# LMD Async Tutoring
**URL:** https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933
**Category:** Tutoring
**Created:** [April 23, 2024, 12:05am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933 "2024-04-23T00:05:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 50
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/982 "2025-05-01T16:02:21Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> There is some audio related training I’ve been working on which involves short quiz style practice like duolingo. I could post about that?
sure, of course you can post about that
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2025, 3:35am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/983 "2025-05-02T03:35:23Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Assignment: Go write comments on 10 links. One sentence comments are fine. This should take under an hour and you should comment on most links you look at, not skip a bunch from being unsure what to say. I think the main reason to skip a link after looking at it would be that you see it’s long. Skimming through for links to short stuff is fine.
I posted 5 comments. It took me just over an hour for that. I don’t really like any of the comments.
> **Comments Log**
>
> Here is my log and notes of what I did.
>
> Start: 12:09
>
> First linked I clicked: [Who Murdered the Dinosaurs? - by Frank J. Fleming](https://www.frankjfleming.com/p/who-murdered-the-dinosaurs)
>
> [Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #5 by Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/5)
>
> Hmm its paywalled to finish the article. I’ll read what I can and then see.
>
> I can’t tell from the first paragraph whether this is a story or real. removepaywall didn’t work.
>
> Here is where I got up to before paywall:
>
> > “Here’s what I think.” Graham shifted in his chair. “I think maybe the dinosaurs didn’t go extinct from natural causes. Maybe they were… murdered.”
>
> I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s like a fan fiction or parody of CSI (maybe from the TV show? Idk never seen it) investigating the dinosaurs. It seemed like a parody. It has some jokes in it I think. I wonder if the rest of the article continues as a story or it has a point?
>
> * * *
>
> [Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #4 by Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/4)
>
> > Note that the price for the highest-quality thread, 100 twist, came down most dramatically. It’s _possible_ for humans to spin thread this fine, but it’s much more difficult and takes longer. For many uses it was prohibitively expensive. But machines have a much easier time spinning any quality of thread, so the prices came closer to equal.
>
> > At one level, this is a cost improvement. But don’t assume that the effect for the _buyer_ of thread is that they will spend less money on the same quality of thread. How the buyer responds to a change in the frontier depends on the cost-quality tradeoff they want to make (in economics terms, their [elasticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticity_(economics)) of quality with respect to cost). In particular, the customer may decide to upgrade to a higher-quality product, now that it has become more affordable.
>
> Right so the customer might decide to not change what they spend on thread but change what quality of thread to buy. They might upgrade and not spend less, basically. Sure.
>
> > In other words, what looks like a cost improvement from the supply side, turns into a quality improvement on the demand side
>
> But the reason they’re interested in the higher quality of steel rails is because it’ll cost them less, right? The outlay for steel rails will be greater but they will not need as much maintenance so presumably they’d be cheaper?
>
> > But what was the effect of upgrading to steel rails? A greatly decreased need for replacing the track lowered the operating costs of the railroad.
>
> Right yes.
>
> time: 12:43pm Okay this is taking way too long. It should take me 5 mins to comment.
>
> This was interesting. I think the answer to the article’s title question is: both.
>
> * * *
>
> [Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #11 by Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/11)
>
> Yeah it’s like they softened the language around evidence and the conclusion. I guess they began to sense that the issue was less clear cut and wanted to not look stupid? They want to tread the line and look like they weren’t wrong about the issue, whatever it turned out to be. Secretly editing past articles I think is really bad and gaslight-y.
>
> I don’t know where the debate ended up about where covid-19 came from but I remember the idea that it might’ve come from a lab was put down a lot and it was claimed to be refuted when I thought it wasn’t. It seemed the idea became more popular with time? People I knew were really touchy about the topic, like a lot of topics during covid. I felt I couldn’t talk about certain issues.
>
> * * *
>
> time: 1:02pm
>
> > [@Elliot Shares Links (2021)](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/25):
> >
> > School harsh drug policies make no sense:
> >
> > [TikTok - Make Your Day](https://www.tiktok.com/@manders1489/video/6969724842358656261)
>
> Were they perhaps concerned about the safety of using someone else’s finger pricker or something? I’m assuming it’s not a fresh non-sterile pricker each time. Though that sounds weird now I say it.
