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I think the rules surrounding the wiki pages should be made more clear and strict. I suggest we use the same rules as wikipedia but with some twists, the main difference being that posts on lesswrong itself count as valid links to reference/quote from in wiki articles. Also we might want to consider now allowing downvoted posts to be used.
Other than that we might want to use a queuing system where a page maintainer reviews changes made and gives karma for accepted changes. At some point you might also consider removing karma for bad changes.
This maintainer thing does not have to mean we don't instantly see the change. The review can be done after the fact or they can be queued and not be made visible until reviewed.
Would you consider turning this knowledge into an actual curriculum that includes practice problems and exams?
I'm thinking of something in the lines of MIT's free curriculum and Khan Academy's Math section. I have no problem with still linking to these text books as long as the freely available curriculum made by you or your team fills the gaps and there are plenty of ways to test understanding. I name khan's math section specifically because it uses that infinite practice problems and 10 in a row signals proficiency and has built in SRS.
Unlike khan however i would want to see mastery of whatever is the current status of the field instead of the low target of a certain school's exam requirements.
Great post.
I wonder is this study-list also good enough for applied psychology? I would like to learn Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and as you point out above most studies are flawed.
If this post post is not enough could you write another one answering my question?
How to read the autism score was explained on the test page itself.
quote: "Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives."
So a score above 32 means you are highly likely of being autistic.
I Took the survey and all the extra questions. I could not answer the USA centric school test results, we have a similar system in my country but they cannot be easily converted to eachother.
I'm glad to finally have a BigFive and IQ test that people somewhat agree on using.
i was unable to click or copy them
possible typo: "But don't you wish you were like me, Rachel?"... Rachael can and should admit that she does wish she were more like Irene... "
"Rachael"
I have done a lot of reading, testing and visiting of farms for my own small farm. The promises of safe, healthy food at higher yields than conventional conventional farming sounds great.
I have researched 4 types of farming
- Classic conventional
- Modern Conventional
- Organic
- Permaculture
Unfortunately i will not be able to provide links to scientific studies or books at this time.
The differences between these 4 types are basically:
- : high crop yield, moderate to heavy use of synthetic pesticides, low crop rotation, high quality crop
- : Extremely high crop yield, low to moderate use of synthetic pesticides, high crop rotation, extremely high quality crop
- : Low crop yield, moderate to heavy use of classic pesticides, high crop rotation, low quality crop
- : Medium to high crop yeild, no use of pesticides, no crop rotation, medium quality crop
Because organic farming relies on classic pesticides the farmers are often forced to use dangerous types that are dangerous to humans and wildlife.
Because modern conventional farming has advanced techniques for choosing crop types and protecting them from pest they can get away with using very little synthetic pesticides. Unlike classic pesticides synthetic ones have to pass a lot of safety testing before they can be used. Rule of thumb: modern synthetic pesticides are safe
Finally due to the options modern conventional farming has, the crop will usually end up being better tasting, prettier to look at, bigger in size and cheaper to produce.
In the organic vs conventional discussion a lot of people fail to realize or mention that modern conventional farming is at a "space age level", near my home there is a tech research company that designs cutting edge farming machines. These things are basically huge robots that can run a farm almost on their own. Almost all of the farming here occurs in greenhouses that have full climate control with pests being naturally dealt with through the use of wasps and ladybugs, note that these are not organic farms.
In which language is the meeting going to be? Also how much would parking cost?
This post made me think about this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM
In the video the annoyed person who made it explains how games teach the game mechanics intuitively as opposed to not at all or through a spoken or text tutorial.
I think it would be good if you watched this video and applied the lessons it gives to the game as a whole.
I get the feeling a large portion of this story can be classified as learned helplessness.
Several studies(google for cal newport) have shown that base talent has little effect on how good you can be at something, the real variable is deliberate practice, pushing the limits of what you can handle a tiny bit to slowly keep improving. ( obviously your swimming example does have harder limits imposed by the limits of your body, this does not seem to apply to fields outside of sports though and in sports like boxing there are different classes because of the differences in bodies)
When I learned about grade signalling I started making mistakes on purpose to lower my average (which was around 9.5 at the time). That was a terrible tactic in hindsight and it still causes selfdoubt on exams today.
