EniScien

Karma: 239

Tldr: from Russia, hated reading, was grateful to science, liked clever things, cheats, computers, coded since 9y, was going to become a programmer, read HPMoR at 12, but didn’t tried to solve any riddle, didn’t read sequences until 16y, until 2023 didn’t understood that rationality isn’t about Truth, it’s about Skills. Now trying to generate maximally useful thoughts, post some on LW.

More detailed version organized as Shortform comments thread: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=JtpxcmxMt2ycd4K5s

EniScien Jun 9, 2025, 4:47 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
I don’t know what is communication problem, but it certainly doesn’t go right. Or probably, multiple problems. Because… Complaining to Grok is like complaining to a parrot… And after not getting clear answer from it I guess that it’s just too niche/original topic to be Grok being able to process it at all. And that are not complaints, it’s a list of what I don’t think could be plausible meanings of what I have seen on lesswrong. In a historical context. With explanation of why I don’t consider those plausible for LW. And you didn’t say initially that it’s what you think, not what eg you have seen. And I not at all fond of the fact that you are commanding me what I “should” do.

EniScien Jun 9, 2025, 3:48 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Before posting on LW I asked Grok that question and it suggested variants like that behaviour is situation based or that personality is measured externals instead of some fundamental internals or that personality is reductionist emergent phenomena of neural activity or that eg Big Five are correlations instead of causal mechanism or “no self” that there are just transient mental states instead of permanent self.

After reading that I concluded that Grok has no idea what lesswrong memetics is and went here to write a post. Because all of that seemed blatantly obvious not from bayesian but just from scientific or even common sense perspective.

The closest sensible idea I think may be referred as “self is not real” is that if you try get coherent agencies from humans they will not tend to neatly cluster as 1 brain → 1 agency, 1 agency → 1 brain.

But it feels like other people didn’t referred to that.

Also maybe they meant that you can have multiple selves like HJPEV with no central one and generate new on a whim. Or even that most of people actually do that, just subconsciously, while communicating with different people (which will actually align with eg morphology of Russian translate of “personality”—“личность” which has same root as face/mask/appearance)

And yet all that feels like not a clear explanation. Also people said about it like about some giant insight and in difference with Sorting Pebbles it feels like I am not getting it fully instead of not getting it at all, so probably I indeed don’t get something instead of just getting it fully in advance.

EniScien Jun 9, 2025, 3:00 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: We Don’t Really Want Your Participation
This whole post looks very strange to me in comparison with other posts.

If I am not misunderstanding it, I really disagree. I have very much parts of my brain which can generate sensible output for some input and very limited amount of attention to actually do that. So it seems to me like a very sensible ask to say something mathematical or say something as rationalist. Somebody who doesn’t know math can easily just never think that he needs to think in some direction.

For example, I can say “oh, well, it’s projection of 3d on 2d and it follows such math” or “one of the main reasons why brain thinks something is beautiful is symmetry” or “as rationalist I for a long time thought that we need make pictures more useful, for example not put them into museams, but draw on wall everywhere, because currently walls are either plain or have ornaments of very low artistic quality” etc. Well, it may be harder to say as rationalist something that relates to some picture and only to that picture. Though “it’s beautiful” is also can be said about very much pictures, not about one presented.

It’s really strange to hear that there is something wrong in ask to say something special as rationalist from the same person who said about not wanting to do anything in his fanfic same way as it was done in other fanfics because then it would be too cliche/unoriginal and will fail to transmit any Shennon information.

Though I think it’s indeed very suspicious when somebody “calls artists to participate” instead of hiring artists.

P.S./Edited: I am not sure that it’s the same idea as in g’s comment. And I don’t think that stereotypical idea of artist view will be correct in comparison with actual artist view any more than will be correct a stereotypical idea of “mathematician view” that you should do everything only with logic with no intuition.

Also, I may compare ask for N’s view instead of “your view as human” to ask for your 20th thought on topic instead of 1st thought. It may have sense to say that picture is beautiful if you are the first who says something, but if not, you probably better in advance say something different than your natural reaction.