>
> What’s a “drug charge under the school” ? Like it goes on your record that you did something bad related to drugs? That seems wrong and misleading.
>
> * * *
>
> [Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #55 by Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/55)
>
> > [@Elliot Shares Links (2021)](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-shares-links-2021/132/55):
> >
> > bad pick up instructor.
>
> He seems so gross and annoying. Also, wtf was that comment about how women used to be babies around 0:25.
>
> * * *
>
> Okay that’s over an hour. And i’ve got 5 comments. I spend too long on the first few I think. I wasn’t just trying to find quick ones like I could’ve.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2025, 3:41am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/984 "2025-05-02T03:41:25Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I posted 5 comments. It took me just over an hour for that. I don’t really like any of the comments.
I’m gunna try again and be quicker.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2025, 5:44am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/985 "2025-05-02T05:44:07Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > I posted 5 comments. It took me just over an hour for that. I don’t really like any of the comments.
>
> I’m gunna try again and be quicker.
My second round took 80 mins and I made 7 comments.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2025, 4:51pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/986 "2025-05-02T16:51:58Z")
It makes sense to take longer on longer materials. Try doing it with TikToks only and skip any that are over 4min.
The activity you did is fine as an activity but I think writing more short comments faster would be good for you to try to see if it helps you post more thoughts more easily or identify what might be blocking that.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2025, 4:17pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/987 "2025-05-18T16:17:01Z")
I’m not sure why you don’t post more often. Is everything great and this is your self-pacing that you’re happy with? Are certain activities taking a long time? Are you really busy? Are you stuck on some stuff? Are you low on assignments and need more? Are you losing interest in some topics?
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2025, 11:08pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/988 "2025-05-18T23:08:29Z")
I’ve got a number of threads that I feel the need to reply to but I’m also a bit stuck on each of them.
I’ve had a few stalled attempts at replying to each of them. I’ve ended up being avoidant.
This seems like a recurring thing. I read back over recent advice you’ve given and notice I haven’t really taken it to heart:
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > I think because it’d be largely unhelpful, for others? I’m not sure actually I didn’t think too much about it.
>
> Why unhelpful?
>
> I think people like stuff to engage with that is less perfect or intimidating, and like examples of posting stuff that is less impressive which makes it feel easier for them to post their own flawed stuff, and also people like a more active forum.
>
> Lots of people have disorganized thoughts and struggle to organize them. They may find it easier to organize some of your thoughts than their own (since they aren’t already stuck on your problems) or to find some parts of your thoughts that make sense to them. If two people share disorganized thoughts, they could potentially both help each other and point out some improvements with the other person’s thoughts.
I often find it hard and unpleasant to reply to things if I don’t just think of something to say quickly. I haven’t really learned to just try posting some stuff even if it’s bad or incomplete. I have some resistance to that I think.
Perhaps if I’m stuck, instead of replying to things directly, I could analyse what is in the post that I’m considering replying to.
For example you posted:
> [@Milton Friedman and Maximizing Profits](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/milton-friedman-and-maximizing-profits/1991/37):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > After reading the MFDM article, I realised one of my confusions with this problem was that I didn’t know if y and x were or weren’t of the same dimension. They weren’t defined. But now I realise in math it’s just standard to assume x and y are of a different dimension; they are unlike terms after all. I’m not sure why this happened.
>
> Yes x and y represent different dimensions in general. But also, where did x and y come from? They symbolically represented and generalized stuff from the economics discussion. So what were the actual factors originally being talked about?
>
> > [@Milton Friedman and Maximizing Profits](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/milton-friedman-and-maximizing-profits/1991/37):
> >
> > Like I think they should maximise profits and care about other things too like, making a great product/service, being a great place to work for employees.
>
> x = profits
> y = great product/service
> z = great place to work
>
> I’m guessing you already know whether those are the same dimension or different dimensions.
What does the post contain? what might I reply to? what new things might I add? Where could this go?
brainstorm:
You quote a comment of mine.
You confirm something in it that I realised (that x and y in general represent different dimensions).
You ask a question and answer it.
You point out that the maximising problem corresponded to the economics problem we were talking about.
You state that you think I already know whether they are the same dimensions or not.
Hmm I don’t know if this helped. Maybe with some different ones it could.
