Parker Conley
The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject
Requests Thread. Post requests for tacit knowledge videos below this comment.
This thread also serves as a memory jogger for those who might have seen videos of the requested types.
Thank you for the recommendation! I think I agree. I will be editing the comments back into the body, but I think it would be useful for the comments to be more legible.
For those reading this, here is the format I recommend (I’ve since edited this recommendation into the body):Domain: Programming, Game Design
Link: Programming livestream VODs
Person: Jonathan Blow
Background: Creator of Braid and The Witness.
Why: Blow livestreams himself coding games and creating a programming language. I imagine people who do similar things would find his livestreams interesting.
I would be interested in more studying/learning videos. I found Andy Matuschak’s very interesting.
@Yoav Ravid: “I’d be interested in tacit knowledge videos about writing, if anyone knows any.”
I would find forecasting videos would be interesting to watch.
Fundraising videos?
Below are the new tacit knowledge videos added to the post since mid-April.
Paul Meehl, Philosophical Psychology 1989 course lectures, “deep introduction to 20c philosophy of science, using psychology rather than physics as the model science—because it’s harder!” (via @Jonathan Stray)
“Meehl was a philosopher of science, a statistician, and a lifelong clinical psychologist. He wrote a book showing that statistical prediction usually beats clinical judgement in 1954, and a paper on the replication crisis in psychology in 1978. He personally knew people like Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, etc. and brings their insights to life in these course lectures.”
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.
Kenneth Folk, Guided Tour to 13 Jhanas.
“Kenneth Folk is an instructor of meditation who has received worldwide acknowledgement for his innovative approach to secular Buddhist meditation. After twenty years of training in the Burmese Theravada Buddhist tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw, including three years of intensive silent retreat in monasteries in Asia and the U.S., he began to spread his own findings, successfully stripping away religious dogma to render meditation accessible to modern practitioners” (Website).
Dave Whipple, building a “[s]imple off grid Cabin that anyone can build & afford (and many other builds on his channel). (via @Vitor)
“Construction contractor, DIY living off-grid in Alaska and Michigan.”
“He and his wife bootstrapped themselves building their own cabin, then house, sell at a profit, rinse and repeat a few times. There are many, many videos of people building their own cabins, etc. Dave’s are simple, clear, lucid, from a guy who’s done it many times and has skin in the game.”
Seymour Bernstein, teaching piano. (via @lfrymire)
“Pianist and composer, performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Adjunct Associate Professor of Music and Music Education at New York University.”
“Tonebase (a paid music learning service) recorded a number of free to watch conversations with Bernstein while he plays through or teaches a piece. Bernstein is about 90 years old at the time of recording and shares an incredible amount of tacit knowledge, especially about body mechanics when playing piano.”
RegLocal, advanced driving. (via @masasin)
“former police driving instructor; he has a book, but the videos themselves are so helpful”
Ryan Farran (Missionary Bush Pilot), flying small aircraft in Papua New Guinea. (via @masasin)
“My job as a bush pilot is to fly missionaries, medical flights, and cargo into mountain and jungle airstrips throughout all of [Papua New Guinea]” (YouTube).
Misha Glouberman, Recorded Coaching Session. (via @Misha Glouberman)
“Consultant, Business Coach, and Co-Author of The Chairs Are Where The People Go.”
Testimonials: Mark Surman, President of Mozilla; Shenda Tanchak, Registrar & CEO of Ontario College of Pharmacists; Michael Bungay Stanier, Author of The Coaching Habit; others (Website).
Max Egorov, “[b]ushcraft and off-grid craftsmanship”. (Russian narration) (via @TANSTAAFL)
“Advoko has a site in the woods near Lake Ladoga in Russia where he films himself building various improvements by hand with local materials. Very competent craftsman, professional touch with no hype.”
Various skilled CAD users and instructors, CAD vs. CAD Speedrunning Tournament. (via @zookini)
“Watch some of the best SOLIDWORKS, OnShape, Fusion 360 and Inventor users Speedrun some challenging models while going head to head and sharing their screens” (YouTube).
Scott Chacon, “So You Think You Know Git” (Part 2). (via @Max Entropy)
Co-founder of GitHub and author of Pro Git.
Inigo Quilez, computer graphics programming. (via @Robert Diersing)
Has worked in roles dealing with computer graphics at Pixar Animation Studios, Oculus Story Studio, Oculus+Facebook, Adobe, and other places since 2003 (Website).
Dan Gelbart, Building Prototypes (18 Part Series). (via @Adrian Kelly)
“Dan Gelbart has been Founder and CTO of hardware companies for over 40 years, and shares his deep knowledge of tips and tricks for fast, efficient, and accurate mechanical fabrication. He covers a variety of tools, materials, and techniques that are extremely valuable to have in your toolbox.”
