Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Kennedy Center Meetup with Michael Vassar

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Kennedy Center Meetup with Michael Vassar

Followup to: MIT Challenge: blogger to attempt CS curriculum on own

A year after he announced it, productivity blogger Scott Young has successfully completed his "MIT Challenge", an attempt to work through that institution's undergraduate computer science curriculum independently, using the large selection of online material that it has made available.

His three pieces of advice for independent learners are worth noting:

1. Create an exciting, but specific, mission. I couldn’t have learned the content of this challenge if I hadn’t wrapped it into a compelling mission. Even calling it the “MIT Challenge” helped me make the goal more specific and real. Too many self-education quests begin as vague ideas and fall apart without any constraints.
2. Build a curriculum or find one. For small projects, taking an individual course will do. For bigger ones, try creating an actual curriculum. MIT (and other universities) offer many free courses, and also have outlines of their undergraduate and graduate programs. Having a preexisting curriculum forced me to be consistent and not avoid topics just because they were hard.
3. Be public in your quest. Self-ed has a harder time obtaining legitimacy, in part, because nobody holds you accountable to that. Being public about my challenge made me accountable and gave me discipline I wouldn’t have had in a private quest. Consider starting a blog about your mission, even if you do it anonymously.

Daniel Kahneman (of Tversky and Kahneman fame) was interviewed on PBS's Charlie Rose last night, discussing his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (reviewed here by lukeprog):

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12185

The talks from Skepticon IV are being posted to YouTube. 

So far we have:

• Richard Carrier on Bayes (my favorite)
• Julia Galef on the Straw Vulcan 
• Greta Christina on angry atheists
• Hermant Mehta on math education
• David Fitzgerald on Mormonism
• J.T. Eberhard on mental illness (a dramatic end to the conference)
• an "atheist revival" by Sam Singleton (on the lighter side)

ADDED:

• "Death Panel" featuring Julia Galef, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Greta Christina, and James Croft
• Darrel Ray on secularism and sex
• Eliezer Yudkowsky on heuristics and biases (really more like a crash course in the core LW sequences)
• Joe Nickell on paranormal investigations (I missed this at the conference; and even more regrettably, missed the chance to ask Joe Nickell what he thinks of many-worlds.)
• Jen McCreight on "skeptical genetics" (the other talk I missed)
• Rebecca Watson on the religious right
• Spencer Greenberg on self-skepticism
• Dan Barker on atheist clergy

More to come soon, hopefully...

Discussion article for the meetup : Skepticon IV meetup: Saturday night

Discussion article for the meetup : Skepticon IV meetup: Saturday night

If any members of the Less Wrong community are planning to attend Skepticon IV this weekend (Nov. 18-20) in Springfield, Missouri (USA), it might be nice to see if we can arrange a meetup. 

Feel free to comment and say "I'll be there!". (At least one prominent Less Wronger is even among the speakers.) Suggestions regarding locations, etc. from folks familiar with the local area are particularly encouraged.

Attractions this year include (besides what was mentioned above): a panel on "How Should Rationalists Approach Death?"; and a talk by Richard Carrier entitled "Bayes' Theorem: Key to the Universe" (and subtitled: that's right, I'm teaching you math, bitches!).

See: You Be the Jury, The Amanda Knox Test

While we hear about Bayes' Theorem being under threat in some courts, it is nice to savor the occasional moment of rationality prevailing in the justice system, and of mistakes being corrected.

Congratulations to the Italian court system for successfully saying "Oops!" 

Things go wrong in this world quite a bit, as we know. Sometimes it's appropriate to just say "hooray!" when they go right.

Discuss, or celebrate.

Scott H. Young is giving himself 12 months to complete MIT's computer science curriculum on his own, via MIT's OpenCourseWare.

For miscellaneous discussions and remarks not suitable for top-level posts even in the Discussion section, let alone in Main.

(Naturally, if a discussion gets too unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post, just like in the good old days.)

Recently, on the main section of the site, Raw_Power posted an article suggesting that we find "worthy opponents" to help us avoid mistakes.

As you may recall, Rolf Nelson disagrees with me about Amanda Knox -- rather sharply. Of course, the same can be said of lots of other people (if not so much here on Less Wrong). But Rolf isn't your average "guilter". Indeed, considering that he speaks fluent Bayesian, is one of the Singularity Institute's largest donors, and is also (as I understand it) signed up for cryonics, it's hard to imagine an "opponent" more "worthy". The Amanda Knox case may not be in the same category of importance as many other issues where Rolf and I probably agree; but my opinion on it is very confident, and it's the opposite of his. If we're both aspiring rationalists, at least one of us is doing something wrong.  

As it turns out, Rolf is interested in having a debate with me on the subject, to see if one of us can help to change the other's mind. I'm setting this post up as an experiment, to see if LW can serve as a suitable venue for such an exercise. I hope it can: Less Wrong is almost unique in the extent to which the social norms governing discussion reflect and coincide with the requirements of personal epistemic rationality. (For example: "Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you.") But I don't think we've yet tried an organized one-on-one debate -- so we'll see how it goes. If it proves too unwieldy or inappropriate for some other reason, we can always move to another venue.

Although the primary purpose of this post is a one-on-one debate between Rolf Nelson and myself, this is a LW Discussion post like any other, and it goes without saying that others are welcome and encouraged to comment. Just be aware that we, the main protagonists, will try to keep our discussion focused on each other's arguments. (Also, since our subject is an issue where there is already a strong LW consensus, one would prefer to avoid a sort of "gangup effect" where lots of people "pounce" on the person taking the contrarian position.)

With that, here we go...