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How to learn philosophy notes
- Why should I learn philosophy?
- Thinking methods, how to learn, how to reason, how to evaluate ideas correctly
- You will do better if you have some ideas about what methods to use and how to organize activities.
- Be able to consciously analyze vs just using intuition and having only one way of doing things
- All goals involve using thinking methods
- Succeeding on purpose and by design
- Know how to debate ideas with yourself and others
- How to make progress?
- Just reading, and listening, without practicing and discussing doesn’t lead to much change
- Most popular philosophy ideas are bad.
- Why don’t Deutsch, Popper, or Rand have a big effect on people’s lives who do like their books?
- Only reading a book leads to understanding < 10% of the content.
- Note taking helps
- Take more time to think, ask questions, and try to see what problems are being addressed.
- Get help from others who already understand or are also trying to learn.
- Can’t correct all your own mistakes unless you are as good as the author.
- Popper had help from associates
- Ask questions about confusing parts and try to get answers from those who understand it.
- Talk to the author, the author’s associates, or others in the living tradition
- A lot the best ideas are semi-recent and have living traditions
- Deutsch reinvented Popper’s ideas to an extent and made some improvements
- Good to know what the author actually meant.
- Get more feedback early on in the learning process.
- Every few paragraphs is a reasonable amount to seek feedback.
- Reading without feedback is less threatening, less challenging, seems successful because there’s no negative feedback.
- Hiding mistakes from criticism just delays learning
- Leads to a vicious cycle of hiding weakness which leads to more weakness
- Appearance of weakness and making mistakes is kind of the opposite of whether you are actually getting stronger by getting weaknesses addressed
- Massive underestimation of the number of mistakes that will need correction (e.g. thousands when learning Popper).
- Compare multiple schools of thought
- Learn to debate objectively and state in an evenhanded way
- Don’t have really high discussion standards at first
- Write informally as you go along
- Take advantage asynchronous discussion and review past writing/feedback
- Need to be able to quickly and casually not make important mistakes
- Need ideas that work fast and easily, so I should practice in that style
- Analyze writing, just looking for the meaning of words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc.
- Catch author’s lying, manipulation, and bias
- Question the authors perspective after understanding
- Books don’t challenge the reader enough
- You have to test your own understanding
- Be able to create your own examples, that are very different from the author’s
- Answers keys can be useful for more basic practice
- Fill in the gaps in books with extracurricular activities
- Look for the things you probably still don’t understand after reading books and articles
- Apply this to all books and article because this problem is prevalent
- Just try to correct one mistake at time, as you read, based on feedback
- Just see how hard it is to get something correct in one 500-word essay
- Most people aren’t that interested in critical discussion
- Rejecting someone due to an impasse is significant
- Another perspective is that you need to filter for the best discussions/ideas
- Expose your discussion methodology and priorities to criticism
- Learn from people who understand ideas you’re learning and those who disagree with ideas you’re learning
- Need to know the opponent arguments and proponent arguments
- Good to go back and forth looking for resolutions
- Organize debate to avoid getting stuck
- Favor writing to avoid social manipulations
- Examine your life thoroughly instead of just going with the first ideas you hear, or going with the crowd
- Bad ideas are widespread so it’s easy to go along with errors
- Most people’s lives don’t amount to much, they only contribute a little bit
- The quality of someone’s thinking is what makes the difference in having a great life
- Anyone can become great because anyone can learn and improve
- Being smart is not something your born with, and it’s not genetics
- The biggest thing is honesty
- Don’t hide flaws and make an honest effort
- Seek out the best criticism from others
- Look for the best books
- Spend a lot of time on learning with care and focus
- Changing the world should not be primary motivation but it is notable and worth considering
- Primary motivation should be you want to know things, you care what’s right, you want a better life
- Errors are a threat to my own life
- Errors threaten projects, businesses, hobbies, and other goals
- Bad ideas lead to the failures
- Being smarter allows you to succeed at more of your own goals and projects
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