LVSN

I find that almost nothing, especially not math, is taught from "first" "principles". To gain true understanding of a thing, you must do three things: First, reduce it to a set of definitions and/or instruction steps; a program. Second, explain what this program relevantly achieves. Third, elaborate the relevant consequences...

Disclaimer: I might have no idea what I'm talking about and my proposal might be an infohazard but it also might save us all; I don't know LessWrong has monthly AGI safety basic questions threads where people typically ask in the comments why their imagined solution wouldn't work, without understanding...

I once spent a lot of time trying and failing to remember the word 'corollary', and once I heard it again I was like "ah, finally, there's that word; now I won't forget." What are some other words like this? I'll keep an updating list in this post as I...

Add a voting mechanism for posts, beside the karma, that indicates whether you * understood the post well enough to agree or disagree with it (upvote), or * cannot understand the post with a reasonable time investment (downvote) I suggest that this determines the post's clarity score (we could name...

I'm coining the word 'kakistocurious'. Its etymology derives from * the Greek prefix kakisto-, meaning 'worst', as in 'kakistocracy' (rule of the worst), * and the English suffix -curious, meaning 'wanting to know', as in 'bicurious'. People who are kakistocurious think about stereotypically bad things and wonder if they are...

The SBF controversy has not shifted my belief that you should always be sensitive to the relevant arguments pertaining to the specific situation, even when you think you've found good general rules, though of course those general rules may count as relevant arguments. I don't even care about "utility." You...

"The basic idea underlying most uses of Bayes’ theorem is that a hypothesis is supported by any evidence which is rendered (either sufficiently or simply) probable by the truth of that hypothesis." — Bayesian Argumentation: The Practical Side of Probability