My recent thoughts in <400 words
Infected by hostility
- I realised yesterday that I felt hostility towards Dominic Cummings (a UK political strategist). This is despite never doing any research about him, or speaking to him.
- I realised that I felt this default hostility towards him this after reading his plan to recruit free thinking people into government. The plan sounded great, adding data scientists, programmers, and independently minded “weirdos" into the executive to improve decision-making.
- So, in the form of Dominic Cummings, I had a default negative view of someone for no reason. I received this negative emotion unthinkingly from some of my relatives. My relatives' received their opinions from news companies. This transmission reminds me of a virus.
- While I have no special connection to DC, this bothers me because I do not want my opinions, particularly about people, to be negative without a good reason.
- If interested, consider who is someone that you dislike and don't know very well? Secondly, is there a good reason for disliking them?1 Send me an email if you think of anyone - I would be very interested to hear.
Judging people by talk instead of action
- Besides serious threats, unpleasant words are trivial. It is much more important what a person does, rather than what they say.
- For example, Elon Musk described a person in the Thai cave rescue in 2018 as a “pedo guy”. While unpleasant and defamatory, this insult is trivial.
- In contrast, successfully transforming the car industry to electric, and starting space exploration are extremely important on a global scale.
- If you want to judge someone’s contribution, it is better to judge a person on their action. Ignore their speech.
Learn more with small steps
- Based on my experiences of learning a few things over last year (calculus, assorted new software, foundational machine learning, basic German, and elephant dancing)2, you learn much more effectively if you focus on learning a small skill first, rather than trying to build a large skill immediately.
- As TurnTrout said, "Nobody teaches people to play piano by starting with Rachmaninov. Nobody teaches math by starting with calculus."
- Breaking a skill down into small, highly achievable steps is much more effective. This is because we receive rewards faster and more easily. Rewards motivate us to continue. 3
Don't read the whole book
- Books, textbooks in particular, have so much life-altering information inside them, ready to be squeezed out. Until yesterday, I have been stopping myself from buying books because of the time commitment.
- Fully reading a textbook normally takes me 3-9 months. So, I have stopped myself from buying unless confident that I wanted to commit that time.
- In contrast, I feel a strong sense of freedom after reading Alex Turner's comment that: "Completing the whole textbook is usually a big waste of time".
- I plan to try out Turner’s advice: "[not to] complete the whole book and all of its exercises...get 80% of the benefit out of the key 20 - 40% of the concepts and exercises, and then move on."
- You are welcome to try it out too. Allowing yourself to read just the most useful parts will probably be more efficient, and fun.
Outro
- I am currently writing this from the MakerSpace in Bonn. It is a club with workspaces, free access to 3D-printers, wood machines, laser cutters, soldering irons, electronic components, plus many other tools, while also allowing you to meet similarly interested people. I like it very much.
- Within 15 minutes of visiting MakerSpace for the first time, I had spoken to someone about his streaming startup, before helping him to move a rack of graphics cards for mining Ethereum.
- I am currently considering what to do for my next business. Email me if you know a big, uncomfortable (and perhaps messy) problem that needs to be solved.
Tom :)
Some starting sources might be opposing sports teams, or anywhere else where there is competition, e.g., a competing business.
One of these is untrue :)
Related LessWrong articles: 1. Learn skills in the right order, and 2. How to beat procrastination
Share this post