tldr (long thing contains all the babble, only included because seemed low cost, don’t recommend reading):
Did exercises alone as didn’t feel like setting up something with a partner. Felt I was excited enough that should work.
steered away from 95% for all exercises where I hadn’t seen the puzzle before as was afraid that there’s a trick.
I mostly noticed how extremely FUN I found this! Just today when reflecting that studying for university courses has kind of killed some of my enthusiasm and I didn’t really remember last time being really excited while studying or in free time. Tried playing games (like chess), but even that felt more like doing the motions and got me more addicted and not actually in a flow state of mind. Somehow this just clicked.
Training regimen:
Probably opting for speed. This seemed on the easier side.
I will maybe try 5 minutes per question and see how that goes for 10 of them.
Journal
steam locomotive
Intuition:
It seems like bigger wheels would be better for higher speed, but might be more wasteful.
abstract
This is in the momentum collum. It seems like one difference would be that the train with lower load, but speed, needs to efficiently maintain that speed. The one for freight needs better breaks.
I also am not sure if I am supposed to use other evidence. On the other hand, why would I have received.
Overall it seems the higher train is made in a way that is designed for slower speed (higher, less big Schornstein.) the thing stopping things in the front
There is something unintuitive about Gänge here as well! Having a big wheel means on rotation of the engine is covering more ground. This definitely seems like the thing that you want for the fast train with less load! On the other hand I think there is a high chance I have the direction backwards there.
I really don’t like the trick of having two options that they are both trains of the same kind! I feel like that makes it hard for me to become confident!
Anything left confusing?
I don’t know lots about time or engines!
Not 100% sure on direction of thing!
Not sure how tricky questions are
I think I want to not get overconfident (gpt-4 thing got me!)!
I also haven’t spent 20 minutes!
Tracks as hints? What about the stangen thing attached to wheels?
How does number of wheels matter?
I feel like I got most of the evidence I know how to interpret.
I am not sure if I should treat this as an exercise in not being too impatient, or in moving at the appropriate speed. I think I want to go with taking the appropriate time?
When practicing I am also not sure how well this went. I felt this exercise really didn’t give me that much to work on?
Result:
b) (90%)
a) (5%)
c,d) (5%)
passenger speed, freight load.
Looking back
I was right!
Gives me more confidence that this book is trying to be straightforward and not trying to trick me.
I could have explicitly thought about if the locomotive thing would have been recommended if it seemed like this thing wouldn’t have been super object level.
I feel like I could easily taken this one on in 5 minutes if I had not expected really hard stuff.
I got the thing correct for exactly the right intuition. Nice. I want to check that in the future.
I want more books that are like that! I feel like I want to take Bryan caplan’s exam that he gave gpt-3 like that (since gpt-4 still failed and I feel like I would remember the questions.)
I like how they didn’t spoiler me by telling me whether this was an easy or hard one though.
What else do we learn from this? Not sure? I’d be interested how hard people thought this one was?
More reflection after more exercises?
I had a hard time figuring out how to feel about gaming. It feels like I could be more efficient. Something is chasing me. On the other hand, I have time!
I’d be interested to know how many other
I still feel a bit impulsive
It is fun to babble all of my notes in this document
at the same time i feel anxiety about later pruning to decide what to post on the forum
i feel i will either dump everything there, or i will just decide later! babble!
I feel in general I have a bit of a hard time balancing meta and object level. Maybe an adhd thing? Maybe I just have the separating babble and prune as too much of a doctrine in my head that I don’t actually follow?
I notice that I love doing these artificial exercises. Fun! I feel way more motivated.
I think in general with adhd and everything I might be steering to much into not giving myself the artificial structure I need to really thrive by giving myself challenges that actually make me achieve great things!
I think I will switch to the next exercise before too much philosophizing.
Report:
I didn’t feel like finding a partner and just wanted to start with 3 problems for now.
Cold Bath
before
Archimedian principle thing (knowing density of the ice not actually required ha!).
I know the answer. The density of ice is lower than the density of water (or at least 4 degrees is the most dense I believe.)
Thing I might be a bit confused about:
if it is getting hotter than 4 degrees, at some point we could reach a temperature again where the thing spills over. My assumption (given this book has been reasonable so far.)
