A good collection of hints, fits to my experiences in autodidactism. But you need a very good library at hand for such browsing (I used as teenager what a mathematician had designed as "Bibliothekskontinuum" ). "Don’t ... study ... as if you had to pass a test on it" is IMO very good too. Skimming connects with the subconscious procedures of memory and learning and works much better that one usually expects. In a similar way, I would suggest to take interesting looking books at home, laying them aside your bed and browsing like you please each evening before sleeping. That helps very much in identifying fitting themes and texts. But then one should stick on one issue and dig deeper, learn and think about a specific topic. After that, the cycle starts again, but on a higher level. Making notices is simplified by having a small paper notebook all the time around.
And, of course, it helps not to be frightened by sensing how small one's knowledge is. When I first entered the math library, I took a book by chance, and understood nothing, not even what the author told about. Then I tried an other one, with the same result. This continued until I came across a "Basic Number Theory" (by A. Weil) and could not believe that I even did not understand the first page. That was a bit too much for my taste - I stopped browsing then, sat down and worked systematically until I found out what to understand in which order for digesting that "Basic Number Theory" - a really tough job for me then. Some more than a few months later I happily finished it's last page and asked some professor lurking in the library for "the 2nd volume". He barely could supress laughter, as there was no "2nd volume", I already was in some sense at the top of the mountain.
But you need a very good library at hand for such browsing
The internet is basically all you need. Anyone with that has access to a whole bunch of resources, including Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare and Khan Academy. Journal articles are often less available, but it is increasingly easy to gain access to journal articles through a combination of Google Scholar, the researchers' websites, and open access journals.
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