= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_M comments on Math prerequisites for understanding LW stuff - 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 (12)
Do you seriously believe that someone who has never studied math before can understand Loeb's theorem and start solving puzzles in mathematical logic after a few weeks of study?! I can imagine that someone very smart could figure out (1)-(3) from scratch fairly quickly, but (4) strikes me as a much harder step. Also, mathy LW discussions often touch on quantum mechanics, various things in computability theory, and sundry other stuff where I don't see any easy way up (especially for QM).
In any case, here's a neat test for those who'd like to tackle step (1):
http://www.rasmusen.org/GI/_stest1/selftest1.htm
I don't think (4) is much harder than (3). Someone who's never programmed before will find (3) very hard. Still, a few weeks of dedicated work should do it. From my experience teaching math to kids, I think it's actually more difficult to go from zero to (1) and (2) than to go from those to (4), because the hard part is learning how to think rigorously at all.
There is no serious descussion of quantum mechanics (or physics in general) on LW. I'd be glad if there was. Likewise, there's almost no serious discussion of statistical inference (frequentism, Bayesianism and related topics), though we do have a handful of people who understand it.
cousin_it:
That sure depends on what we consider to be "zero"!
I do know some very smart people for whom (1)-(3) would be a breeze, but who couldn't prove a theorem if their lives depended on it. (In my experience, lots of such people can be found among programmers and engineers.) I have the impression that quite a few people on LW are in a not too dissimilar position, in the sense that they could easily harness their general intelligence to develop the right intuitions for solving problems of the sorts (1)-(3) reliably, but training themselves for formal math would be a much harder step.
Maybe I'm also biased due to my own position. I can easily pass the tests (1)-(3) (out of curiosity, I just tried writing a quine in C -- I thought of the basic idea in about 5 minutes, and it took me 10-15 min. more to sort out the mess with the escape characters). But although I had a decent knowledge of the basics of math foundations some years ago (to the point where I was proving theorems in exams in graduate courses), scraping the rust off of it to the point where I could constructively contribute to the discussions here would require a significant time investment (which I still hope to do as time permits).
Lots of discussions here touch on MWI and make MWI-related assumptions. While one can grasp the basic idea of MWI without knowing the actual math of the quantum theory, such knowledge is pretty pointless, since it basically involves taking a controversial view on pure faith. (I am familiar with the basics of QM, but I don't think my knowledge is still anywhere near the level where it would make sense to stick my head out with judgments about such things.)
By the way, there is an interesting ongoing physics discussion, just in case you missed it:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2sl/the_irrationality_game/2qiu
Thanks for the link! Of course, I can't understand any of it :-)
Are you going to claim that you believe into AI going FOOM based on the actual math? Why would you care about how founded MWI is if you accept the basic premise of risk from AI to an extent that you donate to some institute with Singularity in its name when not even gravitational singularities are proven beyond the point that people would ground a movement around them...