EniScien Jun 9, 2025, 2:20 AM
3 points
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Maybe I was unclear, it’s highlighted by quotes fuzzy example, not a citation. I meant eg things what is said there: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vjmw8tW6wZAtNJMKo/which-parts-are-me?commentId=RLzuLn3wZkgidQPyC

And I have seen a lot of different phrases in general resemblance of that

EniScien Jun 9, 2025, 12:43 AM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
I often see here, on LW, phrases like “personality isn’t real” and yet it feels blatantly obvious that personality can’t be explained away. So I am really interested to see an explanation what it at all means, because I only ever seen people claiming it, never explaining. I am also interested to know, should I prepare to have some afwul realization or not?

EniScien Jun 8, 2025, 7:00 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Then probably I was wrong to omit that I have seen summary in Rust official guide. Which made me doubt it’s useless.

Though I also now suspect that I have much better memory than most people. (I mean, I always thought that it’s normal to remember near verbatim first few sentences of audiobook after listening to it twice and complain that you stuck on what was fifth. But maybe it’s not? Idk how to check)

EniScien Jun 8, 2025, 6:33 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
It’s… Not at all what I am talking about. There is a big difference between five points overall scale with no reference points except being from (+)1 to (+)5 and −10 to +10 logarithmic scales each of user added tags with bayesian adjusting on previous ratings and clustering users by tastes. And it would be impossible to have good taste in apps if your only option is “vote pro” instead of default “doing nothing”. Actually… I keep in head here Thellims complaints about rating organization on Amazon, majoritarian voting on elections, EY post on psychophysics and, again, that post about textbook recommendations with mention what you also tried (iirc it’s not a thing in Google play, so I can’t filter note taking votes only by those who tried obsidian).

EniScien May 31, 2025, 10:10 AM
1 point
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on: The Outside View’s Domain
And all this time I was missing that my key disagreement with Outside View is that I don’t at all infer from the experiments on Planning Fallacy that you should be less concrete, remove some details, but that you should take into account the past experience with all it’s details while reasoning about a new situation with all its details.
Problem that I indeed inferred something like ignoring details from Overconfidence. Failing to remember past data didn’t look like terrible situation of agent who can’t see it’s flaws even when pointed out to them, and Overconfidence did. Hence was the idea of ignoring everything except conclusions.
And I probably too much allowed myself to follow subtly different phrasings of others instead of phrasing everything exactly in my own Original Seeing. Because, as I reasoned, different frameworks should be isomorphic in the logical sense. And they probably are. But as I missed humans aren’t logically omniscient, so you need to consider selection effects of whose computations were actually picked to be executed.
P.S./Edited: Oh, I forgot important details, when I remember about previous cases, I just feel how my anticipations, intuitions change because previously I just didn’t have that fact fresh in working memory and so didn’t take it into account.

EniScien May 27, 2025, 3:48 PM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
I often read things where I see start with “introduction” (and it’s not some sort of meaningful introduction like in Thinking Physics) and end with “summary”, and both look totally useless. Remarkably, I can’t remember such thing anywhere on lesswrong. But I don’t understand, is it just useless water, is it a question of general level of intelligence, or am I missing some useful piece of cognitive tech?
If there is indeed some useful piece, how to check do I already have it or don’t?

EniScien May 27, 2025, 2:32 PM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
I once thought what will be in my Median World, and one thing was central entering node of all best practices. Easy searchable node. Lots and lots of searches like “best tools” will lead to it, just in case if somebody somehow missed it, he could still find it just by inventing a Schelling point by his own mind.
And then an idea came to my mind: what if such a thing already exists in our world? I didn’t yet try to search. Well, now I tried. Maybe I tried wrong requests, maybe google doesn’t prioritize these requests, maybe there is no such thing yet. But I didn’t find it.
And of course as a member of LessWrong I’ve got an idea that LessWrong could be such a place for best practices.
I thought that maybe it isn’t because it’s too dangerous to create an overall list of powerful things which aren’t rationality enhancing ones. But probably it’s wrong, I certainly have seen a list of the best textbooks here. What I want to see is for example a list of the best computer instruments.
Because I searched for best note-taking apps and was for a long time recommended to use Google Keep (which I used), Microsoft OneNote, as best EverNote. I wasn’t recommended to use Notion, not saying about Obsidian.
And there is a question of “the best” being dependant of utility function. Even I would recommend Notion (not Obsidian) for collaboration. And Obsidian for extensions and ownership (or file-based as I prefer it to name, because it’s not question of property rights, it’s a question of having raw access to your notes, while Obsidian is just one of the browsers you can use).
What I certainly want to copy from textbook post is using anchors to avoid usage of different scales. Because after only note-taking via text-editor, I would recommend Google Keep, and after Google Keep I would recommend EverNote.
And now I tried much more, eg Joplin, RoamResearch and Foam (no, because I need to be able to normally take notes from phone too, that also a reason why I keep Markor and Zettel Notes on my phone, Obsidian sometimes needs loading which needs more than half a second), AnyType and bunch of other things (no, because not markdown file based), so I don’t want to go through recommendations of Google Keep. But I am not going to be sure I found the best thing, because I thought so when I found Notion, and I was wrong, and now I am remembering No One Knows What Science Doesn’t Know.

