Parker Conley
Thanks for the feedback! I’d be curious to hear more about (1) what subjects you’re referring to and (2) how learning tacit knowledge with video has changed your learning habits (if your view here is based on your own experience).
Thanks! Added.
Thanks! Added.
Added. Thanks!
Thanks, added! I look forward to seeing what else you have.
I would find forecasting videos would be interesting to watch.
Thanks! Added.
Thanks! Added.
Thanks! Added.
Relevant note from the entry:Me: I was hesitant to add a lecture series to this list at first. I changed my mind after listening to the first video, where Meehl provides interesting details (gossip, almost) about the life of an academic and the various personalities of his successful academic peers.
Fundraising videos?
Sales tacit knowledge videos?
@habryka / @mods—would it be possible to pin (1) the ‘Review Thread’ and (2) this thread?
I think these will be the two most valuable comments on this post. The comment video submissions are a bit cluttered due to embeds and submissions are more accessible/navigatable through the OP.
Adding to this: an interesting frame is to think about how subcultures develop illegible shadow structures beyond their legible structure and communities. Similar to how banks/bureaucracies do: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/
Review of: Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, Timothy Ogden, Rob Reich, Tom Rutledge, Brigid Slipka, Cari Tuna, Julia Wise: GiveWell’s Public Board Meetings (2007–2020 have audio).
I’m a college student with only pretty low-stakes work experience. I listened to the first 5–10 meetings as I would a podcast last week. Some takeaways, emphasizing that I only just watched them last week:It was interesting to follow the narrative of Holden and Elie getting started on the project. Like, anecdotes about people’s experiences starting a startup are everywhere, but it was interesting hearing them actually talking about the struggles and business decisions they were making.
Holden worked 100h/wk in the first year; that’s a lot of time spent on a project! (Then 60h/wk in the second, afaict.)
Interesting generally how assertive the business meetings were compared to everyday conversation.
I am familiar with GiveWell as a popular charity in the Rat/EA space, but I never really spent the time to understand the research methodology. It was interesting hearing the practical and strategic discussions between the founders and the board on the methodology. It also seemed to change every year in the first three years (I haven’t watched beyond the first three years).
Interesting from a marketing and fundraising perspective to watch as GiveWell, which seems to have found its market now, tested and went about finding one.
Interesting to instantiate generally ‘what are board meetings? who are the people in board meetings? what are their skills?’
Discussions around productivity were interesting. I’ve learn ‘productivity’ skills to improve my time spent studying and working on projects. I was surprised to hear that this is something that was talked about in board meetings, let alone for 10s of minutes.
I would be curious to hear a review from someone with more business experience. If you are to go about watching them, I recommend starting from the beginning. I’ve tried watching a few more recent recordings before this past week and found them less engaging, maybe due to me having less context about the organization.
[pasting a comment of mine on Zvi’s recent monthly roundup]
If anyone has anecdotes as to why they think the videos have been useful to them I’d be curious to hear. I’m still unsure of their benefit; the interest could just be novelty/insight-porn (Andy Matuschak speculates something in this direction, though he too seems ambivalent). I wrote the post partly as a test to see if there is much use.Do people really learn anything from these streams? People certainly claim to learn things from my note-writing stream. I can believe it, maybe, but I wonder to what extent people are deluding themselves. Certainly it’s extremely inefficient: what’s the insight-per-minute?
— Andy Matuschak, Could streaming help convey tacit knowledge? (Working Notes)
Do people really learn anything from these streams? People certainly claim to learn things from my note-writing stream. I can believe it, maybe, but I wonder to what extent people are deluding themselves. Certainly it’s extremely inefficient: what’s the insight-per-minute?
— Andy Matuschak, Could streaming help convey tacit knowledge? (Working Notes)
Post attempts to compile The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject. I notice I lack motivation to use this modality, and think it would be a poor fit for how I learn, and that it is relatively less tempting now than it would have been two years ago before LLMs got good. The problem is that you don’t direct where it goes and can’t interact, so they’re not so likely to be teaching you the thing you don’t know and are ready to learn. But many people benefit?
If anyone has anecdotes as to why they think the videos have been useful to them I’d be curious to hear. I’m still unsure of their benefit; the interest could just be novelty/insight-porn (Andy Matuschak speculates something in this direction, though he too seems ambivalent). I wrote the post partly as a test to see if there is much use.
Glad to see that people find the post useful! I hope it will see many future contributions as well. In case interesting to anyone, I’ve just put together a google form to create an email list for those who would like to be sent lists of newly added videos every month or so.
Situating the Contributions of LessWrong to the Philosophy of Language by @Suspended Reason seems to address this topic in a pretty thorough fashion.
Thanks for the feedback! I too am skeptical of the finance videos, agreeing that the video probably came across my radar due to the figures being popular rather than displaying believable tacit knowledge.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether to remove the videos from the list or just add your expert anecdata as a disclaimer on the videos. In the spirit of quantity vs. quality, I’m leaning toward keeping the videos on the list.