I think this is a discussion about what the best order is in which debiasing should occur.
Project management seems to be an implementation of debiasing strategies and they first teach you to make more accurate predictions and then later teach you how to prevent the sunk cost fallacy from not cancelling a failing project.
Because of this i think debiasing should occur in a kind of logical order, one that prevents someone from cancelling all projects due to a good grasp of sunk cost and a bad grasp of utility calculations.
Thanks that helped. Too bad the spellchecker missed it.
Thanks, google docs is not flagging any typos, could you point some out for me?
Defining key performance indicators for things like these is not very hard, neither is developing ways to measure the performance. Tweaking the accuracy and fixing the gamable parts once the basics are done is the harder part. Also these metrics should like any theory be in a continual beta state and get tweaked, just make clear that the trend compared to previous measurements is broken. I can spend a little time on irc teaching someone how to do this but my time is extremely limited right now so it will have to be a formalish appointment with an eager student.
I would like to have this as an interactive application. It's not always so easy to get into a teacher student situation.
There are applications out there for developing this curriculum in a better way than the regular approach. Like the app these guys are selling http://www.knowledge-values.com/ I use apps like this on a daily basis to create the training content at work.
I don't need a whole game or anything, something as simple as the math exercises on khan academy will do the trick. And i would prefer each skill told as separately and atomically as possible/logically.
People tell me SI is arrogant but I don't see it myself. When you tell someone something and open it up to falsification and criticism I no longer see it as arrogance ( but I am wrong there for some reason)
In any case, what annoys me about the claims made is that its mostly based on anecdotal evidence and very little has come from research. Also as a regular guy and not a scientist or engineer I've noticed a distinct lack of any discussion of SI's viewpoints in the news.
I don't see anyone actively trying to falsify any of the claims in the sequences for example, and I think it's because you cannot really take them all that seriously.
A second problem is that there are many typos, little mistakes and (due to new experimental evidence) wrong things in the sequences and they never get updated. I'd rather see the sequences as part of a continually updated wiki-like lesson plan, where feedback is reviewed by a kind of board and they change what the texts accordingly.
The nitpicks mentioned on rationalwiki also contribute to the feeling of cultishness and arrogance:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong The part about quantum mechanics could use some extra posts, especially since EY does explain why he makes the claim when you take the whole of the sequences into account. He uses evidence from unrelated fields to prove many worlds.
EDIT: for some unknown reason people are downvoting my comment, if you downvote(d) this post or see why please tell me why so I can learn and improve future posts. Private messages are ok if you don't want to do it through a response here.
Due to a lack of focus I could not read the whole document, but it does look pretty good to my untrained eyes.
The moderating factors seem to be pretty important, I was unable to collect them all but they should sum up nicely to a how to do writing therapy guideline.
Note that the matrix-style learning aspect is only in the news bulletin, the actual study has no such information. In fact the skill they learned was not even useful.
But it is nice to see proof that subliminal messaging can work.
I think it's a chicken and egg problem. What luke writes on that page really does work, the page suggests building a set of skills and behaviors. But how does one overcome the akrasia about actually doing what the page suggests? I don't think we have an answer for that.
Thanks for that fix, i updated my post to correct that. I mean this fruit/spice specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper
I assume I'm allergic to the capsaicin in it, as i can eat Bell peppers and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper without any effects.
I agree completely on the additional wiki requirements.
There should be no difference account/Karma wise between posting on the main site or the wiki.
In my limited experience with children i have found that children will only do this when they are being ignored. I have only experienced it once myself and you quickly see the child is teasing you by their eyes and uneasy movement. The benchmark I use is repeating the same question again at a later time, that means they either did not understand or are teasing.
