I find that what helps for me is re-writing maths as I'm learning it.
When I glance at an equation or formula (especially an unfamiliar one), I usually can't take it in because my mind is trying to glance it all at once. I have to force myself to scan it slowly, either by re-writing it, writing out its definition, or by (holding a ruler under it) and scanning one symbol at a time.
Then again, I'm currently studying a postgraduate degree in maths and I'm not someone who's ever considered themselves 'bad at math'.
yeah, that's not going to help
It won't help the situation, but it might help you to better handle the situation. The useful thing about "prayer" isn't that it actually calls down any outside help, but that it forces you to clarify your own thoughts regarding what you want and what would be useful... in much the same way that problem solving is made easier by explaining the problem to somebody else.
Verbal communication forces you to serialize your thoughts, to disassemble what may be a vague or complex structure of interconnecting impulses, i...
That's a useful template and in some cases the advice...
This may vary somewhat with the audience and I believe the claim...
Note, that I did notice the change. I do think that to facilitate proper understanding of a sentence, 'but' should be used slightly differently from 'and', even if both are technically correct.
So, Viliam_Bur, do I understand correctly?
You are saying the major tradeoff isn't between:
It is between:
(The costs-benefit calculation is a long-term one performed over all potential situations, not a short-term one performed over each specific situation)
I agree; this makes sense to me.
In certain cases, bluntness can be useful. However, by this I mean it can be useful if you are able to let pe...
I also recall reading 'and', if not in that book then in one on a similar topic.
I believe the basic format for using 'and' is: "I believe X is good, and it could be even better if you did Y".
Contrast:
I'm not sure Twelve Virtues of Rationality is the best place to start. To be honest, I was a bit confused reading it the first time, and it only made sense to me after I had spent some time on lesswrong getting used to Eliezer's writing-style.
For myself (as I know it was for many others), I got here via Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I'd say it's a great place to start many people off, but perhaps not the majority. Along with that, what got me convinced to start reading lesswrong was my interest in biases and importantly being convinced that ...
Relevant to this topic: Keith Johnstone's 'Masks'. It would be better to read the relevant section in his book "Impro" for the whole story (I got it at my university library) but this collection of quotes followed by this video should give enough of an introduction.
The idea is that while the people wear these masks, they are able to become a character with a personality different from the actor's original. The actor doesn't feel as if they are controlling the character. That being said, it doesn't happen immediately: It can take a few sessions f...
The problem is not that they come up with a hypothesis too early, it's that they stop too early without testing examples that are not supposed to work. In most cases people are given as many opportunities to test as they'd like, yet they are confident in their answer after only testing one or two cases (all of which came up positive).
The trick is that you should come up with one or more hypotheses as soon as you can (maybe without announcing them), but test both cases which do and don't confirm it, and be prepared to change your hypothesis if you are proven wrong.
The problem is not that they are trying examples which confirm their hypothesis it's that they are trying only those examples which test their hypothesis.
The article focuses on testing examples which don't work because people don't do this enough. Searching for positive examples is (as you argue) a neccessary part of testing a hypothesis, and people seem to have no problem applying this. What people fail to do is to search for the negative as well.
Both positive and negative examples are, I'd say, equally important, but people's focus is completely imbalanced.
The context here is a human dealing with a human. Thus it can be considered a useful heuristic to think "will what I write/say cause someone to lose social status?" and depending on the reply that your brain returns, judge whether it could be considered offensive (since this might prove to be a more accurate means of judging offense than trying to do so directly).
Naturally, if you were actually trying to develop an artificial intelligence that needed to refrain from offending people, it probably wouldn't be as easy as just 'calculating the objective status change' and basing the response on that.
"I wish I could believe that no one could possibly believe in belief in belief in belief..."
You wish you could believe Eliezer? Is this a dliberate stroke of irony or a subconcious hint at the fact that you do have an empathic understanding of the thought processes behind tailoring your own beliefs?
My masters degree involved a good bit of category theory. Personally, I don't see how it has any use outside of mathematics. (Note 'maths' includes 'mathematical logic' - so it's still a broad field of applicability).
I am highly motivated to be persuaded otherwise, and hence will be watching this series of posts with keen interest.
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<disclaimer>
I am not a working mathematician, and have not published any papers. My masters thesis involved a lot of category theory - but only relatively simple category-theoretic conce... (read more)