Having conversations is often much more productive for resolving confusions than just listening to other people’s conversations. It’s pretty clear why this would be the case: if I’m confused about thing X, then this may trickle down to small confusions about lots of things Y1, Y2, Y3. Then, it’s fairly likely that at least one of Y1,Y2,Y3 will come up in conversation, and if me and the conversation partner iteratively find cruxes, we’ll quickly identify X and then the conversation partner can give me the arguments for X, at which point I may change my mind.
I would learn a lot more algebraic topology by talking to an algebraic topologist and asking them to define all their terms rather than sitting and “absorbing” a lecture. Ofc “listen to content that you can basically understand with a little bit of new stuff thrown in” is going to be more effective than this, but this still feels like a super silly way to learn algebraic topology.
“Speaking so that you sound like a native” is not the only goal of language learning (I’d argue that it’s a relatively minor one). For instance, if I was to learn a new language my goal would be “be able to kind of basically communicate” rather than to be a native speaker. I’d guess that practicing conversation is much more efficient for picking this skill up, but would be interested if you have evidence to the contrary.
I kind of disagree with the suggestions in the “culture learning” section. I don’t think it’s good for epistemics for people to try to adopt the opinions of people on LW, or to think of this as a goal. If you’re only willing to talk to people that share your opinions, then that is an echo-chamber. However, I agree that it’s more efficient from my perspective for people to have first read some basic content about why people are worried about AI before talking to me about it (although I suspect that this is much less efficient from their perspective because I can adaptively choose what to talk about based on their demonstrated confusions).
This is about socially transmitted skills. Discourse norms are, but technical concepts like algebraic topology and whatever you’re trying to figure out in the first bullet aren’t.
Sure, you can have plenty of other goals, I’m not trying to refute that in any way.
People can have LessWrong culture while disagreeing with a lot of the things on here! This is about being familiar with the norms and knowing that the LessWrong ideas even exist at all, not getting people to believe them. The point about making mistakes that the Sequences caution against is a descriptive claim about an archetypical person who is new to the community, not a necessary condition.
A few thoughts:
Having conversations is often much more productive for resolving confusions than just listening to other people’s conversations. It’s pretty clear why this would be the case: if I’m confused about thing X, then this may trickle down to small confusions about lots of things Y1, Y2, Y3. Then, it’s fairly likely that at least one of Y1,Y2,Y3 will come up in conversation, and if me and the conversation partner iteratively find cruxes, we’ll quickly identify X and then the conversation partner can give me the arguments for X, at which point I may change my mind.
I would learn a lot more algebraic topology by talking to an algebraic topologist and asking them to define all their terms rather than sitting and “absorbing” a lecture. Ofc “listen to content that you can basically understand with a little bit of new stuff thrown in” is going to be more effective than this, but this still feels like a super silly way to learn algebraic topology.
“Speaking so that you sound like a native” is not the only goal of language learning (I’d argue that it’s a relatively minor one). For instance, if I was to learn a new language my goal would be “be able to kind of basically communicate” rather than to be a native speaker. I’d guess that practicing conversation is much more efficient for picking this skill up, but would be interested if you have evidence to the contrary.
I kind of disagree with the suggestions in the “culture learning” section. I don’t think it’s good for epistemics for people to try to adopt the opinions of people on LW, or to think of this as a goal. If you’re only willing to talk to people that share your opinions, then that is an echo-chamber. However, I agree that it’s more efficient from my perspective for people to have first read some basic content about why people are worried about AI before talking to me about it (although I suspect that this is much less efficient from their perspective because I can adaptively choose what to talk about based on their demonstrated confusions).
This is about socially transmitted skills. Discourse norms are, but technical concepts like algebraic topology and whatever you’re trying to figure out in the first bullet aren’t.
Sure, you can have plenty of other goals, I’m not trying to refute that in any way.
People can have LessWrong culture while disagreeing with a lot of the things on here! This is about being familiar with the norms and knowing that the LessWrong ideas even exist at all, not getting people to believe them. The point about making mistakes that the Sequences caution against is a descriptive claim about an archetypical person who is new to the community, not a necessary condition.