Did i understand correctly that you want us both to review your text and add specific examples that we can think of?
I will do both.
On the text:
I liked it very much, but I don't think the text works very well for people who do not see rationality as a virtue.
Some problems i see when i try to put on the glasses of my anti-rationality friends:
- The use of many in-crowd words and assumed meanings: hypothesis, fallacy, cognitive (non-rationality fan people do not use these words in daily life); What could be done is provide links to your definition. I believe we should keep definitions for these words on the lesswrong wiki because not all dictionaries agree on what all of them mean exactly, or what we mean by them.
- I know many people who will deny any claim that they are in some way faulty or that emotions are a bad thing, unfortunately i do not know of a good way to get around this.
- I get the feeling that the whole body of text is somewhat on the negative side: "Rationality will protect you from the cold harsh world" is the feeling i get.
On personal experience with applied rationality:
Example1:
I learned on lesswrong how an hypothesis should be used and how to use experimentation to collect evidence for or against it.
Using the scientific method i formed the hypothesis that something in my food was making me have to go to the bathroom all day long (for the past 15 years). So i started keeping a food diary where i noted what i ate at what time and at what time i had to visit the bathroom and if the visit was normal or not.
Eventually a pattern began to form and after about a month of taking notes it became clear that Chili pepper seemed to be the causation, but at this point it could merely be a correlation. (i had once blamed corn, the doctors did not agree but i could clearly see the causation with my irrational eyes, as it turns out i never eat corn without chili pepper, so it was only a correlation)
So i formed a new hypothesis: When I eat chilly i will get into trouble and then ran tests on that. So I removed chilly from my diet completely. (and the problems all went away), then to test i ate a big bowl of hot chili pepper soup, and in no time i was running to the bathroom again.
Example2:
(This one is about school an learning, i will be talking about a level of school similar to highschool. We use a grading system of 1(worst) to 10(best). The type of class i was in is what in the states would be considered a special school/class for gifted children)
When i got to "High School" i quickly found myself being teased about my learning abilities. With the notable exceptions of Excercise/Gym and Handwriting i was a straight 10 student, always had been. (I'm that guy that corrects mistakes in the schoolbook and the teachers explanation)
Although i pretended the teasing didn't hurt me, i only recently (with the rationality lessons of lesswrong) started to realise that they did hurt.
What happened was that i started to dislike school, getting 10's made me unpopular so something inside me snapped and i started dumbing down to be more "cool"
I still had 8's for everything and the teasing stopped.
But then something worse happened. In the 3rd grade of High School they changed the teachers for Math and we got a new one. This teacher was not a teacher. Instead it was a math genius that knew how to get the results/proofs but had no idea why.
I had always relied on learning a concept through the way of asking why, mapping it to my existing knowledge and then integrating it. but this teacher expected me to "guess the teachers password" and learn math like a copyprinter.
I couldn't do it, quickly i went from an 11 average (i never dumbed down on math) to 2-3 average, not long after i quit school completely and started working for minimum wage.
From that moment on i believed i was unable to learn, the experience shocked me and scared me. I have been unable to study anything since.
Through the lesswrong sequences and advice from regulars on lesswrong i have managed to pinpoint my learned helplessness cause and overcome it. I have learned more than i have in the past 10 years since coming to lesswrong.
Some smaller examples:
- I have done a google scholar, and google regular research to figure out what the best oral health strategy is according to the "better" studies (on average they all suck though)
- I have picked up my university study that i have been procrastinating on for 5 years and am seeing good progress and most importantly, retention.
- I have earned an excellent rating at work for self improvement in communication.
- I have earned an excellent rating at work for using my rationality skills to massively improve the quality of questions asked at work. Before we would accept any claim, now we only accept questions that have empirical evidence of adding value.(this went from 60% effectiveness to 94%)
Since i suck at arguing i would love to see more posts on this subject. I also agree with previous commenter's that a clear distinction needs to be made for things that are darksidey or purely meant for winning an argument no matter what.
there are times when winning the argument is better for your terminal values than always trying to convince the other party of truth.
