Vladimir_Nesov comments on Secrets of the eliminati - Less Wrong

93 Post author: Yvain 20 July 2011 10:15AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 30 July 2011 04:28:01PM *  5 points [-]

My aim is to become a truly useful research assistant in the next few years while realizing my apparent cognitive comparative advantage.

Are you working on training yourself to understand graduate-level logic, set theory and category theory? That's my current best guess at an actionable thing an aspiring FAI researcher should do, no matter what else is on your plate (and it's been a stable conclusion for over a year).

Comment author: Will_Newsome 31 July 2011 01:03:31AM *  1 point [-]

Not yet, but very soon now. (The plan for category theory is to get proficient with Haskell and maybe kill two birds with one stone by playing with functional inductive programming (which uses category theory). I do not yet have plans for set theory or logic; I don't really understand what they're trying to do very well. Or like, my brain hasn't categorized them as "cool", whereas my brain has categorized category theory as "cool", and I think that if I better understood what was cool about them then I'd have a better idea of where to start. I was sort of hoping I could somehow learn all my math in terms of categories, which is still technically a possibility I guess but not at all something I can do on my own.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 31 July 2011 01:11:05AM *  5 points [-]

I don't recommend studying category theory at any depth before at least some logic, abstract algebra and topology. It can feel overly empty of substance without a wealth of examples already in place, it's not called "abstract nonsense" for nothing. Follow my reading list if you don't have any better ideas or background, and maybe ask someone else for advice. I don't like some of this stuff as well, I just study it because I must.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 July 2011 02:04:05AM 2 points [-]

(The plan for category theory is to get proficient with Haskell and maybe kill two birds with one stone by playing with functional inductive programming (which uses category theory)

I've known many people who have tried to walk down this path and failed. The successful ones I know, knew one before the other.

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