Perhaps you shouldn’t frame it as “study early” vs “study late”, but “study X” vs “study Y”.
My point was that these are separate questions. If you begin to suspect that understanding ML research requires an understanding of type theory, then you can start learning type theory. Alternatively, you can learn type theory before researching machine learning—ie. reading machine learning papers—in the hopes that it builds useful groundwork.
But what you can’t do is learn type theory and read machine learning research papers at the same time. You must make tradeoffs. Each minute you spend learning type theory is a minute you could have spent reading more machine learning research.
The model I was trying to draw was not one where I said, “Don’t learn math.” I explicitly said it was a model where you learn math as needed.
My point was not intended to be about my abilities. This is a valid concern, but I did not think that was my primary argument. Even conditioning on having outstanding abilities to learn every subject, I still think my argument (weakly) holds.
Note: I also want to say I’m kind of confused because I suspect that there’s an implicit assumption that reading machine learning research is inherently easier than learning math. I side with the intuition that math isn’t inherently difficult, it just requires memorizing a lot of things and practicing. The same is true for reading ML papers, which makes me confused why this is being framed as a debate over whether people have certain abilities to learn and do research.
My point was that these are separate questions. If you begin to suspect that understanding ML research requires an understanding of type theory, then you can start learning type theory. Alternatively, you can learn type theory before researching machine learning—ie. reading machine learning papers—in the hopes that it builds useful groundwork.
But what you can’t do is learn type theory and read machine learning research papers at the same time. You must make tradeoffs. Each minute you spend learning type theory is a minute you could have spent reading more machine learning research.
The model I was trying to draw was not one where I said, “Don’t learn math.” I explicitly said it was a model where you learn math as needed.
My point was not intended to be about my abilities. This is a valid concern, but I did not think that was my primary argument. Even conditioning on having outstanding abilities to learn every subject, I still think my argument (weakly) holds.
Note: I also want to say I’m kind of confused because I suspect that there’s an implicit assumption that reading machine learning research is inherently easier than learning math. I side with the intuition that math isn’t inherently difficult, it just requires memorizing a lot of things and practicing. The same is true for reading ML papers, which makes me confused why this is being framed as a debate over whether people have certain abilities to learn and do research.