Nanashi comments on The most important meta-skill - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Nanashi 27 May 2015 03:51PM

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Comment author: estimator 27 May 2015 11:06:27PM *  1 point [-]

Also, I'd like to compare your system against common sense reasoning baseline. What do you think are the main differences between your approach and usual approaches to skill learning? What will be the difference in actions?

I'm asking that because that your guide contains quite long a list of recommendations/actions, while many of them are used (probably intuitively/implicitly) by almost any sensible person. Also, some of the recommendations clearly have more impact than others. So, what happens if we apply the Pareto principle to your learning system? Which 20% are the most important? What is at the core of your approach?

Comment author: Nanashi 28 May 2015 02:21:27PM 1 point [-]

As I mentioned in another comment, the difference between this and the "common sense" approach is in what this system does not do.

As for what the 20% of this system that gives you the most bang for your buck? That's a good question. Right now my "safe" answer is that it's dependent on the type of skill you're trying to learn. The trouble is that the common threads among all the skills ("Find the 20% of the skill that yields 80% of the results") doesn't have a lot of practical value. Like telling someone that all they need to do to lose weight is eat less and exercise more.

Let me think about it some more and I'll get back to you.

Comment author: Nanashi 28 May 2015 02:55:28PM 1 point [-]

So, after some cursory thought, naturally the part of the system that gives you the most bang for your buck are the first 4 steps. The last 3 steps are designed to help you improve, which is a much slower process than just learning the basics.

So, now to figure out how to recursively apply the the skill of learning a skill quickly to the skill "learning skills quickly".

Comment author: Nanashi 28 May 2015 05:49:08PM 1 point [-]

Okay, so I made a significant revision of the post. The original ideas are all there, just written in a much less obtuse manner.

  • A much more logical argument is presented at the beginning, along with constraints.
  • "Archetypes" and "Processes" have been replaced by sub-skills and trivial sub-skills.
  • The lengthy discourse on strategy has been replaced by simply sorting your list of trivial sub-skills, which accomplishes the same effect.
  • The "improvement" has been streamlined greatly.
  • Meta-analysis has been removed because it's really a separate subject.
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