diff --git a/Emergence.md b/Emergence.md index d008771..2548377 100644 --- a/Emergence.md +++ b/Emergence.md @@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ When things interact, they often birth new, unpredictable forms. **The sum total of a system is more than its competent parts**. E.g: biological [[evolution]], Conway's Game of Life, Wikipedia, Minecraft. + You can't top-down plan emergent [[systems]], but you can provoke them into being. [Here are some attributes that emergent systems often have](http://gordonbrander.com/pattern/provoking-emergence/): diff --git a/Finances.md b/Finances.md index 92b60c2..056d86b 100644 --- a/Finances.md +++ b/Finances.md @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ - Today's savings buy tomorrow's liberty. Think long term. [A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow](https://putanumonit.com/2017/02/10/get-rich-slowly/). People will take that dollar and do something profitable with it. Financial safety is freedom. - Saving money and investing money are both good [[Habits]]. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth. -* [Be boring with most of your portfolio](https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1743991285214527532). +- [Be boring with most of your portfolio](https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1743991285214527532). - Spend (relatively) more money on things you interact with the most, time-wise (as well as intensity-wise). - Up to a point, being richer will not necessarily make you happier. - Spend on others, especially people you are close to. Positive feedback loop: Prosocial spending makes you happier, and happiness makes you more likely to spend pro-socially. diff --git a/Hobbies.md b/Hobbies.md index a656251..6a2f1ee 100644 --- a/Hobbies.md +++ b/Hobbies.md @@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ - Number of people in a rush - Pigeons QoL - Taxi cars brand + ## Resources - [The NoSurf Activities List](https://nosurf.net/activity-list/) diff --git a/News.md b/News.md index 22a0df6..b9c8516 100644 --- a/News.md +++ b/News.md @@ -22,4 +22,3 @@ - When we're talking about very unpopular beliefs, polls can only give a weak signal. Any possible source of noise ([Lizardman's Constant](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/)) can easily overwhelm the signal. Beware of [bad designed polls](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/bush-did-north-dakota/). - Uncertainty doesn't sell. Nuance doesn't sell. Long, complex lectures don't sell. A video of someone saying "it's complicated" will never perform the way one would of someone using confident, flippant, polarizing rhetoric, and that's a huge problem. - Main rule of fast-moving situation (e.g: early days of [[COVID-19]]): No one knows anything. -- diff --git a/Open Data.md b/Open Data.md index 1d766b5..e9a57e5 100644 --- a/Open Data.md +++ b/Open Data.md @@ -142,55 +142,55 @@ Package managers have been hailed among the most important innovations Linux bro > I'm not super clear on these answers! Please [reach out](https://davidgasquez.github.io/) if you want to chat about it. -1. What would be a great use case to start with? +### 1. What would be a great use case to start with? I'd say [chain related data](https://davidgasquez.github.io/blockchain-data-pipelines/). Is open and people are eager to get their hands on it. I'm [working on that area](https://davidgasquez.github.io/gitcoin-data/), so I might be biased. -2. Why should people use this instead of doing their own thing? +### 2. Why should people use this instead of doing their own thing? [If everybody could converge to it, e.g: _"datapackage.json_" as a metadata and schema description standard, then, an ecosystem of utilities and libraries for processing data would take advantage of it](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15346836). -3. What is the incentive for people to adopt it? +### 3. What is the incentive for people to adopt it? I wonder if there are ways to use novel mechanisms (e.g: DAOs) to incentive people? Also, companies like [Golden](httpfs://golden.com/) and [index.as](https://index.as/) are doing interesting work on monetizing data curation. -4. How can LLMs help "building bridges"? +### 4. How can LLMs help "building bridges"? LLMs could infer schema, types, and generate some metadata for us. [[Large Language Models|LLMs can parse unstructured data (CSV) and also generate structure from any data source (scrapping websites)]] making it easy to [create datasets from random sources](https://tomcritchlow.com/2021/03/29/open-scraping-database/). They're definitely blurring the line between structured and unstructured data too. Imagine pointing a LLMs to a GitHub repository with some CSVs and get the auto-generated `datapakage.json`. -5. How can we stream/update new data reliably? E.g: some datasets like Ethereum `blocks` could be updated every few minutes. +### 5. How can we stream/update new data reliably? E.g: some datasets like Ethereum `blocks` could be updated every few minutes I don't have a great answer. Perhaps just push the new