A while back, @Zvi set up a Schelling point for mentorship. I, personally, had some pretty good experiences from that thread, and wanted to continue the tradition, now that the old thread's been inactive for some time.
To see some of my thoughts on mentorship, check out this dialogue between Elizabeth and I.
I'll be copying Zvi's formatting for comments:
Replies to this post should take the form of any of the following:
- [MENTOR]: A non-binding indication of potential interest in mentorship. Mention that you might, at some point, be interested in taking on an apprentice. This commits you to nothing. Make sure to indicate what you’d be teaching them and what project would likely be involved, and open with [MENTOR]. You are free to include contact info, or not include it and monitor replies.
- Replies to this comment to indicate potential interest in being the apprentice, marked [APPRENTICE], which should include a method of further contact.
- [APPRENTICE]: A non-binding indication of potential interest in being an apprentice. Mention that you might, at some point, be interested in being an apprentice. This commits you to nothing. Make sure to indicate what you’re interested in being an apprentice in and learning, and an indication of what’s motivating you.
- Replies to this comment to indicate potential interest in being the mentor, marked with [MENTOR], which should include a method of further contact.
- [NORMAL] You’re free to comment as per normal, but start with [NORMAL] in the top-level for clarity.
[MENTOR]
I am a 25-year-old computer science PhD student and I currently work on natural language processing with neurosymbolic approaches (using a mix of logic and neural networks to do reasoning on a normal text input). I have a (very) high degree of education in math and theoretical computer science. I also have some very limited skills and knowledge for more practical aspects of computer science. Also, I have quite a lot of reflection on the topic of the nature of thought, valid inference, and rational behavior. These are condensed in a currently unpublished book length report. The result of a year-long break I took for personal reflection. I expect to be able to help quite a lot with fundamental reflection that relates to epistemology or rationality.
If you intend to learn about some aspect of mathematics or theoretical computer science I can probably point you toward resources or help you understand technical aspects. I am also willing to serve as a background help for someone going through a math education. Alternatively, I might be willing to help an in depth reflection to which you think I can be relevant.
I can offer some asynchronous email/messages exchange and semiregular conversation, perhaps averaging one or two per month. Ideally, we would schedule conversations quickly when you need them. If you have a very different mode of interaction in mind I am willing to adapt.
[APPRENTICE]
Presentation copy/pasted from the mentor section.
I am a 25-year-old computer science PhD student and I currently work on natural language processing with neurosymbolic approaches (using a mix of logic and neural networks to do reasoning on a normal text input). I have a (very) high degree of education in math and theoretical computer science. I also have some very limited skills and knowledge for more practical aspects of computer science. Also, I have quite a lot of reflection on the topic of the nature of thought, valid inference, and rational behavior. These are condensed in a currently unpublished book length report. The result of a year-long break I took for personal reflection.
I am looking for one of the followings:
By default, I would imagine a few discussions near the beginning and then much less frequent conversations as needed (once a month?). But that's just off the top of my head.
[NORMAL]
Whether as a mentor, as an apprentice, or because you think we could work together in some other capacity, feel free to DM me through lesswrong. Give me a few days to get back to you. If I do not answer it probably means your message did not go through. In that case just comment below.