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How You Know

paulgraham.com

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Re: How You Know

#151

Post by robrenaud »

programmarchy wrote: post #124
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…

This is why it is imperative to build your model up from first principles. Before adding anything to your model, it should be filtered through proper logic. This makes it easier to build stable models without contradiction in the first place, and also makes it easier to follow a chain of reasoning about a complex viewpoint back to first principles. "Philosophizing in midstream" leads to incoherent thought with unchec…

Do you really follow this? It seems like someone following these rules would rarely be wrong, but that they'd be paralyzed by the cost of making decisions.

Re: How You Know

#152

Post by [deleted] »

arjunnarayan wrote: post #19
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…

This is an important corollary of Paul's essay that I wish he mentioned. Sometimes when you update your model of the world significantly, you still have a cache of previously computed facts that were computed using the old model. You have to clear out that cache and recompute with the new model, and that takes a significant amount of time. Often, rereading is a core part of that, since it forces you to revisit a lot…

[deleted]

Re: How You Know

#153

Post by slayed0 »

VLM wrote: post #97
etrautmann wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point - a possible explanation for a wide range of phenomenologically bizarre viewpoints (e.g.: anti-vaccers, birthers, chem-trails, creationists, etc.)

Most of your examples are social membership tests. You have to publicly say "XYZ" to join the club, where "XYZ" doesn't necessarily mean anything, but joining the club does. Like saying Abracadabra to open a door. (Spoiler alert don't read till the 26th) Do you believe in Santa? I believe in Santa. Oh how nice you also believe in Santa. Aren't we all happy members of our club? It would be so antisocial for someone to…

Can you expand on this? Are you suggesting that most of the people who say these things publicly don't actually believe them but are instead just trying to fit in to a certain social group?

Re: How You Know

#154

Post by Tycho »

a3_nm wrote: post #144

> "when Stephen Fry succeeded in remembering the childhood trauma that prevented him from singing" Does anyone know what this is referring to? Searching for "stephen fry singing trauma" doesn't return anything useful except pg's essay.

he seems to mention it in his autobiography

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fry-Chronicles-An-Autobiography/pr...

(search for "singing")

Re: How You Know

#155

Post by Tycho »

Or put a slightly different way, reading book is a way to test/validate your model of the world. It's like running unit tests on your assumptions.

Re: How You Know

#156

Post by lutorm »

I experience this phenomenon powerfully reading scientific articles. You read a bunch of articles when you are trying to wrap your head around some topic, but if you then go back and read them again after you've worked on it for a while, you'll find all kinds of things that now are very meaningful while they previously didn't seem important to you.

Re: How You Know

#158

Post by [deleted] »

programmarchy wrote: post #124
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…

This is why it is imperative to build your model up from first principles. Before adding anything to your model, it should be filtered through proper logic. This makes it easier to build stable models without contradiction in the first place, and also makes it easier to follow a chain of reasoning about a complex viewpoint back to first principles. "Philosophizing in midstream" leads to incoherent thought with unchec…

[deleted]

Re: How You Know

#159

Post by levlandau »

This makes a lot of sense. However, a machine learning model + data analogy feels more satisfactory (and accurate?) to me. We throw away the data but our model as well as its parameters are retained. The model as well as the parameters get refined with experience and it's possible that the model is recursively made up of multiple models and that combination is governed by parameters which are also governed by experience. Realizing this has always been fascinating to me and it makes it clear that exposing the brain to more data in pretty deliberate ways can yield profound results. The "smarter" you are the less data you need. If you are not so smart/knowledgeable you need more data. The data you need is also specifically of the question-answer form i.e. examples of what it is you are trying to learn. Anyways before i go down the rabbit hole, I think these metaphors are extremely helpful for the purpose of self analysis and improvement.

Re: How You Know

#160

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #96

I have an interesting take on this. Most of the books I've read, I have a copy of. A while back, I endeavored to cut, scan and OCR them all into my computer. One idea was then I could do a full-text search, limited to what I've already read rather than what google thinks is relevant. So far, I've found it very handy to find something if I at least remember which book it was in. But I need a program that can extract t…

Thanks guys, this is great info!

(I just tried pdftotext, and it does just what I wanted.)

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