data into partitioned datasets? -7. Is it possible to [mount large amount of data](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/) ([FUSE](https://github.com/datalad/datalad-fuse)) from a remote source and get it dynamically as needed? +### 7. Is it possible to [mount large amount of data](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/) ([FUSE](https://github.com/datalad/datalad-fuse)) from a remote source and get it dynamically as needed? It should be possible. I wonder if we could mount all datasets locally and explore them as if they were in your laptop. -8. Can new table formats play efficiently with IPFS? +### 8. Can new table formats play efficiently with IPFS? Parquet could be a great fit if we figure out how to deterministically serialize it and integrate with IPLD. This will reduce their size as unchanged columns could be encoded in the same CID. Later on I think it could be interesting to explore running [`delta-rs`](https://github.com/delta-io/delta-rs) on top of IPFS. -9. How to work with private data? +### 9. How to work with private data? -Homomorphic encryption? +Not sure. Homomorphic encryption? -9. How could something like [Ver](https://raulcastrofernandez.com/data-discovery-updates/) works? +### 9. How could something like [Ver](https://raulcastrofernandez.com/data-discovery-updates/) works? If you can envision the table you would like to have in front of you, i.e., you can write down the attributes you would like the table to contain, then the system will find it for you. This probably needs a [[Knowledge Graphs]]! -10. How can a [[Knowledge Graphs]] [help with the data catalog](https://docs.atomicdata.dev/usecases/data-catalog.html)? +### 10. How can a [[Knowledge Graphs]] [help with the data catalog](https://docs.atomicdata.dev/usecases/data-catalog.html)? It could help users connect datasets. With good enough core datasets, it could be used as an LLM backend. -11. [How would a Substack for databases look like](https://tomcritchlow.com/2023/01/27/small-databases/)? +### 11. [How would a Substack for databases look like](https://tomcritchlow.com/2023/01/27/small-databases/)? An easy tool for creating, maintaining and publishing databases with the ability to restrict parts or all of it behind a pay wall. Pair it with the ability to send email updates to your audience about changes and additions. -12. Curated and small data (e.g: at the community level) is not reachable by Google. How can we help there? +### 12. Curated and small data (e.g: at the community level) is not reachable by Google. How can we help there? Indeed! With LLMs on the rise, community curated datasets become more important as they don't appear in the big data dumps. diff --git a/Piano.md b/Piano.md index 5892f4f..be433b5 100644 --- a/Piano.md +++ b/Piano.md @@ -9,9 +9,9 @@ - In the academic side, [Intro Theory by Dmiti Tymoczko](https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/teaching.html). His course works on a much more fundamental level than any other music theory course. - [Study Music](https://github.com/vpavlenko/study-music) is a great GitHub repo with lots of music theory resources. -## Youtube Channels: +## Youtube Channels - - [Bill Hilton](https://www.youtube.com/user/billhiltonbiz) - - [Nahre Sol](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8R8FRt1KcPiR-rtAflXmeg) - - [Andrew Furmanczyk](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpzgTNTgQsR9YYsyOm3k3KQ) - - [Dan the composer](https://www.youtube.com/user/danthecomposer/) +- [Bill Hilton](https://www.youtube.com/user/billhiltonbiz) +- [Nahre Sol](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8R8FRt1KcPiR-rtAflXmeg) +- [Andrew Furmanczyk](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpzgTNTgQsR9YYsyOm3k3KQ) +- [Dan the composer](https://www.youtube.com/user/danthecomposer/) diff --git a/Social Media Issues.md b/Social Media Issues.md index 9b78d9b..385bce4 100644 --- a/Social Media Issues.md +++ b/Social Media Issues.md @@ -1,10 +1,11 @@ # Social Media Issues + - Internet algorithms are [[Systems|complex profit-maximizing systems]] that want to spoon feed you whatever you're most likely to click on. This is a win-win, symbiotic relationship—until it's not. When the algorithm is luring in your primitive mind against you, the relationship is parasitic. [The algorithm will learn to show thing that will further confirm and strengthen your existing viewpoints](https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles). - Each app is competing against the other apps. Only the apps that grains your [[Focus|attention]] continue. Over time, your attention is more and more hacked by these apps. All exist to sell your attention to advertisers. Each one has a team optimizing the attention hacking. - - Social Media apps might be dangerous due to the amount of data they track. Data is not the new gold, it is the new oil, and it damages the social environment. [If you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior](https://www.socialcooling.com/). [Loss of privacy leads to loss of freedom](https://robindoherty.com/2016/01/06/nothing-to-hide.html). This may limit our desire to speak or think freely thus bring about “chilling effects” on [society—or social cooling](https://reasonandmeaning.com/2017/10/31/what-is-social-cooling/). + - Social Media apps might be dangerous due to the amount of data they track. Data is not the new gold, it is the new oil, and it damages the social environment. [If you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior](https://www.socialcooling.com/). [Loss of privacy leads to loss of freedom](https://robindoherty.com/2016/01/06/nothing-to-hide.html). This may limit our desire to speak or think freely thus bring about "chilling effects" on [society—or social cooling](https://reasonandmeaning.com/2017/10/31/what-is-social-cooling/). 