I think I’ll post what I got stuck with on the mfdm article shortly. But going back to the original topic, I’ll answer your questions.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Is everything great and this is your self-pacing that you’re happy with?
No there are problems.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Are certain activities taking a long time?
Some things start off okay but then I get stuck and then I end up with something that I don’t think is worth posting (it’s usually like half done and seems weird to post, like I’d be missing the point of what I’m replying to or ignoring it or something). Then I try move on to something else and think I’ll go back to it but then it’s kinda the same because I guess I haven’t changed anything. I guess I’m hoping some new thoughts occur to me but they usually don’t. Sometimes I’ll do an explicit thing like brainstorm but it doesn’t usually help.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Are you really busy? Are you stuck on some stuff?
Not particularly busy no. I’m stuck on some stuff. And I’m struggling with organisation a bit.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Are you low on assignments and need more?
No I think I have enough to do. But
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Are you losing interest in some topics?
It’s hard to tell because I think my interest depends on whether I’m having trouble or not.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/989 "2025-05-19T15:41:01Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I’ve had a few stalled attempts at replying to each of them.
When an attempt stalls, I’d suggest saying that and putting some thought into what’s going on there.
If it was a 5% rate, maybe you could ignore it, but if it’s happening multiple times in a row and slowing down your posting a lot then the rate is a lot higher than 5% and it sounds like some problem needs to be addressed.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I often find it hard and unpleasant to reply to things if I don’t just think of something to say quickly. I haven’t really learned to just try posting some stuff even if it’s bad or incomplete. I have some resistance to that I think.
Have you tried explicit brainstorming? If so, what happens? It’s hard for me to help with next steps without receiving a lot more information about what happens with initial problem solving steps.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2025, 2:59am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/990 "2025-05-28T02:59:21Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > I often find it hard and unpleasant to reply to things if I don’t just think of something to say quickly. I haven’t really learned to just try posting some stuff even if it’s bad or incomplete. I have some resistance to that I think.
>
> Have you tried explicit brainstorming? If so, what happens? It’s hard for me to help with next steps without receiving a lot more information about what happens with initial problem solving steps.
Sometimes? But I kinda don’t know. I think I need to pay more attention when I’m having trouble responding to something. I can’t remember well what happens with those initial steps right now. I should take more note of it when I get stuck.
Often posting can feel forced, like I’m trying to make myself say something. Maybe I’m not really clear or convinced on why posting a lot is good? Maybe that’s a sign I’m just not interested? I think it’s a sign I have a conflict here. Why do I think I want to do something that parts of me disagree with doing?
Sometimes I don’t know if something needs a reply or not. Like someone will respond to me and they’ll add some extra points but then I don’t know whether I should do something with those. It seems like I should, like with your responses in the Autism thread, you responded with heaps of information. I started trying to think of how to respond but I got a bit overwhelmed. Were we having a disagreement? Is Elliot trying to change my mind? Is he expecting me to respond to his points? Is he just being helpful and providing some insights while doing some thinking of his own? Am I letting him down by not responding to everything he said?
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> If it was a 5% rate, maybe you could ignore it, but if it’s happening multiple times in a row and slowing down your posting a lot then the rate is a lot higher than 5% and it sounds like some problem needs to be addressed.
Yeah it’s happening a lot more than 5% I think.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2025, 4:22pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/991 "2025-05-28T16:22:49Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> Sometimes? But I kinda don’t know. I think I need to pay more attention when I’m having trouble responding to something. I can’t remember well what happens with those initial steps right now. I should take more note of it when I get stuck.
yes, i agree. rule of thumb: if you get stuck in the same way 3+ times, you should focus some attention on figuring out what’s going on. if you get too often without knowing if each time is the same or not, then you should also investigate more. (you’re allowed to investigate before 3+ times. it’s fine to but also fine not to.)
> [@LMD](#):
>
> Often posting can feel forced, like I’m trying to make myself say something. Maybe I’m not really clear or convinced on why posting a lot is good? Maybe that’s a sign I’m just not interested? I think it’s a sign I have a conflict here. Why do I think I want to do something that parts of me disagree with doing?
Well what do you want?
Writing is one of the main activities of philosophy. It’s useful for writing alone, writing to explain stuff to others who you aren’t in a discussion with, and for discussions (including debates). You can write for developing ideas, clarifying ideas, research, notes, organizing thoughts, introspection, and much more.