EniScien May 27, 2025, 12:35 PM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
I now understand my reading issues better. It weren’t just lack of speed and imagination as I thought. There was a whole bunch of factors creating a stable equilibrium.
And probably it indeed was “from childhood”. Concretely, from how I was taught reading at school. At the beginning of school, I already was able to read, but I read slow.
And I was checked on “technique of reading” (“техника чтения”), actually speed of reading. I needed to read out loud (so I couldn’t avoid full-blown vocalization, without even sub) and with expression (so, just make up intonations which aren’t exactly specified by text) and do it maximally fast (so I couldn’t stop to think, check quality of comprehension, not just remembering, or use imagination or...).
And also I was taught on texts which weren’t interesting to me, even the slightest bit. I can remember exactly one example of story which I liked reading in school, and it was already not in elementary school.
And then it all became an undividable habit, including hate.
That was the puzzling thing. I was reading not slower than peers, expressively, with good remembering and good comprehension (checked: I was able to rearrange words in the sentence and make replacement to synonyms very well!).
When I found fan fiction (which allowed me to switch between universes without diving into something totally unknown, and also made dropping books not just permitted in difference with how I was taught to read, but necessary), I even started to like what I read. But I still hated the process.
So advices I saw about “How to Learn to Stop Fearing and Love the Reading” were totally useless. Start to read what you like—I did. Avoid dense text, read in comfortable environment—just misses the mark. Read summaries, highlight key ideas to have better comprehension—I already have! Increase vocabulary—holy Cthulhu, I already have 99.9% if for my age and more than 65y PhDs if in absolute numbers, where more?? Start in short pieces and gradually increase—I already was able to read 16 hours at a day, 8 hours per day on average, my reading already is automatic, I can think about something while my brain will still continue to read. Join a reading club to make it social and fun—are you serious, social and fun? Experiment, personalise, track progress—done, didn’t help. Even the most promising thing “not treat it like a chore” wasn’t actually insightful, I was watching videos as a chore and didn’t have problems like I have with reading.
After seeing such advices, I dismissed the idea of getting help from something like that. As I now see, the most puzzling thing was that I was a smart A-grader etc, though I still hated reading, I shouldn’t ignore that context. But actually that was because stories lied me, when I have gone to school, I understood that in reality it’s not at all like in books, totally not. So I just put this connection “smart A-graders do like reading” into the same bucket of stereotypic blatant lies as “boys pull girls’ pigtails” (I still puzzled why someone will do that, or is actually someone doing that, I have never seen it) or “smart A-graders do like chess” (which similarly to reading actually has its own big story of wrong mental habits causing lack of liking).
As I now see it, a habit of reading maximally fast made me unable to learn any other way of reading, any new method would be less effective in the beginning. And from reading out loud with expression and listening to audiobooks (which weren’t read with just expression, but with soundtrack) I learned to read only sequentially, with never skipping, rereading or stopping to use imagination, and to get a joy from audio (so I couldn’t dismiss it).
And partially it was indeed a problem with reading as a chore, or more properly, as a work, because when I was watching videos as a chore, I wasn’t trying to understand and remember each word, I wasn’t trying to do it perfectly. What I needed as advice was “try to read the same way you’re watching videos”, which actually aims into trying to understand the meaning of the whole content block, but needs to be said with a link to direct experience to avoid misunderstanding.
And partially it indeed was the problem of reading speed. Now, comparing these two experiences I can notice that in the background I all this time felt like in cage, or maybe like being put into rails, while reading with subvoc. I was able to process text my faster than the speed of speech, 4 times at least, maybe? It’s hard to tell exactly just by intuition, because the absence of speech affects the sense of time. And I can’t just take a reading speed test, because I can’t yet switch off subvocalization reliably. And also there are issues with how my eyes are moving, which width the text is text etc.