1. Your data is collected and scored. 2. Your digital reputation may affect your opportunities. 3. People start changing their behavior to get better scores. diff --git a/Thinking.md b/Thinking.md index 04b3ee1..8f9856a 100644 --- a/Thinking.md +++ b/Thinking.md @@ -6,17 +6,17 @@ - For each subject you think you know, ask the following questions: - How could I be wrong about this? [In general, be less sure about what you know than intuition implies](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/epistemic-modesty). - What evidence would convince me I'm wrong? - - We use the same term - “[no evidence](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag)” - to mean: - - This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely true, but we haven't checked yet, so we can't be sure. - - We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop repeating this easily debunked lie. + - We use the same term - “[no evidence](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag)” - to mean: + - This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely true, but we haven't checked yet, so we can't be sure. + - We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop repeating this easily debunked lie. - Be [specific](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XosKB3mkvmXMZ3fBQ/specificity-your-brain-s-superpower). Ask yourself the question, "What's an example of that?" Or more bluntly, "Can I be more specific?" - Run your brain in debug mode so you understand why you're thinking in that way. The brain hasn't changed that much in the last few thousands years and was built for a different world. - Believing you're rational makes it easier to fool yourself mistaking your intuitions with rational decision. - Stress test your ideas/assumptions/beliefs with experiments and facts as many times as possible. - - Anything you know or do could be wrong. You get less dumb by saying things and getting feedback. [We all have crony beliefs](https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/). From time to time, do a self-audit and figure out which ideas you've come to hold sacred and remind yourself that they're just ideas. - - Many beliefs are held because there is a social and tribal benefit to holding them, not necessarily because they’re true. - - A great way to do that is to [bet on everything](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybYBCK9D7MZCcdArB/how-to-measure-anything) where you can or will find out the answer. Even if you're only testing yourself against one other person, it's a way of calibrating yourself to avoid both overconfidence and under-confidence, which will serve you in good stead emotionally when you try to do [[Fallacies|inadequacy reasoning]]. It'll also force you to do falsifiable predictions. - - A tool to assign a percentage to a belief is [the equivalent bet test](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EtxTDPMXrbmpheiAt/how-the-equivalent-bet-test-actually-works). + - Anything you know or do could be wrong. You get less dumb by saying things and getting feedback. [We all have crony beliefs](https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/). From time to time, do a self-audit and figure out which ideas you've come to hold sacred and remind yourself that they're just ideas. + - Many beliefs are held because there is a social and tribal benefit to holding them, not necessarily because they’re true. + - A great way to do that is to [bet on everything](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybYBCK9D7MZCcdArB/how-to-measure-anything) where you can or will find out the answer. Even if you're only testing yourself against one other person, it's a way of calibrating yourself to avoid both overconfidence and under-confidence, which will serve you in good stead emotionally when you try to do [[Fallacies|inadequacy reasoning]]. It'll also force you to do falsifiable predictions. + - A tool to assign a percentage to a belief is [the equivalent bet test](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EtxTDPMXrbmpheiAt/how-the-equivalent-bet-test-actually-works). - Instead of thinking "I'm sure X is fake!", try to think in terms of probabilities. E.g: I think there's a 90% chance X is fake. Instead of thinking in terms of changing your mind, think in terms of updating your probabilities. [This