201–210 of 264 posts
Is it down? I am stuck at: Your query is taking a while. Sorry about that, but it's not long now! We're leaving no book unturned in order to find you your perfect matches.
I provided two books as requested - an old favourite (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams) and a recent fantasy novel (The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin). My recommendations were... unhelpful? Lots of children’s books and comics (including Calvin & Hobbes), peppered with the occasional P. G. Wodehouse. The latter is particularly strange to me, since Douglas Adams was a huge fan of Wodehouse, used ver…
One great way to find books to read is to see what people you look up to recommend. I've built a service that scans twitter for book recommendations from ~2000 thought leaders. https://www.readthistwice.com/people
A related problem is of exploitation vs exploration (being recommended something one likes vs recommended new but with high uncertainty if it will be enjoyable or not)
some of my work on this related topic of active learning in recommender systems:
presentation: https://www2.slideshare.net/nrubens/active-learning-in-recom...
book chapter: http://machinelearning202.pbworks.com/f/Rubens-Active-Learni...
a more basic primer (aimed at startups) https://www2.slideshare.net/nrubens/1-of-40-recommender-syst...
am happy to answer any questions
I realize, the site's aim is to help you escape the "echo chamber". But I've recently been mulling over this other idea from Seneca (writing 2000 years ago!) on limiting the number of books you read, hard as it is, for an avid reader: [...] Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of…
If you want to follow the spirit of the advice, you should certainly cut down on internet forums before you cut down on books.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed? After having read books on two sides of various things, I have found that most people don't have firm beliefs at all. Their beliefs don't even have anything to do with how they live. They ha…
I believe that it's important to understand the perspective of someone you fundamentally disagree with. Or, well, you described it more accurately, it's a bit deeper than disagreement, it's an entirely different epistemology! Like waaayy different
So, if you want to understand what they think they're about, you can just watch the "news" or read other PR material targeted to them. That is now more difficult because it's a bit more targeted because of social media marketing but it is still possible.
But if you want to know what they actually believe without even knowing that they do, you have to look at what they actually do and how they live their lives.
I realize, the site's aim is to help you escape the "echo chamber". But I've recently been mulling over this other idea from Seneca (writing 2000 years ago!) on limiting the number of books you read, hard as it is, for an avid reader: [...] Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of…
On a similar note in Seneca's letter to Serenus (On the Tranquillity of Mind): "Even in our studies, where expenditure is most worth while, its justification depends on its moderation. What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime? The mass of books burdens the student without instructing him, and it is far better to devote yourself…
"[...] I am aware that these mental disturbances I suffer from are not dangerous and bring no threat of a storm; to express to you in a true analogy the source of my complaint, it is not a storm I labour under but seasickness: relieve me, then, of this malady, whatever it be, and hurry to aid one who struggles with land in his sight. [...]"
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Seneca's response to it is equally astounding. (The above quote is from "Dialogues and Essays", Oxford World's Classics; translation by John Davie.)
One of my personal highlights this year: I've spent six contiguous months reading all of 124 letters of Seneca (the University of Chicago Press edition is the way to go) and several of his dialogues and essays. It's amazing how many of his letters try to shape our reading habits.
Not "Secret lives of Millionaires". C’mon man.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But don’t confuse that tendency with the idea that there are no delusional belief systems.
Oh of course, wasn't saying that at all. It's just that I have noticed an uptick in using this kind of phrasing when trying to dismiss other positions on things as a version of the "thought terminating cliche". Not trying to say there are no delusion belief systems. That said, the bar should be very high for calling other peoples beliefs as such. I disagree with lots of people on lots of things, but one of the things…
That's the most important part, isn't it? Beliefs of humans are path-dependent. Nobody can perfectly rationally re-evaluate all evidence they've encountered and compute a belief to hold. We always start with a belief, and adjust it over time. Some more eagerly than others, some more correctly than others, but it's always an additive shift. Integration of evidence, if you like. That's why when I see someone believing something that's clearly (to me) absurd, I'm mostly interested in how did they get there - something must have convinced them, and I found it useful to discover what it was, because often it's a piece of real evidence I haven't encountered before.