EniScien May 26, 2025, 2:04 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
I am not sure how to say… Yeah, it’s a good idea to know what people think. But how to act from that? It’s obvious to me how to act from your own belief “sky is blue” or from replacing it into literally “sky is not blue”. But I still have no idea how to act from “I think that sky is blue because it looks like that, but physics who know better say ‘sky is not actually blue’”.
And by my own experience I noticed that all tries to follow others people advices which contradict my own understanding, end up horribly. Because if I can’t see why they aren’t object level wrong, I can’t perform them in the proper way meant by others. And even worse, then I can’t even learn about what had gone wrongly, in difference with following my own thoughts.
And when I actually succeed to understand it for proper performing, I also stop to disagree with others opinion.
Mostly what I inferred from that is that you can’t even truly disagree with somebody if you can’t understand what he thought, not just what he said. (which contradicted to my principle of not trying to guess people thoughts, because you don’t have access to their thoughts, only to their words)

EniScien May 26, 2025, 1:33 PM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
I now understand that all this time I used my memory and imagination wrongly, in a way I’ve never heard spoken about. I was trying to concentrate on my mental space and then make memory and imagination in it. While I should have been concentrating on memories or imaginations, themselves.
And similarly, when my mental space was becoming too busy, I was “flushing” it, removing all the objects from it, making them fade. While I should have just been concentrating on new mental space, shifting attention to it.
My recall ease and vividness just dramatically increased after that. I couldn’t think that such short and easy advice as “don’t make objects fade, shift attention to new” can immediately give such huge results.

EniScien May 24, 2025, 11:17 AM
1 point
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
Since I first saw Philosophical Majoritarism, my intuition was very strongly against it, though arguments looked valid. I think I finally understood what was the case. It wasn’t that I thought arguments are wrong or conclusion is wrong. Problem that I thought that then opinions will not be Truly Part Of You. And you either will need to learn others opinions good enough that you will be able to agree or disagree purely on object level reasons, or you will not understand the position good enough to properly apply it.
(I can’t come up with a good example from the top of my head, but I suspect that giving some example is necessary, because of that same Truly Part Of You and Double Illusion Of Transparency)
So I can imagine a religious person who successfully uses PhM, properly notices that his god is not special from all the other, that he doesn’t believe in most of the gods, that most of the people don’t believe in his any more than in fairytales. And then stops believing in god. And god is morality, if there is no god, there is no morality. And...
I don’t want to support the idea of making two errors which will compensate each other, but the Valley Of Bad Rationality certainly exists. The ideas of different memspaces aren’t automatically compatible. And believing in views because of non object level reasons will easily become using techniques which you don’t actually understand/appreciate.
Or other way to say that, it’s not like I think that you need sometimes compensate one error by… error, just different. It’s more like I think that not only words in text, but ideas in mind too, have not only morpheme based meaning of assembly of their internal parts, but also semantic meaning of in which environment they were included.
Another example is that as a scientist, you may say that the sky is not actually blue, not more than a mirror is green. And he will be more right than a child who thinks just that the sky is blue. But if a child will try to follow more true statement of physicist, which this child doesn’t know well enough to agree, then this child will act much wronger than before.