I found a video that explains what i mean at a very basic level http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1F3vmNeyOvU
This video tries to explain what i mean, i hope the inferential distance is not too far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1F3vmNeyOvU
I too am very good at guessing the teachers password in addition to really learning the textbook contents. I am talking specifically about those students that do not use guessing the teacher's password as a way to finish with honors. I always do the propagation during the learning itself and improve upon it after the fact (i'll suddenly realize that something is off or changed days later)
I said i had a hard time explaining it and your comment makes extra clear that i failed. I will use your feedback to improve the text i have in mind.
I had this idea that these articles and sequences would help me at winning in life while simultaneously pave the way for a better world and friendly AI. Now seeing these short summaries i am no longer so sure they will help me win.
This post made me realize just how important it is to completely integrate the new things you learn.
I have been reading a lot of books and blogs on the subject of students that finish school with honors, but don't seem to work very hard while doing so. I also met one of those people in person (he finished an entire 4 year curriculum with honors in just 3 months and is now a professor of that content)
It all boils to the same thing: Whatever the textbook is trying to tell you, make sure you integrate that in your life. Only then will you see if you really understood what it was saying and if you are missing any extra information, or if the information in the book is wrong. Once integrated you do not need any extra studying to get an A/10 for the exam.(because you will have recursively updated all your beliefs to include the thing you where supposed to learn)
Some of these books and blogs go into detail on how to how to do this. One of the methods i read was making a doodle of the idea in your notebook. This doodle borrows heavily from your current state of knowledge. An example of what I did: To model the process of taking a raw resource and making it into a profitable end product i drew a mine with rocks coming out, then a table with a chisel on the rock and finally a diamond with a price-tag. I know how diamonds are made so i could use that to represent this process.
There are many more methods, another that i have not yet tried to use is basically making a flashcard.: Question/Evidence/Conclusion http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/04/06/4-weeks-to-a-40-streamline-your-notes/
EDIT: I'm having a hard time explaining what i am trying to say, i will post a new comment or top level post if i manage to figure it out. Basically I'm trying to say that there already well working and documented methods for connecting and updating beliefs in the world of outlier student research.
Test result: I feel really happy and relieved, i finally belong in the group and people will stop nagging me about it, i can put it all behind me. I'm not a chump at all, in fact, i'm (finally) normal.
I do feel forced to finish school, just because everyone else has done so and I have to live up to the expectations of society. (I also live in a country where without a diploma they don't even invite you for an interview).
I have trouble letting go of stuff in general (i have OCD) so i might just read that book anyway.
I shouldn't have to finish school because others want me to, but because i want to of my own free will.
(You know i love playing RPG's and maxing out all the skill trees and side quest badges, these are really no different from school (in my school i'll actually get 32 different badges in addition to the diploma)
Ok so i thought about it hard.
Here's what i think the problem is: I think people who finished school and have diploma's are chumps who fell for paper-to-prove skills game in a system that is easily gamable and as a result doesn't actually show anything about your skill.
I guess i've made it a point to prove that you don't need school to get shit done (i have the biggest house, earn the most, best car, etc.. of all my friends and family, it seems i DO care about showing off?)
What i've been stumped on for years though, is how to respect being a graduate.
I've actually read about this connection in several self help blogs and posts. I also casually mention it in my comment earlier today.
I kind of remember getting the same idea from reading your book, maybe memory is foggy or you only hint at it.
Do you know of a better strategy?
I cannot find any flaw in your statement. If it where just up to me I would just forget about school and give up. But it's not up to me.
I need to find a way to find the motivation to actually do the school work, but nothing i can come up with seems to work..
Blockers that come to mind are: "I'll fail the exams and have to pay extra money to do them again" "The information is so densly packed i can't follow half of it" "I say that i can accept a 6/10 but i don't really believe that(i want at least 8/10)" The list goes on, i think they are just excuses that hide the real feeling.
