this I just go through later and type important parts into a text file.

As far as capture goes, I either write a quick sentence or two and email it to myself to later transfer to a text file or I place the note in my phones note feature. Usually once a week or so I go through and clear my inbox and my phones note feature and transfer everything to text files.

I’ve gone through several attempts to build tagging systems but in reality grep (or spotlight search on a mac) are so good at searching text files that it’s never useful and I end up canning the tagging system.

I don’t use evernote, but my notes are very private, I sometimes write in a very journal like fashion, and so I would not let anyone read them.