= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
JoshuaZ comments on A Proof of Occam's Razor - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (121)
Yeah, it might help to make a list of "math recommended for reading and posting on Less Wrong" Unfortunately, the entire set is likely large enough such that even many physics majors won't have all of it (lots of physics people don't take logic or model theory classes). At this point the list of math topics seems to include Lebesque integration, Godel's theorems and basic model theory, basics of continuous and discrete probability spaces, and a little bit of theoretical compsci ranging over a lot of topics (both computability theory and complexity theory seem relevant). Some of the QM posts also require a bit of linear algebra to actually grok well but I suspect that anyone who meets most of the rest of the list will have that already. Am I missing any topics?
Not all LW participants need to know advanced math. Human rationality is a broad topic, and someone like Yvain or Alicorn can contribute a lot without engaging the math side of things. What I care about is the signal-to-noise ratio in math discussion threads. In other words, I'm okay with regular ignorance but hate vocal ignorance with a fiery passion.
I propose a simple heuristic: if you see others using unfamiliar math, look it up before commenting. If it relies on other concepts that you don't understand, look them up too, and so on. Yes, it might take you days of frantic digging. It sometimes takes me days full-time, even though I have a math degree. Time spent learning more math is always better invested than time spent in novice-level discussions.
That seems valid, but part of the trouble also seems to be people thinking they understand math that they don't after reading popularizations. I'm not sure how to deal with that other than just having those individuals read the actual math.
We need merely a norm to tell people to stop, not a magic way of explaining math faster than possible. Also, more realistic timeline for grokking (as opposed to parsing) deeper concepts is months, not days, and that's if you are smart enough in the first place.
Agreed. I have no idea either.
Well, if someone posts something wrong, call them out on it.
Empirically that doesn't seem to help much. See for example the comment thread in cousin_it's last top-level post.
Cousin_it and JoshuaZ, this sounds as though it could be a good topic (or group of topics) for a top-level post.
Do you mean a set of posts on telling when you don't know enough or a set of posts on the math people should know?
Either or both would be useful, but I was thinking about the latter.
In getting to some of those things, there are some more basic subjects that would have to be mastered:
Algebra: giving names to unknown numerical quantities and then reasoning about them the way one would with actual numbers.
Calculus: the relationship between a rate of change and a total amount, and the basic differential equations of physics, e.g. Newtonian mechanics, the diffusion equation, etc.
If this all seems like a lot, many people spend until well into their twenties in school. Think where they would get to if all that time had been usefully spent!
Why is all that physics necessary? I'm not seeing it.
Practical examples. Not many people are going to plough through abstract mathematics without them.
Causal networks, axiomatizations of expected utility.