Is this a case of multiple discovery?[1] And might something similar happen with AGI? Here are 4 projects who have concurrently developed very similar looking models:

(1) University of Toronto: Unifying Visual-Semantic Embeddings with Multimodal Neural Language Models

(2) Baidu/UCLA: Explain Images with Multimodal Recurrent Neural Networks

(3) Google: A Neural Image Caption Generator

(4) Stanford: Deep Visual-Semantic Alignments for Generating Image Descriptions

[1] The concept of multiple discovery is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors.

Advice/help needed: how do I study math by doing lots of exercises when there's nobody there to clue me in when I get stuck?

It's a stupid problem, but because of it I've been stuck on embarrassingly simple math since forever, when (considering all the textbooks and resources I have and the length of time I've had it as a goal) I should have been years ahead of my peers. Instead, I'm many years behind. (Truth be told, when performance is tested I'm about the same as my peers. But that's because my peers and I have only struggled for a passing grade. That's not what my standard of knowledge is. I want to learn everything as thoroughly as possible, to exhaust the textbook as a source of info; I usually do this by writing down the entire textbook, or at least every non-filler info.)

There is a great disparity between the level of math I've been acquainted with during my education, and the level of math at which I can actually do all the exercises effortlessly. In theory by now I'm well into undergraduate calculus and linear algebra. In practice I need to finish a precalculus exercise book (tried and couldn't). While I'm learning math, I constantly oscillate between boredom ("I'm too old for this shit" ; "I've seen this proof tens of times before") and the feeling of getting stuck on a simple matter because of a momentary lack of algebraic insight ("I could solve this in an instant if only I could get rid of that radical"). I've searched for places online where I could get my "homework" questions answered, but they all have rather stringent rules that I must follow to get help, and they'd probably ban me if I abused the forums in question.

This problem has snowballed too much by now. I kept postponing learning calculus (for which I've had the intuitions since before 11th grade when they began teaching it to us) and therefore all of physics (which I'd terribly love to learn in-depth), as well as other fields of math or other disciplines entirely (because my priority list was already topped by something else).

I've considered tutoring, but it's fairly expensive, and my (or my tutor's) schedule wouldn't allow me to get as much tutoring as I would need to - given that I sometimes only have time to study during the night.

Do any LessWrongers have resources for me to get my questions answered? Especially considering that, at least at the beginning until I get the hang of it, I will be posting loads of these. Tens to hundreds in my estimation.

Do you have a curriculum that works through these?

It can either be an already existing textbook or class or just a list of concepts.

Price's Equation

Next year I want to see an independent measure of conscientiousness, and compare this between people who bother to answer the digit ratio question and those who don't...

If you want to learn statistics by doing, try to do what gwern does.

Do you have any suggestions for such unitary(ish) abilities?

0 degrees Fahrenheit

For our readers who like to use SI units: That is about -17.7°C

The trick to surviving in colder climates is layering. T-Shirt plus shirt plus pullover plus a good winter jacket should do the trick. Some people like to layer trousers but for me a good pair of jeans does the trick. Look for good winter boots as feet loose a lot of heat. Cover your head with a hat, wear a scarf. Experiment with these things as there is comfort and aesthetics to be considered. Wear gloves or start getting used to walking with your hands in your pockets. If you do wear gloves take them off to shake someones hand, anything else is extremely rude.

Person A is an Olympic-level athlete. He can perform amazing physical feats. The limits of his ability can be scored against some sort of metric (lap time, distance jumped, etc.), and since he's working to improve on them, his own personal limits are known to him.

Person B is of average physical fitness.

Person C has a moderate chronic illness. He struggles to perform basic physical feats, but can function independently with some difficulty.

If all three of these people were secretly transplanted into an environment with lower oxygen levels and began to experience mild hypoxia, it seems that Persons A and C would both be more sensitive to this change than Person B. Person A would notice it because he would no longer be able to perform outstanding physical feats to the level he's accustomed to. Person C would notice it because he'd struggle to carry out basic activities.

[Edit for clarity: I'm not saying that Person B would never notice this, but that he would be less sensitive to it, because his performance is higher-variance and subject to less of a "state change", and doesn't have a fine, frequently-scrutinised boundary between what he can and can't do.]

Alternatively:

Person D is a voracious infovore with high reading comprehension. She's used to grappling with precise language.

Person E is an average-level reader.

Person F has some sort of reading-related disability.

It seems that Persons D and F will be more sensitive to badly-punctuated writing than Person E. For example, Person D might be able to parse a sentence in two or three plausible ways, while Person F might not be able to parse the sentence at all.

Both of these cases involve both ends of an ability distribution being more sensitive to degradation of the environment than central cases. Are there better examples? Is this a phenomenon we actually see in the real world? If so, does it have a name?

Seconding a lot of calef's observations.

If the new topic you want to learn is "extended behavior networks", then maybe this is your best bet. But if you really want to learn about something like AI or ML or the design of agents that behave reasonably by the standards of some utility-like theory, then this is probably a bad choice. A quick search in Google Scholar (if you're not using this, or some equivalent, making this a step before going to the hivemind is a good idea) suggests that extended behavior networks are backwater-y. If the idea of a network of things interacting to make a decision appeals to you, maybe look into Petri nets or POMDPs. Or better yet, start with something like Russel and Norvig's AIMA to get a better view of the landscape. If the irrationality part is interesting, start with Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky's Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, which gives you a curated collection of jargoney papers.