Writing and even reading isn’t strictly required. An illiterate person could think and talk about philosophy. But writing is very useful today and it’s generally more convenient than talking when dealing with other people over the internet.
I’m guessing you’d also have some similar issues with talking. I’m guessing the issue is more about what to say than the medium.
Do you want to say philosophical things in any medium? Is that a goal you want to practice and work towards? Or do you have some other goals in mind like just wanting to understand stuff more, and focus on reading/listening/thinking without directly interacting with others? I think that has some disadvantages in general but also it wouldn’t fit with tutoring well because it’d largely leave me out.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> Sometimes I don’t know if something needs a reply or not. Like someone will respond to me and they’ll add some extra points but then I don’t know whether I should do something with those. It seems like I should, like with your responses in the Autism thread, you responded with heaps of information. I started trying to think of how to respond but I got a bit overwhelmed. Were we having a disagreement? Is Elliot trying to change my mind? Is he expecting me to respond to his points? Is he just being helpful and providing some insights while doing some thinking of his own? Am I letting him down by not responding to everything he said?
You’re not letting me down. @Eternity this part is going to be relevant for you to.
A tutor/student relationship is not an equal relationship. You pay me. I help you. You don’t have to help me. You’re the customer and I’m the service provider. You don’t need to worry about whether I’m bored. You don’t have to supply interesting or useful feedback to me. You can skip whatever activities you want and I’ll only push back if I think it’s important to your learning, not to get some benefit for myself.
When I reply to you, it’s intended to be useful to you in some way: interesting, educational, correcting something, sharing an idea, giving you opportunities to think and talk more. I’m generally trying to inspire more philosophical thoughts and sometimes discussion, but that’s not always going to work. I try to get people to think about things more, see angles they didn’t think of, learn something, and maybe be able to understand more next time.
I like to give some opportunities that aren’t assignments because you’ve gotten stuck on some assignments so I want to make some stuff more optional and flexible. And because fundamentally people have to direct their own learning; I don’t want to be a micromanaging central planner, just an advisor.
You may want to give me feedback or be helpful as a fan. But don’t stress yourself out about that. Don’t worry about it. Focus on being a student not a fan. You may view tutoring as a partial favor or special opportunity and not want to let me down, but even if so, don’t stress about it, especially in the short term. If you want to do something nice for me, you should probably do it later, when you have plenty of skill and resources, not now. If things go great, maybe you can be nice to me in a few years, or not, it isn’t an obligation. But for the short term forum interactions, you should definitely optimize them for your learning, not for me.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2025, 7:02am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/992 "2025-05-30T07:02:42Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > Sometimes? But I kinda don’t know. I think I need to pay more attention when I’m having trouble responding to something. I can’t remember well what happens with those initial steps right now. I should take more note of it when I get stuck.
>
> yes, i agree. rule of thumb: if you get stuck in the same way 3+ times, you should focus some attention on figuring out what’s going on. if you get too often without knowing if each time is the same or not, then you should also investigate more. (you’re allowed to investigate before 3+ times. it’s fine to but also fine not to.)
Cool. I’ll make an effort to do that.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > Often posting can feel forced, like I’m trying to make myself say something. Maybe I’m not really clear or convinced on why posting a lot is good? Maybe that’s a sign I’m just not interested? I think it’s a sign I have a conflict here. Why do I think I want to do something that parts of me disagree with doing?
>
> Well what do you want?
This question is hard for me.
Posting/discussing is fun and doesn’t feel forced when I have thoughts to share or arguments to write or things to explain. It seems that when it gets a little harder than that it stops being fun. Maybe when it’s not like that, I need some equally fun alternative. Like having some lower standards that I can achieve. That kinda sounds like saying I just need to get unstuck. Which I think is right, but not necessarily a clear idea. Maybe I need to be more okay with finding something hard and spending some time on it.
Maybe I shouldn’t feel so pressured to respond to everything, and should feel more free to, like you say, skip things. And should just follow what I’m interested in more? I’d feel bad when it was communicating with other forum members though, who I do have an equal relationship with.
