Lumifer comments on How to learn a new area X that you have no idea about. - Less Wrong Discussion
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Well, you are on LW. It's... unusual to find here reactions which can uncharitably be summed up as "OMG, the freaks like it, what's WRONG with it??!?"
It sounds that bad? Dangit!
I am aiming to generate rationality content that is applicable to mainstream; clearly I am not doing that if my hypothesis was correct.
Does that statement make sense?
I have a nasty mind and a propensity for snark, so I can't guarantee that my reaction matches the mainstream :-P
If you actually are aiming at a target, you need to define it a bit better. "Mainstream" is very very fuzzy and a lot of that mainstream is pretty dumb.
how about replace "mainstream" with "a large number of people"
That's just making things fuzzier.
There is usual advice that one should write for a particular audience. Who is your intended audience?
My purpose was, "generate rationality content". And create a guide where I could not previously find a guide describing how to learn a new skill X.
Who might find this guide useful? (a similar question to who is my intended audience)
I am not sure how to better test for those two groups of people.
So, let's try a couple of different examples. Let's take (1) the skill of sailing a small boat; and (2) the skill of starting a social interaction with strangers. Do you think your guide would be useful for these two specific examples?
Trying to understand how learning actually happens, or how, from your point of view, it's supposed to happen?
2 first - I meant - learning how to learn. or trying to get better at techniques of learning.
1a. sailing: I just ran through the first few points in my head (took about 5-10 minutes); and yes it seems to work for sailing.
1b. social interactions with strangers: yes it works. It occurs to me that there is no indication of how long each step should take. I am going to add that in as a guide.
Say you're aiming to catch a bear. So you put out a a pile of fish. A crow eats one. Does that mean that bears don't like fish? No, and while you're thinking about that you might any bears going for the fish.
Cryptic as that is; I understand; trouble is that the bears didn't eat many fish. So maybe these bears don't like the fish that I put out...