All of Crab's Comments + Replies

Crab00

Reading high quality works by the giants of the 20th century and comparing it to more modern material can be a humbling experience for some--it certainly has been for me on more than one occasion.

I am not sure, are you saying, that for some fields "works by the giants of the 20th century" is great, while modern material is bad?

0RedMan
Correct. I have found that the works written at the time when the relevant technical work had just recently been completed, by the people who made those breakthroughs, is often vastly superior to summary work written decades after the field's last major breakthrough. If I remember correctly, Elon Musk cited some older texts on rocketry as his 'tree trunk' of knowledge about the subject. This advice only applies to mature fields, in places where fundamental breakthroughs are happening regularly, this advice is downright awful.
Crab20

Reposting my comment from lukeprog's thread with slight edits.

It would be useful for me if some of you guys shared your methodology of choosing textbook / course / whatever for learning X, especially if X has something to do with math, computer science or programming.

My methodology (especially for math, computer science and programming) (in no particular order):

  • I know Russian and English but I prefer English textbooks, because there are more textbooks in English produced. If their usefulness for me is a gaussian distribution, then top textbooks in Englis
... (read more)
Crab60

It would be useful for me if some of you guys shared your methodology of choosing textbook / course / whatever for learning X, especially if X has something to do with math, computer science or programming.

My methodology (in no particular order):

  • Go to this thread and look at recommendations
  • Go to libgen, search for the keyword and sort by the publisher or by year
  • Check rating on goodreads and/or on amazon
  • Check top comments by usefulness on goodreads and/or amazon
  • Download the book, look at the Contents section, see how much I like what I see
  • Google best
... (read more)
Crab20
Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject.
You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject.
You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.

Subject: Probability Theory

Recommendation: Feller's An Introduction to Probability Theory is better than Jaynes' Probability Theory: The Logic of Science and MIT OpenCourseware: Introduction to Probability and Statistics

Jaynes' book probably has more insight for someone who already knows probabili... (read more)

Crab00

You claim that posting attention to some kind of pain might make you feel that pain stronger in the future. However Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction supposedly makes you feel better despite chronic pains. It inckudes mindful meditation, which has you pay attention to how your body feels. This seems to be a contradiction with what you claim, because of you pay attention to it, it will become worse, as you say.

Crab20

The title misled me: I though this would be useful if me and another person decided to write a piece of fiction together.

Apparently this post is for people who write things and let other people comment on them, make little changes and suggest edits. But there is still one main author.

2richard_reitz
I'm sorry my title misled you. (Since writing has trouble carrying intent: I genuinely feel bad that the title I chose caused you to believe something that wasn't true. I wish I was smart enough to have come up with a title that more precisely communicated what I was and wasn't discussing.) This is perhaps a case of different projects being best served by different practices. There's certainly nothing stopping you from making a Google Doc where two (or more) authors have editing permission (as opposed to commenting permission). But it's absolutely true that I'm writing from the perspective of having one primary author. This is because every piece I've worked on has had one primary author. Paul Graham writes: "Design usually has to be under the control of a single person to be any good." Indeed, almost all books of fiction I'm aware of were published by one author. A quick survey indicates that even most TV shows—which have writing staffs—usually have one author, although it's somewhat more common to have several people collaborate as equals to put together a story, which is then written up by one person. This was more or less how Buffy got written, as described by Jane Espenson. It would certainly have been a major breakthrough if I'd discovered how to have multiple authors consistently work together to make good work. But that's above my pay grade; if a bunch of professional writers who have been in the business for decades have a strong preference for single authorship, I see that as a strong indication that I should generally prefer single authorship. Also, if this piece comes off as having collaborators mostly making small edits, that's partly because it's true, but partly my own bias. Certainly, in In Fire Forged, we had one or two people who primarily worked with the author on macro level issues (plot, characterization, thematic consistency, etc), while I worked on the micro level. But it's also partly because it's true; outside of two fanfics (plus a poe
Crab20

Actually the LW Study Hall uses 32-8.

0ChristianKl
Thanks, I corrected it.
Crab550

I have taken the survey.