EniScien May 21, 2025, 10:45 PM
6 points
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on: EniScien’s Shortform
(I don’t have good propositions of what to do, but probably it’s still better to just share my regrets, than to do nothing.)
When I’ve first read hpmor at 12 I’ve remembered Yudkowsky’s advice “read sequences, hpmor is just their shadow” and tried to read some sequence. I’ve read “Fable of Science and Politics” and… Well, Yudkowsky was just wrong about hpmor being shadow of that, hpmor is much cooler. So I decided to read it sometime later. I encountered nowhere phrase “do you want to be as cool as hjpev and even more? There is textbook for that—Rationality AZ” (I’ve read russian translation and then tried sequence as .fb2).
When I just started reading I’ve seen phrase about riddles, but not gave attention. I’d wanted better warning that it will be my alone chance in life to try to solve them, and how I may regret that I didn’t even tried it and hence was totally unprepared when the final exam came.
And also that was book so much better than any I have ever seen, that I decided to be cautious and not read that treasure to much, so it will not become too well known. I didn’t understand that such way I will just forget simultaneously rhythm, details and whole fragments.
And also I wasn’t trying to imagine myself in place of heroes, so I wasn’t quite learning their thinking. Actually, I wasn’t quite trying to imagine anything, I thought reading is when you look into words, say them with expression and understand their meaning.
Also I’d wanted to see not only “science is real science” but that it’s causal world like real one, things aren’t happening just for the sake of plot or fun like in whole lot of other fiction, especially that psychics shown works like real psychics, that wordless thoughts of Harry and internal voices aren’t just some magic like dark side, ability to be any person, occlumency… Except that those also aren’t just magic.
And also I want to say that despite of what is usually said, Russian translation of hpmor is really poor (no, it’s good that it exists, otherwise I wouldn’t read hpmor at all, probably until now), in breaking the style, in losing details, wrongly translating lw vocab and even doing really big factual errors like “if Harry is one on million, then there are 12 such smart boys in New York”, factual errors with important implications actually, because it would mean ~1200 for all ages and ~2400 for also woman, I would want to see all those 2400 people in New York who were at eleven as smart as HJPEV, I myself actually quite underestimated until this year how unusual are Harry’s shown capabilities.
When I actually read the sequences I already was against Putin and I was very suspicious to people who very saying that you should be apolitical. Because they usually continued it as something “politics is a dirty thing” (of course it will be dirty if everyone non dirty will avoid it by that logic!) or “just do little goods around you and everything will become better” (while it was obvious that you should do crucial changes like changing politics). And so I was really suspicious to Yudkowsky, Sequences, LessWrong and Bayesian epistemology as whole.
Though later I changed my opinion. I started to avoid Politics. I was into Science. Yeah, Our Science vs Their Nonscience (or Nonsense)! Science, cool! I’d really wanted so it clearly said “tribalism” instead of “politics”. And probably special choice of lenses for different countries. So people from eg Russia will be able to get their remarks (like “changing president is important, just your relative power here approximately 1/100M” and maybe a link into that post about politics being too centred in some directions, so it’s more effective to push in other) or whatever.
I generally think it will be good idea to have some more directed reading orders and lenses (or at least guides) like “if you know: common sense, science, skepticism, traditional rationality” or “for zoomers” (eg I was just sure that only thing you need to know is how to google something) or “for 12 year olds, 16, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80” and probably even personal qualities like “perfectionist” or “how diligent you was in school” or “automatic creative thinking” (I could easily right you a list of 200 usages of paperclip, but unprompted I would do things in Only Proper Way Taught To Me) etc. Or “programmer”. Maybe even g factor. And also be different for those who already read hpmor, will read later or will not. All that because, well, I understand that peoples who aren’t Russian perfectionist twelve programmers will have totally different asks than me.
Also I’d wanted to straightly go into lesswrong com with all it’s intelligent design, hypertext, posts, comments (now also reaction and inlines) etc, not switch between .fb2 sequences and lesswrong ru. Though I already said somewhere that I want translations to be lenses of wiki pages. And it also makes sense as just easier way to learn English meanwhile (eg by using touch-to-search, very convenient imo, much better than select and search google), or use machine translation (maybe even embed into lesswrong site, so working for comments and posts too, not only wiki).
And also I once read here wondering how is it to go into Bayesian rationality not already knowing “Traditional” rationality previously. Well, in my experience—badly. It looks like I didn’t have crucial basic skills which you are getting from books like “You are surely joking mr Feynman” such as “your own direct observation is primary source of knowledge, not someone words or even scientific papers” and “even if you can’t calculate formula in real time, you still can see right in world in real time it’s general meaning” and “learn first what you will use in practice” and even “there is nothing wrong in learning being funny and non serious, actually funny and easygoing is better”. And also reading them probably would be really could just so, but is dim after reading hpmor and sequences.
And actually not only Traditional Rationality was something I was lacking. Common sense too. Like… Chesterton Fence? (it was really enlightening for me). Though at the same time some “advanced” things were quite obvious to me, like Orthogonality (I had troubles to understand which point Sorting Pebbles at all is trying to make) or Security Mindset (when I was a kid I was checking passwords to only stored hashes even if with no salt, transferring data with RSA, keeping encrypted important values in RAM, even though I heard about first two, not thought by myself). And also I already was pretty pessimistic (I’d wanted to know that I don’t owe to reject positive thinking because of that), a lot of times even too much.
Actually, I think Rationality AZ is pretty terrible name, it gives really wrong connotations for the sake of a pun. It’s not a-z, it’s aab-acy or something. Or better, rationality 101, and then Tradional will 051 and also some 001 of common sense. Or Rationality: Intro [point] by Eliezer Yudkowsky. There are some things before it. And a lot of after. Or, more precisely, infinity after, there always will be more of complicated rationality concepts to share. And it’s not mentioning that except concepts there are also techniques, habits, skill trainings, fictional experiences etc.
And also of course I’d wanted to know earlier that no, you will not “remember everything which is actually important”, that memory fades without repeating. And that you in fact can make better by training your imagination, memory, willpower, introspection and actually any property of mind (including personality) or skill, that you in fact can control your thoughts and your emotions.
And also probably explanation that learning math, competing in math Olympiads is good, not bad (I avoided math because it was too suspiciously appealing and because I’ve seen a stereotype of completely unbound to reality math liker while I wanted to become a programmer and do really useful things and be able to write script for my own needs and have lots of money).
And explanation why you need to somehow at all interact with other people who are interested in that topic, instead of just reading everything by yourself only.
Also I was eager to listen to any advices how to get more of rationality into my head. But I just couldn’t, because I didn’t know English. And also disliked to read, especially books instead of hypertexts. And also read 200wpm or even less, and since I was listening to audiobooks, lectures at x2 (up to 300 wpm, and also you can add video to audio) I also stuck in local maximum. I would prefer to have some ready fixes for such problems. Because it may be really unobvious to somebody who didn’t yet read Sequences, and because of that can’t.
(That’s not all my stream of consciousness about regrets, probably I will add continuation as comment to that post.)