This seems really unfair to get confident
Final answer: Will stay exactly brim full. Ice displaced exactly as much mass as there is water in the thing (confusing stuff about air and everything else is negligable.).
prediction
a) 3%
b) 2%
c) 95%
after
right!
I don’t give myself too much credit as I had already encountered this.
Apparently I might have been eposed to too much of this. Probably lots of stuff out of this book was used by content creators I know.
I did end up needing to precisify my answer and I also didn’t notice even without knowing ice density, you can solve this with archimedian principle.
I think I also want to prod internal physics simulation engine more (not only the verbal one.)
Rare Air
Dang! I ended up exactly on the wrong page and spoilering myself! I had thought a tad before that I hadn’t written down how annoying it is to not spoiler yourself on the other exercises!
Lesson: stay careful to not get a page too far! (maybe precompute page disparity!)
9 pages!
The expansion of nothing.
Analysis
This one feels really interesting!
Intuitive model is very confused. I can see arguments for all three.
Slightly more intuitive if it would get smaller though.
Seems coincidental to just stay same (but eh… toy physics problems sometimes do this)
Intuition-pumps
What if we had the rod without the circle?
What happens without the circle?
What happens if we repeat?
What is the mechanism behind the expansion in the first place? I guess we have electrons in higher states. Everything is in higher energy and pushing away from each other?
Is there an analogy with other stuff that has force like this?
What if I imagine concrete points?
Making the thing really thin gives me the strong intuition that everything within the same radius is going to push each other apart, resulting in hole being bigger! Not what internal physics engine said!
I am also not sure if there is going to be some strain because the balance of material is not working out anymore?
Reminds me of the orange thing, that no matter if you have an orange or the earth, increasing your circumference is going to do the same to your radius. Means the shape would just stay the same. Everything just gets a bigger radius.
How to resolve remaining confusion?
I could try to dig deeper into how the stretching apart might work.
I could dig a bit deeper into ..j
I have learned some stuff about mechanics and lagrangians/Hamiltonians and going from normal to radial coordintees. Is that stuff any help here?
I feel if I would hit it from the top, it would still give me a different answer
Not sure if principiled to give 95% when I am still into other models? How confident in meta thing?
Noting that I have “SO” much fun doing this!
I remember just a few hours earlier feeling like I miss this feeling of just being really enthusiastic! Not sure if that was just me being not really reflective, or if that is really the case and I should attend to this. All the generic advice out there kind of tells me that I should perhaps not stop myself and just continue riding the wave for now?
For: follow your interests, there’s this guy who just for fun did all the problems sets in one go. (Paul graham) I find them effortful
Overenthusiuams seems the only real way people with adhd operate
Against:
People who work on this not just for one evening but over extended periods might actually form longterm differences with their brainz.
Noting that I feel like actually applying the finding portends for and against thing explicitly so strongly since I have not made predictions for sometime.
takeaway
I also just notice that with this exercise I just felt entitled to start
With research on AI safety stuff I feel like I am waiting for this gatekeeper to tell me that I’ll not be wasting peoples time by working on xyz. Not sure that is an actual problem in general. Specifically doesn’t seem super productive compared to just getting excited and started on things though!
I was still using slightly more sketchy analysis this time! I did realize that you could take the ring apart, but then I threw this thought away before thinking about what would actually happen if take apart, heat, take back together.
In my mind I took things not really apart, but kept them in the same place when heating. I would not have expected to still get the same answer!
I did not come up with something close to the taking a photo and expanding the whole photo analogy
I do feel like I had something close to that!
I feel great because deliberation actually got me closer from my initial first guess. Kind of suspicion though, that I was in kinda modest mode and I took more interesting intuition, but if pressed I would have gone with the expansion. (Could be hindsight bias)
All in all I really liked this challenge! Very fun!
(The >! thing didn’t work in markdown I just did a quick edit to change the comment to a LessWrong Docs comment where I was confident the spoiler tags would work, will look up how to do markdown later)
and, thanks and congrats!
I couldn’t quite tell where you journaling vs end takeaways started and stopped. I’m happy to read through the whole thing but you might want to edit for clarity for benefit of others.
I was copying it from my notes (with syntax for spoiler tag already in) and I belief that the lesswrong-docs mode didn’t work for that reason. Took some time because I got confused because I looked in the “welcome&faq”-post instead of the actual faq for the markdown way.
