There have been a couple discussion posts on this, but let's make it general and collect our tips in one place. It's also a good way to encourage each other at getting better at this - looking for info more often and more efficiently.

So, if you want to find something out, where do you look, and how? Who do you ask?

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

Admitting to being wrong isn't easy, but it's something we want to encourage.

So ... were you convinced by someone's arguments lately? Did you realize a heated disagreement was actually a misunderstanding? Here's the place to talk about it!

When I read a book with new and interesting ideas, I usually want to know if there are major flaws that any knowledgeable scholar in the field would point out immediately (Two recent examples are Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature", and Harriss's "The Nurture Assumption")

I usually:

• Look at reviews on Amazon (especially the negative ones)
• Google with keywords like "criticism, "review", "problem", (and whatever major issues I seem to have run in) etc.
• Search Google Scholar for the same thing
• Ask in some communities (LessWrong, reddit AskHistorians) if anybody read it

One problem is that I end up spending a lot of time reading stuff of no interest - either reviewers explaining the book to people who haven't read it (and sometimes even misrepresenting it's arguments, or framing them in terms of their pet controversy), or bloggers/posters who haven't read the book so go off a summary and come up with arguments that are already well-addressed in it.

So, what tips and strategies do you have for finding solid scholarly criticism ?

Quite a few of us are working on interesting projects; many of those are solo, but some could maybe use some help. So here's the place to ask!

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris, Sunday November 13

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris, Sunday November 13

I'm just putting this here in case it helps someone fix the problem, mods; feel free to delete this once things are fixed.

It seems posts with comments crash (so the bug's probably in the comment rendering code or something). Posts without comments can be read, so can the comment rss; inbox works but "view comments by user" doesn't ("view submitted" does).

(Don't reply to this, it'll make the page inaccessible :P)

So it's still possible to view existing posts (even with comments) through the rss feed, but not comment on them.

(My best bet would be something to do with comment karma calculation)

(Actually, after poking though recent commits on github, my bet would now be on comment retraction and deletion)

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Following [last Paris meetup](http://lesswrong.com/lw/5eg/paris_meetup_saturday_april_30th_2pm/), next one will be Satuday, June 25th, probably around 2PM, but we can use this thread to settle on the details.

Anybody have any suggestions for a better place than some random Café?

(I had the impression that announcing meetups too early was not advised, as people would just forget ...)