PhilGoetz 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: Armok_GoB 30 May 2011 06:43:57PM *  8 points [-]

Exercise: Nonconformity, (posibly fun), (possibly curiosity); watch or read from somehting VERY far out of your target demograpic.

Examples: Twilight, My Little Pony Friendship is magic, the Quran. (Note: I have only watched MLP of these examples, and can confirm it will surprise you by being great. For the other two I get an instinctive revulsion saying "that can't POSSIBLY be anything other than slow torture" in spite of knowing taking the outside view says otherwise, which is exactly why I should watch/read from them if I were to do this exercise)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 30 May 2011 10:20:08PM 2 points [-]

You're the third person this past week to tell me how good My Little Pony is.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 30 May 2011 10:27:55PM 1 point [-]

Yea, in some circles it's actually all the rage, but I'm counting on it still being controversial in most of meatspace for at least a few more months.