EDIT: i figured something out, I need to find a pet project or work project that the class is relevant for and then follow the class as a way to get that project done/improved. That way i have a directly related goal and no reason to procrastinate.
I don't see it?
I am doing school to improve my chances on the market. I have been working since i quit school at 18(31 now). The reason i need to finish school is so i can apply for better jobs or get a raise in my current one. There is also other financial benefits involved with finishing school (i'll get a 10.000 euro bonus when i do). But all that still does not motivate me to do it. There IS a lot of fear involved, i was a straight A student before i met the teacher from hell and soon after quit school.
EDIT: forgot to mention that the contents of the classes are for 80% or more relevant to my dayjob.
I have a bunch that i cannot solve, maybe i have gone to low on them? in fact i've only fixed 3 or 4 so far, and they where all done in in a couple of beliefs.
I guess i never learned how to spot "going too low"
My biggest problem is doing school. I have been procrastinating on it for years and i can only bring my self to do brief bursts of work for a few days followed by weeks of doing nothing. I have tackled several conflicting beliefs but this one won't budge.
P.S. I would like to know about the progress on your new books. P.P.S It would be great if you could help/coach me somehow.
The most important thing i learned from less wrong is "Cause and Effect".
Since i filled out the poll i would like to say something.
What i think the poll did not take into account is that procrastination seems to be caused by conflicting beliefs. I can completely cure myself from procrastination on one specific subject if i manage to find and correct all the conflicting beliefs. It also helps to allign them with a goal you have, this turns a once procastination inducing task to something you get OCD about doing whenever it pops up.
But thats also a downside, you have to learn the habits of tracking down the conflicting beliefs, and you are likely to procrastinate at learning these new habits (as do I). It's also a bit depressing to realise you have so many conflicting beliefs,but that effect is outweighed by knowing you CAN fix them some day.
In my experience it can take anywhere from 1 to dozens of belief changes to fix chronic procrastination on a single task. I have noticed some bleeding out effect though, some of the other tasks i used to procrastinate on have become easier to do, but they clearly still have conflicting beliefs of their own.
My point is: Generally you need to attack each individual thing you procrastinate on one by one, so progress is VERY slow. But i would never have gotten to step one without lesswrong and particularly PJ Eby's http://thinkingthingsdone.com/
I guess i would like to see an exercise routine that was designed from the ground up to provide a nice balance of benefits vs injury risk, and then specifically a routine that you can keep doing indefinitely.
But maybe i'm not giving the breakdown of the human body enough weight...
I guess i just want a lifelong exercise plan with easy to follow steps, one that has a lot of evidence behind it that it won't cause early damage to bone, tissue, etc...
Thanks for taking the time to explain that.
That exercise works to some extent is clear, just look at bodybuilders. However i do not see a lot of evidence based work on exercises that find a good balance between health and body damage. You might notice that many bodybuilders no longer look so healthy after their 40's.
I'll keep searching.
I got the feeling this post was going to tell me how to become more awesome in a better way. At the end i felt like i was left hanging with no solution.
My guess would be that the lowest possible hanging fruit for this would be: Learning how to learn Being able to learn effectively seems to be the underpinning of all possible other things one might want to accomplish.
I would very much like to see a post that summarizes the current state of knowledge on learning and an applied "how to" in addition or in the same post.
both pages look really spammy, how can i be more sure that i'm not looking at survivor biased individuals, or worse quacks selling snakeoil.
I'm very interested in the physical abilities part but almost everything seems to be bullshit.
There may be schools in the world somewhere where the MBA study actually teaches you something useful, in my country there are none.
To run a business you don't need any of the above things, a training in middle management is enough.
The things i mentioned are specifically for organizing a company for the first time, or reorganizing an existing one. That's what i use these skills for (and with high success)
This is basically my job so here goes:
Get certified for the best management practices, these have been established by years of trial and error using a simplified version of the scientific method called Plan-Do-Check-Act.
