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Learning to Learn

kevin.the.li

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Re: Learning to Learn

#101

Post by keeptrying »

wordpad25 wrote: post #76
apwell23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me why doctors are totally useless in diagnosing extremely common issues like acid reflux. Why do GI specialists have no freaking clue what is causing acid reflux. Why do they not know what how exactly my a1c is relevant to heart disease instead of just prescribing me a statin. I personally know couple of doctors who themselves are clueless in fixing their own chronic conditions. Let alone helping someon…

Asking a doctor to diagnose and treat a chronic condition from a list of symptoms is like asking a detective to solve a crime from a list of evidence. There is A LOT of additional legwork and investigation required to get to the truth even if you're brilliant Sherlock Holmes (and most won't be). The best they can practically do in the 10 minutes they spend on your case, is try to treat symptoms.

And this is why you need to study Medicine!

https://meded.ucsf.edu/sites/meded.ucsf.edu/files/inline-fil...

Re: Learning to Learn

#102

Post by keeptrying »

keeptrying wrote: post #15

A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…

Since this struck a note - you can find UCSFs list of textbooks here: https://meded.ucsf.edu/sites/meded.ucsf.edu/files/inline-fil...

Start with Anatomy. And the basic anatomical form.

Start with a problem you personally have. (Go to a doc if its serious!)

Figure out your concentric anaotmy of hte issue, the pathology. Everytime you read a textbook it will push you to a new subject.

Do this for at least 5 hours and you'll be able to relate to your doctor much better.

If you want to know what a dcotor looks at for decision support - you can go to uptodate.com - I think they have a free trial for 3 days or something.

The most essential idea is that a doctor is someone whose model of hte human body is much more realistic than yours.

Thus as you learn medicine keep improving the model you have of your own body and how someone elses would be different from yours - for all major body systems - lymph, respiratory, nervous, endocrine , muscular, digestive, integumentary, urinay, excretory, circulatory etc.

Re: Learning to Learn

#103

Post by paldepind2 »

wordpad25 wrote: post #82
paldepind2 wrote: post #65

I agree with the blog post that learning how to learn is an important skill. But the post offers very little beyond a few tips on how to actually achieve that. For people interested in actually learning how to learn I'd recommend the book "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning", which offers a lot of details on this topic based on actual scientific research.

that book seems to be very inline with cutting edge research on learning, thanks book summary "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning" Summary: Key Premise: Effective learning strategies differ from common study methods like rereading and cramming, which provide an illusion of mastery but lead to poor retention. Main Learning Principles: Retrieval Practice: Actively recalling information strengthens memory…

That summary is pretty good based on what I remember from the book. I think the second to last point, _effort_, deserves a bit more of an emphasis though. It's actually a common theme through all the effective learning methods that they require more effort and that more effort generally implies more effective learning. As an example, simply rereading a text takes little effort compared to doing flash cards, and the later is more effective.

Re: Learning to Learn

#104

Post by systems »

cloverich wrote: post #86
setgree wrote: post #75

Something from Andrej Karpathy on learning that stuck with me [0]: > Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the qu…

A counter point, or maybe complementary point (b/c I agree w/ the quote). I killed myself trying to do more than 8 pull ups in a gym for ages; at times I'd be going to the gym 4x a week doing full body workouts, always working hard, always sweating, always gassed at the end; consistently doing pull ups to exhaustion on multiple sets. Yet 8 was a kind of ceiling. At some point I stopped working out, but got a pull up…

how much weight did you loose during that time?

you either lost significant weight, or added significant muscle .. no other way .. the end result here is more significant than how you reached it

for pull up, loosing weight is usually far more important than adding muscle, so i am leaning toward you lost weight

Re: Learning to Learn

#105

Post by will-burner »

kwar13 wrote: post #79

I cannot recommend reading A Mathematician's Apology enough. It was written by GH Hardy and I think it's one of the best non-math texts out there to understand how a mathematician's brain works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician%27s_Apology Fairly short and beautifully written.

