[Question] Intellectual lifehacks repo

[Antoine de Scorraille]

1. I really like dimensional analysis. It’s a simple and powerful trick, almost magical, that allows you to distinguish between plausible and chimerical formulas.

2. I really like the type signature. It’s a simple but ontologically important change for classifying different objects. ^[1]

3. I really like computational complexity, and its marketing version “Does it scale?” It’s a simple but powerful trick for understanding and designing systems and rules. ^[2]

4. …

Let’s list our ‘intellectual lifehacks’ here, i.e., elements of knowledge that have properties like. :

• Very general

• Simple to apply, but powerful

I don’t have a proper definition other than ‘I feel like it’ to the question ‘Does this count as an intellectual lifehack?’, but I’d like to make it clear that I’m setting the bar very high. I hope you’ll be able to connect the dots with n=3… Anyway, share and discuss!

Hereby, our intellectual lifehacks repo:

• dimensional analysis

• type signature

• computational complexity

1. ^

   See: How to keep the essence of a theory by looking at the type signature, or to make progress on ontologically unsolved questions

2. ^

   See: How to import such intellectual lifehack in another intellectual field