In the background of this problem, there is a worry that I have which I also noticed on some other problems in my life. I feel like I’m scared that I’ll find out that I don’t want philosophy, that I don’t like the activities much. I get worried that that’s true. And I get worried that I’m the kind of person that will avoid being that honest with themselves so they don’t find that out. I’ve noticed those kinds of thoughts are in the background of other conflicts I have had. Like maybe I just don’t want to do thing X but I for some reason don’t want that to be true and think I should want it, and have put lots of resources in to X, etc.
I think also, I’m a little lost on what it is I’m focusing on right now with tutoring. I guess I’ve just been trying to like participate with forum stuff, though it’s not been that explicit in my mind. That obviously uses skills like writing and reading and analysis etc. But I’ve not been sure when I’m doing it right or not (which probably has something to do with it being inexplicit.) If my goal is just participating, doing any posting at all would be right. Have you been looking out for anything in particular regarding my forum activity in the past month or so? Do you have a different perspective on what you’re currently helping me with?
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> I’m guessing you’d also have some similar issues with talking. I’m guessing the issue is more about what to say than the medium.
Yeah I think so.
As for writing, I like writing and am glad to have made progress with it, and would like to make even more. I use it a lot more in my life now. I’m convinced on the value of writing.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Do you want to say philosophical things in any medium? Is that a goal you want to practice and work towards? Or do you have some other goals in mind like just wanting to understand stuff more, and focus on reading/listening/thinking without directly interacting with others? I think that has some disadvantages in general but also it wouldn’t fit with tutoring well because it’d largely leave me out.
I want to say philosophical things yeah. I want to have philosophical things to say. Is your question here more about the ‘in any medium’ part or the ‘philosophical things’ part? I just realised that music is a medium that I would like to be able to say philosophical things too.
I want to understand some stuff more, and I want to improve reading/listening/thinking. But I’d like to learn how to do those things with others. Or at least part of thinks that a good idea. I got stuck trying to do those on my own. And I became convinced that doing those things well requires error correction and that discussing with others is a good way to error correct. I’d like to know how to discuss what I’m learning and explaining what I understand and look for errors with others.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2025, 3:37pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/993 "2025-05-30T15:37:24Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I just realised that music is a medium that I would like to be able to say philosophical things too.
If you mean _in_ music, I don’t know how to do that and can’t teach it. Sounds very hard. If you mean saying philosophical things _about_ music, I don’t really know about that either but it sounds significantly less hard.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> And should just follow what I’m interested in more?
yes
> [@LMD](#):
>
> It seems that when it gets a little harder than that it stops being fun.
Psychological stuff like this is out of scope of my tutoring. I’m not a therapist. I don’t claim to know how to solve this problem for people. I can give some comments, tips, suggestions. I can discuss and analyze it some. But I have much lower confidence in results than when teaching philosophy stuff (taken very broadly) like grammar, reading comprehension, logic, math, writing, debate, trees, bottlenecks, breakpoints, evolution, epistemology.
If you find stuff hard and therefore not fun we can try something else or break it down into smaller, easier parts or talk about your method of approaching it and how some other method could be more effective. What you consider fun, or are motivated to do, is basically up to you. I can say why philosophy is good, useful, cool, stuff like that. I can talk about benefits of it. But it’s up to you whether those impress you and make it fun for you or not. (I guess maybe they do impress you, but sometimes without making it fun, which is a hard conflict to deal with.)
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I feel like I’m scared that I’ll find out that I don’t want philosophy, that I don’t like the activities much.
If you don’t want philosophy but think you should you can always try to change. That doesn’t imply any particular resolution to the conflict, any particular side winning.
If you don’t want philosophy but don’t realize it, that’s just going to be confusing and make it harder to resolve the conflict and solve the problem.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> I think also, I’m a little lost on what it is I’m focusing on right now with tutoring.
My recollection, without rereading, is you wanted to move away from some more specific step by step skill building like paragraph trees or math, and you’ve been doing fine (good enough quality, low enough error rate) with some more freeform writing and analysis tasks when you do them, and I think if you just do a lot more of them on any topics you will make progress. The common theme is writing, analysis and discussion, stuff like that, rather than a particular topic like economics or breakpoints.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2025, 1:52am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/994 "2025-06-02T01:52:42Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > I just realised that music is a medium that I would like to be able to say philosophical things too.
>
> If you mean _in_ music, I don’t know how to do that and can’t teach it. Sounds very hard. If you mean saying philosophical things _about_ music, I don’t really know about that either but it sounds significantly less hard.
