I would also learn enough causal inference stuff to recognize when the {press|people on the internet} are talking out of their asses about an empirical result. Usually this is of the form [policy prescription based on observational data], e.g. “scientists find wine is correlated with life expectancy, so drink wine to live longer!” People, even otherwise very smart people, get this wrong surprisingly often.
But I would say that!
If you know a bit of math that comes up often, you can use it as a sanity check for how careful people are about things you may not know about. That is, if they screw up what you know, that means they probably screw up other stuff.
I want to have access to outlook-changing insights.
“Insight porn” is not how real intellectual growth happens, at least in my experience. New insight feels nice, but lasting behavioral change isn’t sudden. Learning new stuff generally outpaces a consistent ability to act on that knowledge in our society.
With regards to insight porn, I was actually a bit surprised to see EY say “change your outlook on life”, which seems very strong. (He did say, “more than” the alternatives, so perhaps it’s a bit uncharitable to critique that.)
Acknowledging that its not a substitute for real understanding, I like insight. There’s no reason why I can’t have them both.
Also, I’m not sure that it is always true that cheep, quick insights aren’t the way intellectual growth happens. There have been many little realizations (and even just exposures to new ideas or topics), that, taken together, made for a more intellectually competent me. Sure, it’s harder to “act on that knowledge in our society” (that takes self-discipline), but I consider that separate from “intellectual growth”
I guess I don’t view “intellectual growth” separately from “personal growth” (perhaps I should?) And I view personal growth as a kind of chemical reaction, where the input ingredient in smallest amounts is the limit to how far the reaction goes. In (modern, Western, internet-enabled) society, intellectual insight/knowledge is usually not the limiting ingredient. The limiting ingredient is generally the motivation to get work done. Without it, the standard failure mode for “too much insight” is online wankery, basically.
I would look into very basic texts (doesn’t even have to be a full book) on what a proof is and how proofs work, e.g.:
http://math.berkeley.edu/~hutching/teach/proofs.pdf
I would also learn enough causal inference stuff to recognize when the {press|people on the internet} are talking out of their asses about an empirical result. Usually this is of the form [policy prescription based on observational data], e.g. “scientists find wine is correlated with life expectancy, so drink wine to live longer!” People, even otherwise very smart people, get this wrong surprisingly often.
But I would say that!
If you know a bit of math that comes up often, you can use it as a sanity check for how careful people are about things you may not know about. That is, if they screw up what you know, that means they probably screw up other stuff.
“Insight porn” is not how real intellectual growth happens, at least in my experience. New insight feels nice, but lasting behavioral change isn’t sudden. Learning new stuff generally outpaces a consistent ability to act on that knowledge in our society.
With regards to insight porn, I was actually a bit surprised to see EY say “change your outlook on life”, which seems very strong. (He did say, “more than” the alternatives, so perhaps it’s a bit uncharitable to critique that.)
Acknowledging that its not a substitute for real understanding, I like insight. There’s no reason why I can’t have them both.
Also, I’m not sure that it is always true that cheep, quick insights aren’t the way intellectual growth happens. There have been many little realizations (and even just exposures to new ideas or topics), that, taken together, made for a more intellectually competent me. Sure, it’s harder to “act on that knowledge in our society” (that takes self-discipline), but I consider that separate from “intellectual growth”
I guess I don’t view “intellectual growth” separately from “personal growth” (perhaps I should?) And I view personal growth as a kind of chemical reaction, where the input ingredient in smallest amounts is the limit to how far the reaction goes. In (modern, Western, internet-enabled) society, intellectual insight/knowledge is usually not the limiting ingredient. The limiting ingredient is generally the motivation to get work done. Without it, the standard failure mode for “too much insight” is online wankery, basically.
You gotta be kidding. You don’t need to learn how to make tools when you only need to use them.
How do you know what a tool is?
Do you know how to use a hammer? Do you know how to make it? Does not knowing how to make it prevent you from using it effectively?
I hope not, because then there must not be even a single tool I know how to use.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html