EniScien May 21, 2025, 8:08 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
People are different. Source: 1, 2, 3.
I’ve already read “Universal experiences” (though thanks for 2), people are different, yeah, but there should be something central. Most people don’t have synethesia, don’t like math, but respect existing status hierarchies, noticebly want to be not alone etc. And subvocalization while reading is the most usual, so I suspect it to be the most usual while thinking too.
Depends. I would expect that the difference is not only in speed, but also in precision, or maybe suitability for different kinds of problems.
That was what I thought initially when I subvocalized all initial flashes of idea. But now my direct observations are showing me that was I was just wrong. Actually, I had evidence that I was wrong, I just didn’t properly process it: when you are opening your eyes in the room, you are immediately seeing it all, the visual cortex recognizes dozens of objects with hundreds of details at one moment, parallelly as the brain is. It’s not brain limit to use words sequentially, it’s mouth limit (or hands for sign language).
When you are imagining a scene like “blond haired woman in a red dress was going to the shop by a street with trees” you don’t need to think about each element sequentially, you can just see it as a whole, including action. Which is really different from how you will read a sentence describing it.
Audial thinking is faster than visual, but not that much, you can say something like 24 phonemes in one second and recognize in speech 2-3 times more than that − 48-72 per second. And you need ~100ms to recognize an object visually (~250 to react), so it’s 4-10 per second. But it’s only a little difference, 6 or 7.2 times between limits.
While sentences contain 10-30 words and words are ~4-8 letters each, 40-240 for sequential audial processing, 0.5-10s vs 0.1s for visual recognition.
“feeling” for choosing between clearly given options
And I suspect that we put different meanings into “conceptual thinking”. I am not talking emotions feelings, and not about intuitive leaning to some option, and not even about semantic thinking. It’s exactly conceptual thinking. I don’t know, maybe… When you already said a sentence, can you at least sometimes feel it’s meaning as a one concept same way as you can feel as one concept meaning of a word even if it’s something not perceptual like “cat”, but complicated abstract definition like “freezing into a solid form without creating a crystal structure”? I just found out that with some introspection you can turn initial flash directly into that, without a need to subvocalize distinct words. and very fast in comparison with a sentence, approximately a time of saying a word.
Though sometimes I can’t convert it into a conceptual feeling of sentence that fast, because it’s somewhat difficult to organize it semantically. But I am not sure it’s even worse for thinking, not for speech. Because then I still can unfold conceptual sense of it, it just becomes not projected into specific words. which maybe good, because I can say either “probabilistic correlation” or “logically binding” or “timeless agreement”, but as non word projected concept I can just think about a central object between all of them, without picking only one side.
Though after time passed I indeed see some unobvious flaws. Like that subvocalizing words with intonation enhances your emotions. Though… Can’t you just subvocalize a song while thinking conceptually?
Also when you stuck in a dialogue you can just start babbling, but conceptually it’s much harder. Though it’s also maybe easily done non sequentially (non audibly) by imagining words printed shapes visually.
And also I see some vague beginning of understanding how different forces shape your thinking depending on modality. Like there are limits how slow you can talk and after which sentence should go next sentence, while visual (or conceptual) thinker can just not generate new thought after ending previous, and therefore be even worse in general, while being better in fast bursts.
Or that you can start feel that you have more time and therefore use it with more slack.
Or that audial thinkers can actually have whole lot of background faster non auditory processing, so it will not be 1 vs 10-30, but more like 1+5 vs 10-30. So it will be still good, but not that good.
Though I think that maybe one of biggest advances may be not even speed, but the fact that after thinking thought you can save it in your imagination space, and then put following thought next to it etc. And so see whole thought chains, which I don’t see how you can do audibly at all.