The HPO Center Has done a lot of research on why companies stay in business for a long time, and how they remain market leader. The result is 35 rules that when followed give you a higher chance of being a long lasting market leader.
Another methodology you can get certified for is Six Sigma which revolves around reducing the number of errors in your processes, this is often combined with Lean which focuses on removing those things from your process that do not add any value to the end product. These two combined ensure the customer gets a good product or service at minimal costs to you.
Finally, most of your value will be in the form of knowledge, documents, processes, etc... Companies like Knowledge Values specialize in tools and teaching surrounding the management of this knowledge.
All the idea's here combine to form a strategy and mindset for creating a company (process) that can have a high chance of success an profit with a lower investment and risk of bankruptcy. Note that the whole thing stands or falls with how willing your customers are to get your product, and how good you are at making them want it. In the topics i mentioned this issue does not get a lot of attention.
The concepts i mentioned are often used by companies to become or stay in list like the forbs500.
One final note, whenever you optimize for some metric, that metric becomes less and less reliable, this is called Goodhart's Law. The topic's above do go into this a little bit, but my main advice would be to always find 3 interconnected and if possible contradictory metrics so you see what happens to the other 2 when you optimize for one. An example:
Customers complain >> give them more money they stop complaining.
You can manage the complaint solving a little bit better by adding a cost metric in addition to the customer happiness metric. (in my case i also added a time spent by the employee metric)
The review alone makes me want to play it!
Yes i think you understood what i meant. It is a recursive system where you keep defining each thing in detail, hacking at the edges of reality until any hypotheses left are all equally valid.
It is hard work, and it is possibly too much for the brain to handle, but afaik, other than the handful of Direct Instruction studies nobody has done any really big tests. the tests done on the small scale where highly successful though.
I obviously program this stuff in a specially designed tool, which makes it intuitive and easy to keep defining the definitions deeper and deeper (and you basically end up with laws of nature at the bottom, like the math explaining gravity etc..)
I guess what i am trying to say is, that the foggyness of concepts in our head can be a result of our teaching methods and not a flaw of the mind per-se, my only evidence being the fact that we can make tools that help us clear up the fog, and that using these tools/methods to teach people seems to have a big effect.
i have tried the read-on thing on 2 pages and it made it even worse, so i dropped back to the opening pages tactic. That page you mention is actually one of the better ones although using examples like "Wulky Wilkinsen" and post utopianism made no sense to me. Having things explained elsewhere is a big problem imho, but i intend to devote some time to help fix that.
You may have been exposed to enough american culture by tv, movie, shows and books to not get overwhelmed by them?
While reading this i got the idea that this article is attacking the current standards for “how to order things in nature”
I have two things to say in response:
Direct Instruction and i guess the scientific method in general both claim/prove that you can cut reality at the exact joints required to make only those hypotheses that explain the thing available. (So we can come up with unfalsifiable set of data on what a “red” is).
Only real data about a thing should be stored, flat things that say something concrete about the thing. Categorizing the thing in a scale with other similar things, meta infomation, should be done for each unique question posed. For example: We store all the facts about dolphins in a database(like has lungs, has fins, has sonar), but not labels(is mammal, is fish, etc..). You can then query the database for things you want, for example, all things with fins, and then dolphins will fit the meta label, do the same thing for all things with gills and the dolphin will not be in the result.
In short: Labels are situational and should be clearly defined as to what kind of characteristic they scan for and what they’re use is.
As a knowledge designer. I would store all the simple facts in a database, and then use a conditional script to select the best label for any given query at that moment. This means i throw away the current concept of “fish” whatever it is, and make it concrete by asking: “What specific characteristics are you interested in for this particular query?” (We can decide on common queries that we want to make international standards, like we have now for fish, but we need to make clear in what situations that standard even means anything)
I don't know math, quantum mechanics or philosophy, i had to open 10-20 pages of references and google searches to follow what was going on(per individual sequence page).
It reads as though it is assumed that you are a AI graduate.
Its also strongly aimed/influenced by american culture, so some things are weird for us Europeans.