Challenge I
Exercises:
steam engine :-1:
cold bath :+1:
expansion of nothing :+1:
tldr (long thing contains all the babble, only included because seemed low cost, don’t recommend reading):
Did exercises alone as didn’t feel like setting up something with a partner. Felt I was excited enough that should work.
steered away from 95% for all exercises where I hadn’t seen the puzzle before as was afraid that there’s a trick.
I mostly noticed how extremely FUN I found this! Just today when reflecting that studying for university courses has kind of killed some of my enthusiasm and I didn’t really remember last time being really excited while studying or in free time. Tried playing games (like chess), but even that felt more like doing the motions and got me more addicted and not actually in a flow state of mind. Somehow this just clicked.
Training regimen:
Probably opting for speed. This seemed on the easier side.
I will maybe try 5 minutes per question and see how that goes for 10 of them.
Journal
steam locomotive
Intuition: It seems like bigger wheels would be better for higher speed, but might be more wasteful.
abstract
This is in the momentum collum. It seems like one difference would be that the train with lower load, but speed, needs to efficiently maintain that speed. The one for freight needs better breaks.
I also am not sure if I am supposed to use other evidence. On the other hand, why would I have received.
Overall it seems the higher train is made in a way that is designed for slower speed (higher, less big Schornstein.) the thing stopping things in the front
There is something unintuitive about Gänge here as well! Having a big wheel means on rotation of the engine is covering more ground. This definitely seems like the thing that you want for the fast train with less load! On the other hand I think there is a high chance I have the direction backwards there.
I really don’t like the trick of having two options that they are both trains of the same kind! I feel like that makes it hard for me to become confident!
Anything left confusing? I don’t know lots about time or engines! Not 100% sure on direction of thing! Not sure how tricky questions are I think I want to not get overconfident (gpt-4 thing got me!)! I also haven’t spent 20 minutes!
Tracks as hints? What about the stangen thing attached to wheels?
How does number of wheels matter?
I feel like I got most of the evidence I know how to interpret.
I am not sure if I should treat this as an exercise in not being too impatient, or in moving at the appropriate speed. I think I want to go with taking the appropriate time?
When practicing I am also not sure how well this went. I felt this exercise really didn’t give me that much to work on?
Result:
b) (90%)
a) (5%)
c,d) (5%) passenger speed, freight load.
Looking back
I was right!
Gives me more confidence that this book is trying to be straightforward and not trying to trick me.
I could have explicitly thought about if the locomotive thing would have been recommended if it seemed like this thing wouldn’t have been super object level.
I feel like I could easily taken this one on in 5 minutes if I had not expected really hard stuff.
I got the thing correct for exactly the right intuition. Nice. I want to check that in the future.
I want more books that are like that! I feel like I want to take Bryan caplan’s exam that he gave gpt-3 like that (since gpt-4 still failed and I feel like I would remember the questions.)
I like how they didn’t spoiler me by telling me whether this was an easy or hard one though.
What else do we learn from this? Not sure? I’d be interested how hard people thought this one was?
More reflection after more exercises?
I had a hard time figuring out how to feel about gaming. It feels like I could be more efficient. Something is chasing me. On the other hand, I have time!
I’d be interested to know how many other
I still feel a bit impulsive
It is fun to babble all of my notes in this document
at the same time i feel anxiety about later pruning to decide what to post on the forum
i feel i will either dump everything there, or i will just decide later! babble!
I feel in general I have a bit of a hard time balancing meta and object level. Maybe an adhd thing? Maybe I just have the separating babble and prune as too much of a doctrine in my head that I don’t actually follow?
I notice that I love doing these artificial exercises. Fun! I feel way more motivated.
I think in general with adhd and everything I might be steering to much into not giving myself the artificial structure I need to really thrive by giving myself challenges that actually make me achieve great things!
I think I will switch to the next exercise before too much philosophizing.
Report:
I didn’t feel like finding a partner and just wanted to start with 3 problems for now.
Cold Bath
before
Archimedian principle thing (knowing density of the ice not actually required ha!).
I know the answer. The density of ice is lower than the density of water (or at least 4 degrees is the most dense I believe.)
Thing I might be a bit confused about:
if it is getting hotter than 4 degrees, at some point we could reach a temperature again where the thing spills over. My assumption (given this book has been reasonable so far.)