I also like mathematician's apology and would recommend it for understanding now a mathematician's brain works and in particular a mathematician's perspective and mindset on being a mathematician.

But I'm curious what prompted you to bring that up in this thread? I don't see how it's connected to the blog post.

Re: Learning to Learn

#106

Post by will-burner »

>What’s something you’ve learned that you believe gives you an edge - something that you’re almost surprised more people don’t know about?

I don't know if it's just me but I would not be stoked to be asked this question during an interview. During interviews you're implicitly trying to differentiate yourself from others vying for the position. You usually do this by talking about your experience in different ways. I find it annoying when the interviewer explicitly asks you to differentiate yourself from others vying for the position. In part it annoys me because I think that should be the job of the interviewer to determine based on how I've answered their concrete questions about my experience. But also explicit questions like this one give such an opportunity for bs that I do not think they give a lot of signal. I guess I could be wrong though and don't spend enough time thinking about what makes me better than other people.

Re: Learning to Learn

#107

Post by keeptrying »

cbracketdash wrote: post #18
keeptrying wrote: post #15

A big hole in this article is that you need to find the very best learning resource there is. This is a must. Eg: For RL it would be Barto&Sutton book. Sometimes the best source is not intuitive. Eg: The best way to become a safe driver is to go to performance drivign school - its a bit expensive but they tell you how to sit and stay alert in a car which I have never seen outside of these schools. One of my most comm…

Would love to hear more about your thoughts on learning medicine! Why would you recommend an online program over textbooks?

Realize I didn't answer your qeustion.

Online courses aren't really holistic enough and not fundamental enough. They are usually dertivatives which are a translation of sorts from source documents.

For medicine you want the source documents which you can really trust.

Meidicine isn't static - it'll keep changing but its important to know source mateiral and tracking how outlooks and fixes for diseases change from there.

UptoDate.com has the best deciison science -newest knowlege. Thye are about 18 months old from cutting edge research. (Which is a good thing).

Re: Learning to Learn

#108

Post by textread »

I have a related question: Is learning interlinked with writing?

PG tweeted:-

    You can't replace reading with other sources of information like videos, 
    because you need to read in order to write well, and 
    you need to write in order to think well.

Re: Learning to Learn

#109

Post by nickburns »

cloverich wrote: post #86
setgree wrote: post #75

Something from Andrej Karpathy on learning that stuck with me [0]: > Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the qu…

A counter point, or maybe complementary point (b/c I agree w/ the quote). I killed myself trying to do more than 8 pull ups in a gym for ages; at times I'd be going to the gym 4x a week doing full body workouts, always working hard, always sweating, always gassed at the end; consistently doing pull ups to exhaustion on multiple sets. Yet 8 was a kind of ceiling. At some point I stopped working out, but got a pull up…

For anyone not familiar with this methodology, it's called 'greasing the groove.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmOEgK5o2yg

Re: Learning to Learn

#110

Post by cloverich »

systems wrote: post #104
cloverich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter point, or maybe complementary point (b/c I agree w/ the quote). I killed myself trying to do more than 8 pull ups in a gym for ages; at times I'd be going to the gym 4x a week doing full body workouts, always working hard, always sweating, always gassed at the end; consistently doing pull ups to exhaustion on multiple sets. Yet 8 was a kind of ceiling. At some point I stopped working out, but got a pull up…

how much weight did you loose during that time? you either lost significant weight, or added significant muscle .. no other way .. the end result here is more significant than how you reached it for pull up, loosing weight is usually far more important than adding muscle, so i am leaning toward you lost weight

Oh, I'm pretty lightweight / lanky (hover around 165lb, BMI around 20-21). I didn't see any significant weight change at the time, perhaps I transferred muscle if that's a thing since I was doing less general muscle building at that point - just pushups and the casual pull up routine, running (sprints) to blow off steam.

I can see weight loss being a significant factor for heavier people, esp. those that are heavy and strong. I am definitely neither (typical things like bench press / squat etc I used pretty light weights).

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