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How You Know

paulgraham.com

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Re: How You Know

#81

Post by lmm »

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.

I don't use it for this, but I host my own MoinMoin instance; on any linux machine enabling apache is a couple of lines of config, and then moin is just download, unzip, and add a couple more lines to the apache config (and make sure mod_wsgi3 is installed). It's an old and probably horribly out of date version by now, but that doesn't matter when I'm only allowing access from 127.0.0.1.

Re: How You Know

#82

Post by themodelplumber »

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…

Great passage. As a digital artist who works with fractals, that really resonates with me. Visual fractal detail quite often converges to visual noise (and looks remarkably like a noise function as expressed on e.g. a TV set). I usually need to remove or de-emphasize that noise in order to clarify the direction and abstract intent of the work.

One of my favorite films that works along these lines is the 1998 Japanese film "After Life," in which a small party of workers attempt to recreate others' memories with very basic film studio equipment. I absolutely treasure the loss of detail in the various recreation scenes, and the way it suggests that there is actually a satisficing point at which we might realize, "yes, I'm actually reliving that memory right now." So I agree with Mr. Graham's conclusion that technology can bring this about.

On an unrelated note, PG's essays always bring to mind the Meyers-Briggs INTJ type. Essays about the annoyance of accumulating "stuff", a focus on abstract / intuitive learning styles, and clever writing which quickly establishes a theoretical framework which is then thrown against the world's (audience's) experience, rather than starting from first principles hoping to eventually reveal a framework as others might do. His seems to me very much a "systems thinker" approach.

Re: How You Know

#83

Post by drcomputer »

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 sentiment is expressed "incorrectly", but that doesn't mean it's existence is useless. It may prove to be very useful eventually.

The idea that mental models can be incorrect by being compared to other mental models is a strange concept to me. It requires assumptions that can not be proven in their entirety.

Re: How You Know

#84

Post by lmm »

sbensu wrote: post #15

The problems is figuring out which books provide those useful mental models. I found that fiction usually doesn't but a list with recommendations in the comments would be great.

Neal Stephenson's Anathem felt like the most accurate capture of what being a Cambridge mathematician felt like.

The thing that made a lot of history make a lot more sense to me was playing Civilization. I don't know how accurate the details are, but the fundamentals of diplomacy don't change a lot.

Honestly most nonfiction feels like it was telling me what I already knew, or bringing new facts but no new ideas. I can't remember any that actually changed the way I think.

Re: How You Know

#85

Post by michaelochurch »

fumar wrote: post #77
amatix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An article by Ted Chiang: The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling -- talks about some of these issues from a couple of different & interesting perspectives which I found really intriguing. One of which being a thought exercise about what it would mean to have the ability to accurately replay everything we'd ever seen or done. And how two people who went through the same experiences can come out with vastly different…

The idea of replaying moments of our lives reminds me of a Black Mirror episode from Season 1. "Set in an alternative reality where most people have a 'grain' implanted behind their ear which records everything they do, see or hear. This allows memories to be played back either in front of the person's eyes or on a screen, a process known as a 're-do'." Without giving too much away, the episode explores how new solut…

I found that one to be one of the less dystopian episodes.

My explanation is linked because I don't want to spoil the episode. (Also spoils 15 Million Merits.) http://paste.lisp.org/display/144706

Re: How You Know

#86

Post by drcomputer »

proveanegative wrote: post #55

>Reading and experience train your model of the world. This sounds convincing but then an argument against reading fiction follows since fiction trains your model of the world with fake data.

Real data can train your model of the world falsely :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statisti...

Re: How You Know

#87

Post by dpweb »

amatix wrote: post #64
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…

An article by Ted Chiang: The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling -- talks about some of these issues from a couple of different & interesting perspectives which I found really intriguing. One of which being a thought exercise about what it would mean to have the ability to accurately replay everything we'd ever seen or done. And how two people who went through the same experiences can come out with vastly different…

The movie strange days where experiences are recorded on a personal recorder and can be played back although that movie was from 1999 so an updated version would have those experiences transmitted to the cloud..

Re: How You Know

#88

Post by jonah »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #56
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…

In the analogy, it seems more likely that a mistaken short in the wiring is created, than we compile and lose the code all the time. Most of us have good ideas of the provenance of our prejudices (I am pretty sure I can remember which side of most debates arguments I get from Fox Mews and which from the BBC, even if the specifics are hazy.) There are always areas where we do forget the provenance. In my case I stood…

While it seems your father had his reason for informing you of that fact at that particular time, he was likely correct[0]. ;)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrageenan

Re: How You Know

#90

Post by eoi »

coderholic wrote: post #8

I remember reading something very similar to this (but can't remember where, ha), where it said the important thing about reading is how if affects your general thinking rather than the individual pieces of information that you're likely to remember (or not). I spent several years reading a ton of different books on economics and I can recall very few facts from those books, but it did and has completely altered my w…

I think a machine learning model provides a nice version of Graham's "The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life."

Using an artificial neural net analogy instead of a compilation analogy: "The same book would optimize your neural net towards a different local minimum at different points in your life."

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