Oh no I didn’t think you could teach that. But when you asked the question about mediums I initially just thought of writing/speaking, but then I realised music could be one? idk just a thought. But I think you could present philosophical ideas in music, through lyrics, in a similar that way you could do it with poetry. (I don’t know if that could be done without lyrics) I don’t think it’s a very practical or efficient way to do versus writing/speaking but it has other advantages. I like how Rand does philosophy through art. I think at least including better philosophical ideas in lyrics would make the music better than having worse ones.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > It seems that when it gets a little harder than that it stops being fun.
>
> Psychological stuff like this is out of scope of my tutoring. I’m not a therapist.
That’s okay I understand. I don’t expect that kind of stuff. Do you mind if I do share things which are outside of the scope of tutoring sometimes, or would you prefer I put some effort into not sharing things that are outside the scope of tutoring? I’m trying to filter less when I write and share and it’s been helpful so far I think. I guess something to be worried about there is whether I understand properly the scope of tutoring.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> If you find stuff hard and therefore not fun we can try something else or break it down into smaller, easier parts or talk about your method of approaching it and how some other method could be more effective.
Okay cool. I think I want to do this with the MFDM post mortem for the Milton Friedman article. I’ve stalled a few times on that. I’ll revisit today and have a think about what I’m having trouble with there.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2025, 3:14am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/995 "2025-06-02T03:14:00Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> x = profits
> y = great product/service
> z = great place to work
>
> I’m guessing you already know whether those are the same dimension or different dimensions.
Yeah I do know that these are of different dimensions.
So your conclusion is that there is no way to maximize all these factors. I get a sense of the reasoning from the Multi-Factor Decision Making Math article, but I guess I’m not completely convinced in the sense that I feel like I understand some things, but it’s not just obvious when I think about it that I couldn’t maximise these three factors, so I think that means I’m misunderstanding something. It feels like a fact I know but that I don’t _feel_, you know? Like I feel like it’d be dishonest for me to convince someone why they couldn’t maximise multiple factors, because I don’t know it.
So what am I having trouble with right now? I don’t really know what the next thing to do is. I’ll brainstorm things.
read the article again and take notes
read the article from where I remember reading up to ~2 weeks ago
try and find some further notes I made on this article ~2 weeks ago
ask elliot for some advice on what to try next
do some freewriting on the points from the mfdmm article
So without consciously going through each option, the thing that I want to do the most next is trying to find my previous notes. I seem to remember making some.
Okay so I found like, a whole post’s worth of notes that I didn’t share. I don’t know why. I think I had to leave for work for the day and thought I’d get back to it tomorrow but didn’t? It might’ve had something to do with me being disorganised about which threads to respond to. I basically forgot I had done this much work which is weird.
Here are the notes:
> **Notes**
>
> > [@Milton Friedman and Maximizing Profits](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/milton-friedman-and-maximizing-profits/1991/37):
> >
> > > [@LMD](#):
> > >
> > > After reading the MFDM article, I realised one of my confusions with this problem was that I didn’t know if y and x were or weren’t of the same dimension. They weren’t defined. But now I realise in math it’s just standard to assume x and y are of a different dimension; they are unlike terms after all. I’m not sure why this happened.
> >
> > Yes x and y represent different dimensions in general. But also, where did x and y come from? They symbolically represented and generalized stuff from the economics discussion. So what were the actual factors originally being talked about?
> >
> > > [@Milton Friedman and Maximizing Profits](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/milton-friedman-and-maximizing-profits/1991/37):
> > >
> > > Like I think they should maximise profits and care about other things too like, making a great product/service, being a great place to work for employees.
> >
> > x = profits
> > y = great product/service
> > z = great place to work
> >
> > I’m guessing you already know whether those are the same dimension or different dimensions.
>
> Yup I knew that those were the factors originally being talked about. And yes I think they’re different dimensions.
>
> I’m read through the article more and made some notes:
>
> So I get that you can’t add unlike terms. And, in the same way, that you can’t add things together from different dimensions; you can’t add profits, product quality, and workplace quality together.
>
> So why can’t you maximise these things? Because they have to first be combined somehow in order to maximise them? Why? Why can’t you maximise them without combining them?
