"novels/poems/etc. help you understand your own motivation and more easily put you in the shoes of others" That is only a very late and somewhat restricted idea. E.g. ancient greek science of history used novels etc. as epistomological tool, because the core of the things, that what really happened shows not in the surface of the facts, but has to be found and by poetic/artistic work (re)constructed. That was the reason, why their statues were colored like pop art, and why Thukydides' history book contains poetic inventions as quotes . It is a bit as if in a documentary on e.g. the cold war, suddenly Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbatchev would sing an opera. In contemporary american literature you have this e.g. in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried . Or in Reed's "Naming of Parts.". A friend (a great mathematician AND great intellectual ) allowed to illustrate that point by the poem there, scroll down.
If this post is inappropriate, I apologize.
I stumbled upon this site after reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". The story so far has really moved me on multiple levels and sent me here in a quest to learn more about rationality as a philosophy/way of thinking about the world. I have read Ayn Rands published works and loved the stories and most of the message. The characters always seemed like titans that were far and above me, but now, I've seen a character that is a bit more approachable.
I've started to go through the "Map and Territory" section of the "Core Sequences" and this whole project and community makes me ecstatic. I'm currently working my way through the Bayes's Theorem article with some success. The more I read, the more I realize I may have a problem.
I'm pretty dumb.
Is higher level reasoning "use it or lose it" ? I like learning new things and love reading but any new ideas require a ton of thought and re-reading. I think I have enough interest to keep plugging away at it, but I'm not sure I'm going at things the right way. Is there a "Kid's Table" for lesswrong.com?
For "Priors": I'm 28 years old, white male, married, no children, poor economic upbringing, solid emotional upbringing, currently lower to middle class, high school diploma, US Navy, currently a civilian electronics technician, raised Baptist currently Agnostic/Atheist (recently).
I guess that's it. Thanks!
--John