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How You Know

paulgraham.com

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Re: How You Know

#111

Post by sixdimensional »

pitchups wrote: post #102

An associated problem caused by a change in the mental model due to reading is the "Curse of knowledge" principle - which essentially states that "....better-informed parties find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed parties." Once you have read something and your mental model of the world is adjusted to include the new information, you have a difficult time understan…

This is also why it is so incredibly important to treat everyone's input with respect and consideration - you don't always know what you don't know, or someone could give you an experience or new input that reframes how you think about a particular thing. I think this is one of the elements of human interaction that I value and enjoy the most - being able to try to learn how other people think, and what they think about, and sharing how I think and what I think about.

Re: How You Know

#112

Post by salimane »

nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

That's why, always checking for the origin of things is very valuable, asking why we currently do things the way we do them :)

Re: How You Know

#113

Post by mentos »

drcomputer wrote: post #83
nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

I wouldn't call that a danger. I would call that being human. We all have models of the world that deviate in some ways from one another, otherwise we would all have identical minds, identical environments and origins, identical heritages, identical ways of interpreting information, and identical ways of composing information into new creations. Making an erroneous assumption or a mistake can mean that a particular s…

>>It may prove to be very useful eventually.

Even if accidentally.

Re: How You Know

#114

Post by lazyant »

nilkn wrote: post #10

There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…

It's even worse (at least with emotional political opinions); when confronted with adversarial data we tend to become more entrenched in our positions.

Re: How You Know

#115

Post by DenisM »

chubot wrote: post #23
agentultra wrote: post #9

> Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. Hence the important art of keeping a journal. You can keep a transaction log of changes. The act of replaying the journal allows you to identify patterns in your thought processes and identify cognitive dissonances. The very act of reading should induce a reactive compulsion to write. As Burroughs taught in his later creative writing courses -- in orde…

I'm definitely a fan of taking notes on things you've read (among other things, the effort to write notes makes you choose what you read more carefully). And I agree that it will help you remember the sources for various ideas. But I think a journal is the wrong model (i.e. time ordered entries, either electronic or paper). I have used a paper notebook in the past, but I would rarely go back and look at things, and i…

Would you consider writing up your wiki design choices, and how they differ from the typical wiki?

Re: How You Know

#116

Post by patrickdavey »

chubot wrote: post #23
agentultra wrote: post #9

> Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. Hence the important art of keeping a journal. You can keep a transaction log of changes. The act of replaying the journal allows you to identify patterns in your thought processes and identify cognitive dissonances. The very act of reading should induce a reactive compulsion to write. As Burroughs taught in his later creative writing courses -- in orde…

I'm definitely a fan of taking notes on things you've read (among other things, the effort to write notes makes you choose what you read more carefully). And I agree that it will help you remember the sources for various ideas. But I think a journal is the wrong model (i.e. time ordered entries, either electronic or paper). I have used a paper notebook in the past, but I would rarely go back and look at things, and i…

Just to chime in here.. I _really_ like keeping notes on books now. I put them in my vimwiki, write it in (github flavour) markdown, and publish statically. Very handy.

Re: How You Know

#117

Post by personlurking »

I recently met some people who swore that photoreading was legit and that because of it they'd read about 10 thick books per week. Not knowing what it was, I looked it up and immediately didn't believe the premise. There's something to be said for speed reading (at a rate slightly faster than normal) but photoreading just seems ridiculous. Not only can no real content/meaning be gained from doing it, but no mental models can be formed. I'd love to be proven wrong, though...

Re: How You Know

#118

Post by brd »

I am a firm believer in actively curating a mental model. At work I could be accused of over-communicating and I demand the same from those around me. I do so because my goal is to help refine the mental model of myself and all my coworkers so that everyone has a better intuitive understanding of the system/process/organization we're working with.

By this process I've been able to internalize much of a massively complex system (SAP) in a relatively short period of time.

Re: How You Know

#119

Post by esfandia »

pacalleri wrote: post #67

While I was reading came to my mind the Borges's short story "Funes the memorious". It's about someone who can't forget any detail. He remembers absolutely all the things and the infinite instances of them through the time. At some point of the story Borges conjectures: "I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget the difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly re…

My AI prof once wrote on the board "Learning is generalization". It makes sense: if the only way you're reasoning is by attempting to retrieve things from your cache, it's rote learning and you're not able to deal with situations you haven't encountered before. And even if your cache is super-extensive, all you're doing is overfitting.

Re: How You Know

#120

Post by patrickdavey »

Raphmedia wrote: post #37
chubot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely a fan of taking notes on things you've read (among other things, the effort to write notes makes you choose what you read more carefully). And I agree that it will help you remember the sources for various ideas. But I think a journal is the wrong model (i.e. time ordered entries, either electronic or paper). I have used a paper notebook in the past, but I would rarely go back and look at things, and i…

I've heard a few people tell they use a Wiki. Do you host it on your own server? Is is a public wiki, or a private one? I'm very curious.

My editor of choice is Vim. Vim has the vimwiki plugin, so your wiki is always available. I write it in markdown and then use a small gem wrapper (https://github.com/patrickdavey/vimwiki_markdown) to compile to html. Then on a git-commit hook, I rsync everything up to a webserver. Works really well for me :)
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