Hrishi Olickel, creating a proof-of-concept Web App using LLMs.
CTO at Greywing (YC W21) (GitHub).
Carl Rogers, Frederick Perls, Albert Ellis, Everett Shostrom, Arnold Lazurus, Aaron Beck: Three Approaches to Psychotherapy—recorded therapy sessions.
Carl Rogers. Founder of person-centered psychotherapy; one of the founders of humanistic psychology (Wikipedia).
Frederick Perls. Developed Gestalt therapy with his wife, Laura Perls (Wikipedia).
Albert Ellis. Founder of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) (Wikipedia).
Everett Shostrom. Put together the film. “He also produced well known tests and inventories including the Personal Orientation Inventory, Personal Orientation Dimensions, the Pair Attraction Inventory, and the Caring Relationship Inventory ” (Wikipedia).
Arnold Lazurus. “Authored the first text on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) called Behaviour Therapy and Beyond” and won various awards including two from the American Psychological Association and the American Board of Professional Psychology (Wikipedia).
Aaron Beck. “He is regarded as the father of cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)” (Wikipedia).
Aswath Damodaran, “Reading a 10K”.
“Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches corporate finance and equity valuation. [...] Damodaran is best known as the author of several widely used academic and practitioner texts on Valuation, Corporate Finance and Investment Management as well as provider of comprehensive data for valuation purposes” (Wikipedia).
Anecdote from an experienced finance friend: “Damodaran is an NYU prof who’s super credible and well regarded for his practical tutorials on valuations and corporate finance, I used to refer to his blog often.”
Zane Carney; composing, recording, and producing music live.
Guitarist who has contributed to albums like Thundercat’s “Drunk” and John Mayer’s “Paradise Valley.” Has toured with Jonny Land and John Mayer (Website).
Shannon (House Improvements), “How to build a deck” (6 Part Series).
Has been in the construction industry for decades. Runs his own renovation business. 925K YouTube subscribers (Channel Trailer).
Me: A friend of mine successfully built a deck using this playlist as a guide.
René Rebe, live streaming Linux, open source, and low-level programming hardware and software projects.
CEO of ExactCODE GmbH since 2005 (LinkedIn).
BNYX, Olswelm, and other indie (?) music producers; music production livestream VODs.
William Lin, competitive programming.
“[S]ophomore at MIT [...], IOI 2020 Winner, Codeforces Max Rating 2931 (International Grandmaster), CodeChef Max Rating 2916 (7 stars)” (YouTube About).
Steven Ramsey, 200 days of woodworking projects during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Hobbyist woodworker turned woodworking content creator (1.9M YouTube subscribers); formerly a professional graphic designer (Website).
Ben Eater, “Build a 65c02-based computer from scratch”.
Updates Thread. Below are ~monthly updates with lists of new tacit knowledge videos so you don’t have to scroll through the list again to find new videos.
You can subscribe to the Tacit Knowledge Video Updates Substack to have these emailed to you or sent to an RSS feed (https://tacitknowledgevideos.substack.com/feed).
@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.
[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)
Meal prepping Tacit Knowledge Videos?
Agreed and added.
Agreed. I added the link to speedrun.com/games to the post. From there readers can navigate to individual games and their respective leaderboards, click on a player, and watch the player’s speedrun YouTube video.
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.
Thanks! Added.
At my university library, you can use Bloomberg Terminal, which usually costs $2,000 per month, for free.
(another one)
Domain: Business, Business Communication
Link: GiveWell’s Public Board Meetings (2007–2020 have audio).
People: Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, Timothy Ogden, Rob Reich, Tom Rutledge, Brigid Slipka, Cari Tuna, Julia Wise, and others.
Backgrounds:
Holden Karnofsky. “Director of AI Strategy (formerly CEO) of Open Philanthropy and co-founder of GiveWell” (Website).
Elie Hassenfeld. co-founder and CEO of GiveWell (LinkedIn).
Timothy Ogden. Chief Knowledge Officer at Geneva Global, Inc.; founding editor of Gartner Press; founder of Sona Partners; chairman of GiveWell (Aspen Institute).
Rob Reich. Political Science professor at Stanford for 26 years (Stanford).
Tom Rutledge. Has worked in finance since 1989 (LinkedIn).
Brigid Sliplka. Director of Philanthropy at ACLU (LinkedIn).
Cari Tuna. President at Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures (Wikipedia).
Julia Wise. Community Liaison at Centre for Effective Altruism (LinkedIn).
Why: I’ve personally found it interesting to listen to these meetings for generally instantiating “what actually is a board meeting?”. They can be listened to just like you would listen to a podcast, in a multi-tasking sort of way.
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.