SarahC comments on Teachable Rationality Skills - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 May 2011 09:57PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 May 2011 12:16:51AM 3 points [-]

Running list of major skill areas not yet discussed:

  • Curiosity - the true and honest feeling, or failing that, how to get as close there as possible. Litany of Tarski, "ask whether, not why", Update Yourself Incrementally, etc.
  • Bottom-line stuff - noticing when you already know your destination, hold off on proposing solutions, etc.
  • Connecting belief to anticipation.
  • Use-of-words skills - people trying to milk definitional arguments for inferences, etc.
  • Empiricism - keeping a constant eye out for ways to test things. Not big official scientific reliable tests, just keeping your eyes open.
  • Concreteness / specificity - managing your levels of abstraction (this is surprisingly important in practice).
  • Productivity - adding new good habits, breaking old bad habits, scholarship
  • Argument flow awareness - things like motivated stopping, motivated continuation, flinching away from a counterargument that might carry; also positive aspects like knowing which question an argument is intended to resolve
  • Nonconformity
  • Cooperation
  • Saying oops
  • Munchkinism, minmaxing, "burn the spirit of the game", zs'hanh, assume the problem is solvable and continue solving it
  • Fun
Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2011 04:38:33AM 3 points [-]

Exercise: test understanding by filling in the blanks before you know the answer. I'm trying to get better at estimating large dollar amounts, so I do a lot of practice guessing. Also, talking research with a professor, I mentally made a point of predicting what his insight was going to be before he said it.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 May 2011 05:12:25AM 1 point [-]

Which one's this an exercise for?

Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2011 05:19:42AM 0 points [-]

Empiricism and curiosity.