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GabrielDuquette comments on Open Thread, November 16–30, 2012 - Less Wrong
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How much would Get Over Your Math Fear camps/modules/new sequences widen LW participation? I'm assuming the number of math-capable folk is larger than the number for whom math is enjoyable.
The vibe I get from LW in general is "you should know this stuff already" or "you must walk that road alone."
All the required math is online, of course. The issue is that different people have different gaps in their math education and many are unable to tell where those gaps start and how to fill them. A useful post/sequence/app would construct the pyramid of the math knowledge and skills required for not being stumped by whatever math is in the sequences, let people test their mastery of each piece, map out the gaps and direct them to the relevant online resources in the suitable order. Not sure how much interest is there among the LWers who are qualified to do such a job.
I don't see this is a potential future achievement of LW (or CFAR), primarily because others are already doing it much better. In the lead here is Khan Academy, with the knowledge map dashboard (last link, might need to login first), with tons of data and progression based on complete mastery of a topic, with time-spaced reviewing and nifty features all the way up to achievement badges for the positive reinforcement and social bragging rights.
I also hear Coursera is planning to continuously upgrade their personalized-feedback mechanisms, possibly up to the point where the system might automatically detect that, while attempting to solve these integrals, you're struggling with some particular type of factorization method, and then snap you back to the specific relevant modules and make you master them before resuming calculus. This seems like the natural next step from Khan's current system, and would be such an incredible distance in quality up from standard high school classrooms that I have a hard time putting into words how amazingly awesome that feels for me.
Basically, LW could help with specific courses, possibly with regards to Bayes stuff or applied epistemology or decision theory, but if we tried to tackle getting-people-to-like-and-be-good-at-maths, other experts already have a large lead and are doing quite a good job of it; our impact would be marginal, and we can achieve much greater things in other domains than standard mathematics.
After some consideration, I want to drop the "modules/new sequences" part of my suggestion and focus solely on camps, and non-solitary effort in general. "Struggle alone in front of your computer" seems valuably different from "struggle alongside others in person."
One idea, off the top of my head: a household whose housemates come together specifically for the purpose of immersing themselves in math as part of daily tasks. Which I suppose would require at least one "teacher" housemate, who could live for reduced or free rent in exchange for enabling a math-immersive atmosphere (challenges, etc). I don't know if having no endpoint (as with a camp) is beneficial or not in this case.
The problem is there is a difference between having proofs or definitions available and being able to teach yourself to understand the material.
(Well, a good textbook or expository webpage is more than just proofs and definitions, but wording quibbles aside---)
I don't believe you. There are many unfortunate people who suffer from cognitive disabilities such that they can't learn (e.g.) calculus from a book, but if you're reading this site, you're almost certainly not one of them.
People are different.
As far as I see around, there are people with various optimal bite sizes.
For something I do want to consume in entirety, I prefer long-form writing; there are people who prefer smaller-sized pieces or smaller-sized pieces with a rare chance to interrupt and ask a question.
I learn better from text; there are people who understand spoken words better. Spoken words have intonations and emotional connotations (and often there are relevant gestures at the same time); text reading speed can be changed without any loss.
So, I wouldn't discount the option that another form of presentation can be hypothetically interesting to some 10% of population. It would be just one separate thing for the mto consider, of course.
Someone who is familiar with the relevant cognitive science is encouraged to correct me if it turns out that my current contrarian opinion is merely the result of my ignorance, but---I'm inclined to just call that a cognitive disability. To be sure, if you happen to be so lucky as to have a domain expert nearby who is willing to spend time with you to clear up your misconceptions, then that's a wonderful resource and you should take advantage of it. But human labor is expensive and text is cheap; people who understand something deeply enough to teach it well have better things to do with their lives than give the same lecture dozens of times. What happens when you want to know something that no one is willing to teach you (at an affordable price)? To be so incompetent at reading as to actually be dependent on a flesh-and-blood human to talk you through every little step every time you want to understand something complicated is a crippling disability, much much worse than not being able to walk. I weep for those who are cursed to live with such a hellishly debilitating condition, and look forward to some future day when our civilization's medical technology has advanced enough to cure this awful disease.
Whether it is a cognitive disability is not a useful question; the question is whether there is something that is cost-effective to offer to these people.
My main point was that having this situation is not incompatible with being on LessWrong.
About cheapness: you oversimplify. A good recorded video lecture requires noticeably less effort to produce than a good textbook. And even simple lectures for big audience are quite good w.r.t. scalability.