>
> Well because maximising all three of them means maximising some combination of them. If we’re considering e.g 5 different combinations of 3 factors, and want to choose the one that maximises them, what we need is a way to rank combinations of factors by our goal of maximising them. So we first need a way to combine factors together in a way that gives us an overall score of each combination that we’re considering.
>
> This is the problem from the MFDM Math article:
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > How can we mathematically _combine_ multiple _factors_ to get an _overall evaluation_ that lets us _rank_ the options to decide which is best?
>
> The article considers combining them with addition. It concludes that _we can’t add them_, because that ignore the dimensions. We can only convert between dimensions in relatively rare special cases. It rejects addition as a solution to the problem.
>
> It considers combining them with multiplication, which can give us a single term (an overall evaluation), but the units of the term don’t necessarily correspond to anything useful. Also, if we’re considering different combinations of different factors, multiplying them will give different units; unlike terms, so they couldn’t be ranked (to rank terms they need to be like terms.)
>
> (Why is it that we need a _useful_ term? Why couldn’t we seek to maximise (profit \* workplace quality \* product quality)? I guess it doesn’t really make sense, like what is that unit but just each thing multiplied together? But what’s wrong with it? I guess you _could_ decide to increase that unit, but the problem is whether you should. Does that unit correspond to something you care about, such that increasing it will make things better in terms of that? Why does the unit need to correspond to something you care about? Because we’re trying to find a unit that corresponds to something we care about? Because that’s part of our goal?)
>
> (I think that multi-dimensional units and whether they are arbitrary or not is interesting. It’s interesting how it depends on problems we have and concepts that we have. How it is not just math.)
>
> Okay this is taking a little while, and I’m not sure what my immediate goal is. I’m going to change what I’m doing and brainstorm how to break this down next.
>
> - what I didn’t understand previously
> - why i thought I did understand it
> - what’s going on there
> - how the article relates to the problem
> - any issues i’m having with understanding things from the article
> - what did I mean by _maximising_ when I said a business should maximise profits and making great products, and being a great place to work?
>
> Okay I think if I answered these things, and I think I can, then that’s a good plan. I’m going to start again on this tomorrow. I’ll do some other philosophy stuff now.
>
> Notes:
>
> Did I think that some goals like, work towards each other? So that like e.g maximising profits involves maximising other things like product quality, and workplace quality?
Do you have any thought on what I could do next?
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2025, 3:28am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/996 "2025-06-02T03:28:40Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> That’s okay I understand. I don’t expect that kind of stuff. Do you mind if I do share things which are outside of the scope of tutoring sometimes, or would you prefer I put some effort into not sharing things that are outside the scope of tutoring? I’m trying to filter less when I write and share and it’s been helpful so far I think. I guess something to be worried about there is whether I understand properly the scope of tutoring.
Feel free to post about whatever!
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2025, 3:38am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/997 "2025-06-02T03:38:00Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> So your conclusion is that there is no way to maximize all these factors.
You can only maximize multiple factors when a solution maximizes all of them individually. In general, you shouldn’t be trying to maximize multiple factors, and actually usually no factors because you just need to cross some breakpoints not maximize.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2025, 3:20pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/998 "2025-06-02T15:20:40Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> So your conclusion is that there is no way to maximize all these factors. I get a sense of the reasoning from the Multi-Factor Decision Making Math article, but I guess I’m not completely convinced in the sense that I feel like I understand some things, but it’s not just obvious when I think about it that I couldn’t maximise these three factors, so I think that means I’m misunderstanding something. It feels like a fact I know but that I don’t _feel_, you know? Like I feel like it’d be dishonest for me to convince someone why they couldn’t maximise multiple factors, because I don’t know it.
Do you feel like {100,100,50} maximizes them when the alternative is {50,50,100}? If so, you may be intuitively assuming each factor has equal importance and the numbers are comparable (on the same scale or using comparable units).
With these numbers, the first option does not maximize the third factor. You could choose something else and get more of it. No option maximizes both the second and third factors. You have to pick one or the other to prioritize/maximize and one not to.
The first option maximizes two things. Maybe it’s better, maybe not (the numbers mean nothing taken totally out of context and are not comparable to each other), but it doesn’t maximize all 3 things. It doesn’t maximize the third thing.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> Why couldn’t we seek to maximise (profit \* workplace quality \* product quality)?
