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cousin_it comments on Leveling IRL - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (125)
Good start, thanks a lot for the work you put into your comment! Harsh critique follows.
1, 6 and 7 are precise enough to be part of a formal leveling scale. (But we'd need to i18n-ize them a little because all three use the American cultural assumption. I don't know offhand the weight of a pound, the length of a mile, or the number of words in the Gettysburg address :-))
3 could be made more precise with a little work. I'd prefer it to say "write and run a program", to make the winning condition clearer. Also I'd rather use one of the classic examples, e.g. Hello World, 99 bottles of beer on the wall, or any of the first ten Project Euler problems. IMO we shouldn't be in the business of inventing new exercises that teach programming!
2 is not very informative: if you were able to initiate a conversation with a stranger once, that doesn't mean you can do it again. Same for 4: can Bob qualify for level 1 if he's pretty sure he worked for two hours straight at least once in the last month? I'd like to have criteria that are about as informative and insensitive to flukes as #1.
5 and 8 are too vague and need to be completely rethought, IMO. A level 0 person doesn't know what a proper mathematical proof or a proper piece of evidence feels like.
Agreed on substituting Project Euler problems. (God, I should really be doing those at some point...)
Maybe 2 and 4 need to add a frequency requirement? Let's say, in a month, 4 invites and 2 days a week that involve a 2-hour sprint of work. (BTW, I think meeting strangers is less important than initiating conversations with people you've already met; my "social" criterion was about the latter. Can you ask that guy you know from class if he wants to meet up and study? People who can't arrange to meet are at a disadvantage, and I've struggled with that for a long time.)
5 and 8 are too vague. The trouble with LessWrong is that there's a very wide range of math abilities. I think calculus is conceptually important, though; maybe it should be something like "complete a Khan academy course," "complete a Schaums Outlines calculus book," or "Pass the AP calculus test."
I honestly don't know what to do for empiricism.
Great idea about frequency for 2 and 4! It adds an element of grind (leveling is now guaranteed to take time), but that sounds like an okay tradeoff to me if we can't think of anything better. Also I agree that talking to people you know is a better idea for level 1 than talking to strangers.
I have set up a wiki page with our current draft. I think you should be able to edit it :-) And let's commit to finalizing the requirements for level 1 within the next couple days - do you agree?
Could this link be edited into the article? I missed it before.
Awesome job starting us off! Sorry I forgot to mention that earlier.
Maybe a minimum level is realizing that you don't know something, and being willing to update on information related to the fact that you're curious about?