This seems really unfair to get confident
Final answer: Will stay exactly brim full. Ice displaced exactly as much mass as there is water in the thing (confusing stuff about air and everything else is negligable.).
prediction
a) 3%
b) 2%
c) 95%
after
right!
I don’t give myself too much credit as I had already encountered this.
Apparently I might have been eposed to too much of this. Probably lots of stuff out of this book was used by content creators I know.
I did end up needing to precisify my answer and I also didn’t notice even without knowing ice density, you can solve this with archimedian principle.
I think I also want to prod internal physics simulation engine more (not only the verbal one.)
Rare Air
Dang! I ended up exactly on the wrong page and spoilering myself! I had thought a tad before that I hadn’t written down how annoying it is to not spoiler yourself on the other exercises!
Lesson: stay careful to not get a page too far! (maybe precompute page disparity!) 9 pages!
The expansion of nothing.
Analysis
This one feels really interesting!
Intuitive model is very confused. I can see arguments for all three.
Slightly more intuitive if it would get smaller though.
Seems coincidental to just stay same (but eh… toy physics problems sometimes do this)
Intuition-pumps
What if we had the rod without the circle?
What happens without the circle?
What happens if we repeat?
What is the mechanism behind the expansion in the first place? I guess we have electrons in higher states. Everything is in higher energy and pushing away from each other?
Is there an analogy with other stuff that has force like this?
What if I imagine concrete points?
Making the thing really thin gives me the strong intuition that everything within the same radius is going to push each other apart, resulting in hole being bigger! Not what internal physics engine said!
I am also not sure if there is going to be some strain because the balance of material is not working out anymore?
Reminds me of the orange thing, that no matter if you have an orange or the earth, increasing your circumference is going to do the same to your radius. Means the shape would just stay the same. Everything just gets a bigger radius.
How to resolve remaining confusion?
I could try to dig deeper into how the stretching apart might work.
I could dig a bit deeper into ..j
I have learned some stuff about mechanics and lagrangians/Hamiltonians and going from normal to radial coordintees. Is that stuff any help here?
I feel if I would hit it from the top, it would still give me a different answer
Not sure if principiled to give 95% when I am still into other models? How confident in meta thing?
Noting that I have “SO” much fun doing this!
I remember just a few hours earlier feeling like I miss this feeling of just being really enthusiastic! Not sure if that was just me being not really reflective, or if that is really the case and I should attend to this. All the generic advice out there kind of tells me that I should perhaps not stop myself and just continue riding the wave for now?
For: follow your interests, there’s this guy who just for fun did all the problems sets in one go. (Paul graham) I find them effortful
Overenthusiuams seems the only real way people with adhd operate
Against:
People who work on this not just for one evening but over extended periods might actually form longterm differences with their brainz.
Noting that I feel like actually applying the finding portends for and against thing explicitly so strongly since I have not made predictions for sometime.
takeaway
I also just notice that with this exercise I just felt entitled to start
With research on AI safety stuff I feel like I am waiting for this gatekeeper to tell me that I’ll not be wasting peoples time by working on xyz. Not sure that is an actual problem in general. Specifically doesn’t seem super productive compared to just getting excited and started on things though!
I was still using slightly more sketchy analysis this time! I did realize that you could take the ring apart, but then I threw this thought away before thinking about what would actually happen if take apart, heat, take back together.
In my mind I took things not really apart, but kept them in the same place when heating. I would not have expected to still get the same answer!
I did not come up with something close to the taking a photo and expanding the whole photo analogy
I do feel like I had something close to that!
I feel great because deliberation actually got me closer from my initial first guess. Kind of suspicion though, that I was in kinda modest mode and I took more interesting intuition, but if pressed I would have gone with the expansion. (Could be hindsight bias)
All in all I really liked this challenge! Very fun!
Prediction:
a) 80%
b) 10%
c) 10%
(The >! thing didn’t work in markdown I just did a quick edit to change the comment to a LessWrong Docs comment where I was confident the spoiler tags would work, will look up how to do markdown later)
and, thanks and congrats!
I couldn’t quite tell where you journaling vs end takeaways started and stopped. I’m happy to read through the whole thing but you might want to edit for clarity for benefit of others.
I was copying it from my notes (with syntax for spoiler tag already in) and I belief that the lesswrong-docs mode didn’t work for that reason. Took some time because I got confused because I looked in the “welcome&faq”-post instead of the actual faq for the markdown way.