mindset](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-scout-mindset) makes it easier to remember that it's not a question of winning or losing, but a question of being as accurate as possible. “Probability update” is less emotionally devastating than "I said X, but actually ~X, so I was wrong"). - You can try things to find out which ideas are right or wrong. It requires asking "What else would be true if this thing were true?" or "What would be different depending on whether X versus Y were true?". - Knowledge decays. Things you learned in the past might not be true nowadays (_status of Pluto as a planet, dinosaurs with feathers, number of people living, ..._). [Facts decay over time until they are no longer facts or perhaps no longer complete](https://fs.blog/2018/03/half-life/). @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ - [Absolute truth is relative and everyone is doing the best they can](https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/08/12/there-are-no-adults-in-the-room/). These are opportunities for you to help and learn more about the world. - Think in distributions instead of [magic answers](http://cassandraxia.com/cogbiases). The world is [analog and not digital](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html), continuous and not discrete. [Nuance is everywhere](https://www.raptitude.com/2023/10/the-truth-is-always-made-of-details/). - Real people are complex and flawed, [full of faults and biases](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg). Each turn of events is mired in potential positives and potential negatives, which is a mess to sort out. - - [Fundamental Attribution Error](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/nummi): we attribute people's behavior to their personality, not their situation. + - [Fundamental Attribution Error](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/nummi): we attribute people's behavior to their personality, not their situation. - Digitizing an analog view will result in some loss of information. In that world, everything is good or bad, everyone is smart or ignorant, ones and zeros. Mistrust simple comparisons. - You need a view of both the micro and the macro, the forest and the trees — and how both perspectives slot together. - Local Validity: Some argument steps are allowed steps and some argument steps aren't ([Non-Central Fallacy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world)), independently of whether they arrive at an answer you agree with. @@ -37,8 +37,8 @@ - [Notice](https://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-to-train-noticing.html) your internal state (cognitive and emotional). - Notice when you are in a failure mode, and step out. For example: - [Motivated Reasoning or Soldier Mindset](https://youtu.be/w4RLfVxTGH4?list=WL): - - You are fighting to make sure an argument wins. - - You are fighting to make another argument lose. + - You are fighting to make sure an argument wins. + - You are fighting to make another argument lose. - You are [[incentives|incentivized]] to believe something, or not to notice something, because of social or financial rewards or because it'd be physically inconvenient/annoying. - You are [offended/angered/defensive/agitated](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral-fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world). - You are afraid you'll lose something important if you lose a belief. @@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ - Do your philosophical thinking in advance ([cached thoughts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2MD3NMLBPCqPfnfre/cached-thoughts)), so you can concentrate on explaining well. Above all, practice staying within the one-inferential-step bound. - [Think for yourself about "wise" or important or emotionally fraught topics](https://www.lessestwrong.com/posts/aSQy7yHj6nPD44RNo/how-to-seem-and-be-deep) rather than letting your brain complete the pattern. If you don't stop at the first answer, and cast out replies that seem vaguely unsatisfactory, in time your thoughts will form a coherent whole, flowing from the single source of yourself, rather than being fragmentary repetitions of other people's conclusions. - Sometimes inferential distances can be very far apart. You need [willingness to entertain and explore ideas before deciding that they are wrong](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/studies-on-slack/). The other person might be on a self-consistent equilibria (someone christian, creationism, ...) and only changing one view of the world wouldn't work. You have to convince them for all the views. [A clear argument has to lay out an inferential pathway, starting from what the audience already knows or accepts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances). Same applies when working with a group or even for you! _Change your mind a little at a time_. - - You cant reason someone out of a notion that they didn't reason themselves into. + - You cant reason someone out of a notion that they didn't reason themselves into. - There's a distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge: - Tacit knowledge is like the knowledge that you use to ride a bicycle—it's complex, experiential, intuitive, hard to put into words. There is knowledge experts have, but cannot explain or write down. - Explicit knowledge is clear and concrete and transferable and (at least somewhat) objectively verifiable. How you ride a bicycle is tacit, but the fact that you can ride a bicycle is explicit. It's a binary fact that can be completely and compactly transferred through words, and that is verifiable through experiment. @@ -64,20 +64,20 @@ - Humans think in very different styles, related to how they use their senses while thinking. For example, some people see images during a conversation for each concept, others "feel" concepts in their body, others have explicit models that they update, and many have some combination. Also, some people can't imagine in images, and others can't store faces. It's very strange that we enter adult life without a shared understanding of this. - Don't model the minds inside other people's brains as exactly the same as your own mind. Humans lack insight into their own minds and what is [common among everyone](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/) or [unusually specific to a few](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example). - [We're all biased to our own personal history](https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/ideas-that-changed-my-life/). Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. - - When thinking about any question, imagine yourself considering a similar question, under circumstances that would bias you the opposite direction. If you stick with your opinion, it's probably honest; if you'd change your opinion in the counterfactual, you probably had it because of bias. + - When thinking about any question, imagine yourself considering a similar question, under circumstances that would bias you the opposite direction. If you stick with your opinion, it's probably honest; if you'd change your opinion in the counterfactual, you probably had it because of bias. - [Counterfactual tests to improve rationality](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-scout-mindset): - **Status Quo Test**: If you're defending the status quo, imagine that the opposite was the status quo. Would you be tempted to switch to what you have now? - **Conformity Test:** Imagine that some common and universally-agreed idea was unusual; would you still want to do it? If not, you might be motivated by conformity bias. - **The Selective Skeptic Test:** How credible would you consider the same evidence if it supported the other side? - [Predictive processing](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/) gives us more confidence in an admission that bias is possible, and a hope that there's something other than bias which we can latch onto as a guide. It helps provide a convincing framework we can use to figure out what's going on at all levels of cognition. -- An estimate is better than a guess. An measurement is better than an estimate. +- An estimate is better than a guess. A measurement is better than an estimate. - All points of view have complex context, many of which are predetermined by chance of birth, biology, and environment. There's no such thing as, "I only believe (x) because of (y)." our brains like simple, binary thinking, but real life is constantly challenging that impulse. - Experiments usually have mistakes. When the experiment process improves around a topic, the evidence might decrease indicating it wasn't present in the beginning. To find truth, improve the way to measure it! -- [Cognitive ease](https://youtu.be**/cebFWOlx848) makes us more likely to believe things that are familiar to us. Cognitive strain helps us avoid the pitfall of jumping to the intuitive but wrong answer. Both ways are useful in different situations, the key is to identify where to flow or fight against the cognitive ease. +- [Cognitive ease](https://youtu.be/cebFWOlx848) makes us more likely to believe things that are familiar to us. Cognitive strain helps us avoid the pitfall of jumping to the intuitive but wrong answer. Both ways are useful in different situations, the key is to identify where to flow or fight against the cognitive ease. - Saying "that's a good point" doesn't lose the argument. It wins trust. Acknowledging a valid observation is a display of respect. It signals that you're [[Listening]] with an open mind, and motivates them to follow suit. You don't have to agree on everything to agree on something. - Every time you say "that's a good point", it gets easier for you to acknowledge good points in the future. Same happens when you say "I was wrong". -### Resources +## Resources - [LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/) - A community dedicated to improving reasoning and decision-making. - [Rationality Checklist](https://www.rationality.org/resources/rationality-checklist) - [[Checklist]] for personal use, so you can have a wish-list of rationality [[Habits]] and see if you're acquiring good habits.