EniScien May 18, 2025, 12:08 PM
1 point
0
on: A Fable of Science and Politics
When I first read it I thought in the way of “Hm, Daria vs Ferris, whom I am more sided with?”. Now I think… I am not sided with anyone. I am not picking any of limited options. No of them actually even remotely resemble my actual views. I just clearly see it. Whose don’t fit into any of these groups, and actually there is no reason for them to fit. There are actually exponentially more ways to conceptually organize relation to something than just a few groups. And there is no reason there ways of act should even remotely converge into those groups. Maybe, it means that now I finally actually understood the difference between Tribalism and Investigation.

EniScien May 18, 2025, 11:36 AM
2 points
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
(I don’t know how to better organize my thoughts and discoveries, and also suspect that it’s better to wait until I master speedreading, but I think it may worth to just share/ask about this one my big confusion right now as quick take)

When I was younger I considered obvious how human mind works, there were such components of it like imagination, memory etc. And of course, thoughts were words. How can it be at all possible to think not in words?

Discovery by mere observation

But some time ago I read “You are surely joking mister Feynman” for the third time, and it finally succeeded to make me go and just look into reality. What I found… Is that all my life was a lie. The Facts aren’t things which are being produced in labs via some elaborated tools and then going down through hierarchy of authority and being whispered to you by Teachers in school or by Experts on youtube.

Facts are just things which emerge when someone observes reality or deduces from information. I mean, of course I knew that you can just see things in everyday life. But these were mere mundane things, things which are from another category which can’t be compared with True Scientific Knowledge.

In the end, you can’t just introspect a little and go publish scientific papers about how human vision or thinking works, aren’t you? You can’t discover true knowledge by doing some such easy, unserious, accessible to everyone thing like… observation. Or thinking.

No, really, truths are things which said you by authority, not things which you can just… see. In the school you are said some arcane truths which came from experts, not just said to… observe a little.

And I have seen people who dared to trust their eyes more than words of scientists, they believed in dreams prophesying future and all other sorts of crazy things. It would be a terrible fate to become one of those.

But now I was just looking at reality and discovering information which could be on wikipedia page about how eye or mind work. Just by observation. Without any eye motion detectors or other tools. And it was really clear that these knowledges aren’t any qualitative way worse than those from tools in labs or authoritative sources of knowledge.

Eventually, my brain just got non standard input of direct observation and I found out that I am a type of mind who believes his own eyes more than authoritative people. Though well, it was actually new information, before I genuinely didn’t know that just by my own eyes and brain I can discover such things that usually said to you by authoritative people.

Speed of thinking

And main thing I started to observe was my mind. And I found out that I was wrong all this time about how it works, which are it’s constraints. It was like be a 12 dimensional creature but always move only in 3, and then find all these degrees of freedom and start to unfold.

And there were much much more things than I am able to say in one post even in short. But there is one thing which confuses me the most. I found out that I can think not only in words. That was strange feeling, more like in dreams where you have some incredible mental experience and then wake up and find that it was complete nonsense.

