W09_04_23

09/04/23 11:01:44

Summary

• Read “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe”, really interesting stuff from Carroll and nice to be able to appreciate popular science from the ‘slightly’ more scientific knowledge I have since I last read a book like this.
• Holden Karnofsky played a large role in my thinking the last few days of this week. His methods inspired me to create housing and to see the use in exploring ‘Wicked Problems’ if only to see how difficult it is to actually have an opinion about something.
  • I think more generally, I’ve become more content with the notion that, you have to trust someone at some stage or else you have to know everything (which is impossible).
  • This acceptance of ignorance in some sense rhymes with how shockingly average I am.
  • Although, as karnofsky points out, you should more think of yourself as normal but the very fact that you’re interested taking you the rest of the way. Assume you won’t be much harder working etc. than others.
• I’ve had some success, when my brain is distracted to focus on some problem in my head (see excerpts where i was looking at gdp).
• Heuristics picked up this week
  • Spherical cow (dramatically simplifying things).
  • Expected outcome how does this change the expected outcome of something. If it has no effect than its not really much good information.
  • Notetaking should just be large topics. Then hypothesise throughout that one document under the general topic.
• A lot of my thinking is so transient? Maybe there is some patterns that emerge but there never as grand as I think.

Actions from last week.

• Could I try and use Polya techniques for the Biofuels lab report as I’m sure multiple problems will pop up. Not done.
• History of Rome. Could use this for examples of games and also just to learn latin!!! Done.
• Notes on Axelrod book. Done
• Astronomy reading. Done.
• Notes on ancient philosophy book. Not done.
• Try and improve note taking workflow as I go. Not done really.

Actions

• Focus on college.
• Try and start some project with astronomy.
• Read more on How To Solve It.
• More notes on housing.
• Notes on why im interested in learning about Rome (to learn latin?).
• Ankify some Irish history.

---

Excerpts

On price as a signal of value

I was listening to marc andreesen on the lunar society podcast this morning. He talked about if you looked at the mona lisa, what would you say its price was. Would it be the materials and labour that went into making it, no, but theres this large gap between what its ‘worth’ and what it’s valued at say, like 10billion or something. This could be seen as encompassing the cultural components of value and all in between.

In this sense, just because you don’t value it, or think it’s trite doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Although, there is a difference here with pure speculation.

03/04/23 10:21:07

@daily

Status Trap

• I’m not too sure how applicable this is but just in general, it might be a good name for times when I feel I’m not doing enough, that I’m wasting time rather than just enjoying what I’m learning.
• The author recommends writing about moments when you noticed you’re in a status spiral. A process of exposure, where you bear what the moment actually entailed.
• I don’t feel I fully relate to this article. In fact, one question the author poses

  If you weren’t so busy trying to prove your worth through status games, what would you want your life to be in service of?

• I wold say science and doing something useful. Which seem non statusy.

On my walk in from the startalk podcast

You would have to live in a post-scarcity society to not have money. Do we operate, using money on some spectrum here? Need to think about this.

If you assume that the problem is, “there’s not enough x to go around” then the way out is to produce more of x. So more x production captures technological changes.

Does it capture “its easier, requires less work to produce x”?

In this scenario, the price of the good will capture this. So price would capture both questions. Rather than just pure quantity. Price also encapsulates how much demand there is for something.

In a post scarcity world everything is essentially free.

If we have something like bread, which is in really high demand and not everyone has access to. We’re assuming no one is hoarding it and that everyone could have it if it was available (big assumption). Then the way to make things better (in the sense that people’s lives get better when they’ve more access to bread) is to make more bread. The more bread you make the cheaper it gets so rising gdp (if gdp was just bread) would be bad right? Or it could be viewed that more people have access to money to buy bread?

Just measuring an increase in the quantity of bread wouldn’t capture the ‘true’ value that increase is providing as demand might rise with it.

Ok, so gdp doesn’t really work here. Productivity would have to be measured some other way maybe. This is my model for how the world economy kind of runs though so I cant see how gdp measures progress.

I think the correlation is more on the income side. That people have more access to money to buy things.

04/04/23 13:59:02

• One thing that’s kind of helped this week (its only tuesday) but just turning my mind to problem I’m trying to solve, like I was writing about yesterday, with my model of GDP meaning.
• Today, I had alook at my Youtube history in 2018. It’s shockingly bland and heavily concerned with music and fitness. I look at my current stage of development as starting really through Covid.
• There’s two main things that stick out. One, it’s not that I’ve become suddenly interested in science, or jumped some large gap. I think, I’ve been fairly consistent in interest and this is the result. Two, this consistency of interest is nothing special and the results speak for themselves. I think if I’d used spaced repetition or made models of my thinking on major topics and appended new information to them I would be further along in my education, whatever that means.
• Really, it’s just shockingly bland and unimpressive. Even spending all that time studying Physics I don’t have a crazy amount to show for it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it, it just might mean that for me, that’s what it takes to get where I am. Of course, there is some benefits. I do feel I’ve developed as a person but the constant anxiety about whether I’m using my time efficiently or not seems kind of pointless given that so much of my time most likely was not very focused in the past.
• I’m not too sure if there’s anything actionable from this. Maybe one thing. I should really gather all my writings on major topics. It’s all a patchwork of random concepts that aren’t even in my head. I should address what my actual models of these things are, like I did yesterday with how I think about GDP. That way, I can move forward and learn with them.
• I’m interested to apply this kind of thinking to learning more about Rome. To see if I’m able to dive in without that timeline that I might have tried to work on for Irish history.
• In saying that, I have always had some interest in something science related. Maybe it doesn’t always persist for long but if I was on a spectrum of science interest, I’m more interested than the average, I think.
• Some influences persisting:
  • Cosmos, NGT, Carl Sagan.
  • Star Trek
    • Although, only recently have I actually liked it.
  • TBBT.

05/04/23 20:04:37

@daily

@daniel-dennett I watched a video by Dennett on intuition pumps about changing the names on some example can completely change it’s intuition.

06/04/23 12:54:19

@daily @sean-carroll Reading ‘the biggest ideas in the universe’ carroll talks about conservation. I’m struggle to follow what it is. If our assumption is that the natural state of most objects is being at rest. Then how does an arrow move through the air with nothing pushing it? Why can’t we use what Aristotle thought, that the air circulates around and pushes it onwards?

Also, the notion of the spherical cow, or getting rid of all effects is a useful technique for thinking about problems. It’s interesting to think about using it with intuition pumps to twist the knobs, change the names and all that.

One of the classes on emergency response to a nuclear accident. Basically an exercise or generate a system to control the masses, control their panic. Or, mitigate the damage the public will do to themselves.

Wicked problems

https://www.cold-takes.com/useful-vices-for-wicked-problems/

Listened to this and can relate to a lot of it. I like the idea of sketching a summary of what it would take to convince someone of the question you’re trying to answer.

• Accepting your ignorance, set up sub problems.

• That answering some of these questions is supposed to be hard. Trying to walk that line.

• The start is often the hardest part. So it’s hard to judge from that.

• He talks about the goal of reading being to get back to the writing and getting to some conclusion or hypothesis confirmation.

• There’s also just no way to have a really informed take on everything. I’m seeing this more and more.

• I think just being conscious that the process of learning and testing these hypothesis involves some anti-flow states where you’ve to constantly re evaluate your questions.

• Similar to learning something new when studying. Shouldn’t always look at some hard productivity measure.