You can do that. But then you’re maximizing that single quantity, not each of the 3 factors. If you maximize their multiplicative product, then you’ll pick the first option from my example numbers, and therefore pick less of the third factor, so you won’t maximize the third factor.
There is also the question of why you’d want to maximize that particular math formula related to the factors and not one of the infinitely many other formulas that uses the factors.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2025, 3:32pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/999 "2025-06-03T15:32:57Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> Why couldn’t we seek to maximise (profit \* workplace quality \* product quality)?
You can because that is maximizing a single thing, not multiple things. Why to seek it is another matter. And sometimes when you do that you’ll maximize _none_ of the individual factors, so it’s quite different than maximizing individual factors.
---
### Author:  [@LMD](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/LMD)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 4:18am UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/1000 "2025-06-04T04:18:35Z")
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> Do you feel like {100,100,50} maximizes them when the alternative is {50,50,100}?
Yeah, I did. I think I figured out a confusion I had on this below.
In the business example, why does wanting to maximise those three factors mean we have to combine them somehow? Is it because we have to choose a single course of action to take? Like we need one plan and we’re evaluating it based on our goal of maximising the three factors individually. Each set of different values for our factors is a single option to consider? I feel like this is the answer but I’m not super sure so thought I’d ask for your input.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> > [@LMD](#):
> >
> > Why couldn’t we seek to maximise (profit \* workplace quality \* product quality)?
>
> You can do that. But then you’re maximizing that single quantity, not each of the 3 factors. If you maximize their multiplicative product, then you’ll pick the first option from my example numbers, and therefore pick less of the third factor, so you won’t maximize the third factor.
>
> There is also the question of why you’d want to maximize that particular math formula related to the factors and not one of the infinitely many other formulas that uses the factors.
Yeah okay like you could have just a couple factors be huge and the other tiny and still get a high overall evaluation. Like if you’re maximising the area of a 3D rectangle, there are lots of different possible shapes (combinations of factors) for the same area. Cos of how multiplication works.
> [@Elliot](#):
>
> You can because that is maximizing a single thing, not multiple things. Why to seek it is another matter. And sometimes when you do that you’ll maximize _none_ of the individual factors, so it’s quite different than maximizing individual factors.
Right so multiplying them together like that gives us a new single thing that we can maximise. It’s 3 things combined, but how they’re combined is important: are they combined in such a way that maximising their product maximises each factor individually? No. Okay that’s making sense to me.
So the problem is, is there _any_ way to combine factors of different dimension into a single thing such that maximising it maximises each factor individually? This sounds like the problem in the article:
> [@LMD](#):
>
> How can we mathematically _combine_ multiple _factors_ to get an _overall evaluation_ that lets us _rank_ the options to decide which is best?
Mine’s different in that it’s about factors of different dimensions (no biggie). They’re both about combining them.
I think I don’t know how exactly to connect these two problems.
I think I was thinking of maximising the three factors not as maximising them all individually, but as maximising a combination of them. I think this is another confusion I’ve been having. Like there is the issue of whether you can combine them (which you need to do to evaluate the set of factors), and then there is the issue of whether how you’ve combined them reflects what your goal is. Like whether multiplying them together actually works for maximising each factor individually. It doesn’t work for maximisation because there are multiple ways to maximise your score that it that don’t necessarily involve every factor being maximised.
---
### Author:  [@Elliot](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/u/Elliot)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 1:13pm UTC](https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/lmd-async-tutoring/1933/1001 "2025-06-04T13:13:03Z")
> [@LMD](#):
>
> In the business example, why does wanting to maximise those three factors mean we have to combine them somehow?
You can maximize 1 thing. You can’t maximize 3 things. If you combine 3 things, then you have 1 thing not 3.
How many things should you want to maximize? Generally 0.
> [@LMD](#):
>
> So the problem is, is there _any_ way to combine factors of different dimension into a single thing such that maximising it maximises each factor individually?
There is no way with unrestricted factors.
And that’s not the right problem/goal. You don’t need to maximize anything, let alone multiple things.
It seems like you’re trying to untangle non-CF epistemology, which can’t be done. Try thinking in terms of binary factors instead. If the only values are 1 and 0, maximization loses its appeal.
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