Thing which I was, as it looked, observing, was that I can think not in words, but some strange indescribable way without them. And even more, it felt multiple times faster than thinking in words. And I had that wild idea of “speedthinking”, analogous to speedreading possibility that if you are able to process others ideas in 5x speed just by using visual modality instead of audial, then maybe it is also possible to process your own ideas that fast?

And the problem was that it was too wild. If it would be possible, then… People who think 5 times faster will be like some 1000 years old vampires, they will shine, they be super fast and noticeable, at 20 they will have more cumulative knowledge than usual people at 100, and so, ever in the life.

It will be super noticeable. And then everyone will go and also learn to think visually. That wasn’t our world. Was it possible that I discovered a thing that was never or almost never discovered by anybody at all?

But then when I was practicing foreign language, I found that when I am trying to find a word, I can think without words. It wasn’t just a daydream. Conceptual thinking was real. And so I decided to just test was it possible to learn it as a skill and think 5 times faster.

Unfortunately it took much much longer to test than I thought. But now I am sure that conceptual thinking is possible, I just can do that. And I found that there were much more properties of thinking mode than just that one.

But I am still very confused by the question of which thinking is usual. People are usually by some strange reason can’t report a detailed introspection about how they think. I also tried to ask Grok about that but answers also failed to form a picture.

On the one hand, it looks like people are used to think much faster than I was thinking in words. But on the other hand, average speed of reading is 200 wpm and people usually do that by subvocalization. Which is really strange if they think not in words, or in words, but by hearing them, not pronouncing, and so much faster.

But what about unusual people? Here into my mind immediately comes up Eliezer Yudkowsky who in his glowfics gave probably the most detailed (or maybe, object level instead of metaphorical) descriptions of work of the mind I saw.

And he definitely talks like thoughts work by sequential mental audial words with their length being a cap. And also he talks about speedreading in the way of that actual restriction is speed of your mind, not speed of your body.

And I have now some understanding about how mind can work after some training, conceptual and visual thinking dozens times faster than audial by pronouncing is certainly possible. But I am still really confused how thinking works usually.

And well, also about its significance. Is it actually such a big advantage if you can think 30 times faster than somebody else, as I thought initially?

EniScien Feb 20, 2025, 11:10 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Even expert speed readers do it, they just do it a bit faster than untrained people do. We can check this because that inner voice sends faint communication signals to the vocal cords, as a residue of your internal monolog, and those signals can be measured objectively.
I’ve heard about that and that looked like an evidence that you are able to untrain only things which are introspectively visible, not that it is somewhat important. Again, what about deaf-mute, what do they subvocalize? And “a bit faster”? 5000 phonemes/min, ~100/s, more looks like 1 phoneme per neuron activation. I doubt you can properly understand speech on 1000wpm.
But in general, when I started, I failed to find existing discourse and decided that it will be quicker to just check. And than it just looked too clear than I actually can at least think just visually and much, much faster than speak.
I’ll check the link though. (It’s existence explains why not more people checking this)
PS Edit: okay, I’ve read and I didn’t find anything new in this article. I will try to read link on “evidence”
And also just to check, will you also say that it’s impossible for ordinary human to read text and speak at the same time?
PPS Edit: and no, second article also hasn’t had any evidence. But still thanks, I’ve found some techniques of speed reading I’ve never heard before, only thought about by myself, so probably my ideas aren’t new even if it’s not something like math. And people converge in such topics, and end up having almost fully overlapping ideas, and I’m not exception.
And the reason why such ideas aren’t widely used probably isn’t that no one discovered that, but because people are sceptical. Like I was. 1000wpm? 20000wpm? Looks like fake for credulous.
But now I’m less sceptical even about such results because I was wrongly sceptical about such things like training of imagination, attention, intelligence, memory and willpower. And was clearly wrong. Btw, what you will say about these things?
Also I was sceptical about thinking multiple thoughts in parallel, but that was mostly because of Feynman’s and EY’s claim, and now I’m just more doubt them, after I understood it’s easily possible.

EniScien Feb 20, 2025, 10:20 PM
1 point
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
Do someone know something like “synesthesia” browser extension for better legibility? It should paint black-and-white letters into colored, probably saving intensity.

EniScien

Discovery by mere observation

Speed of thinking