sure, of course you can post about that
I posted 5 comments. It took me just over an hour for that. I donāt 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
Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #5 by Elliot
Hmm its paywalled to finish the article. Iāll read what I can and then see.
I canāt tell from the first paragraph whether this is a story or real. removepaywall didnāt work.
Here is where I got up to before paywall:
āHereās what I think.ā Graham shifted in his chair. āI think maybe the dinosaurs didnāt go extinct from natural causes. Maybe they wereā¦ murdered.ā
Iām not sure what to think about this. Itās 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
Note that the price for the highest-quality thread, 100 twist, came down most dramatically. Itās possible for humans to spin thread this fine, but itās 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 donāt 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 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 theyāre interested in the higher quality of steel rails is because itāll cost them less, right? The outlay for steel rails will be greater but they will not need as much maintenance so presumably theyād 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 articleās title question is: both.
Elliot Shares Links (2021) - #11 by Elliot
Yeah itās 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 werenāt wrong about the issue, whatever it turned out to be. Secretly editing past articles I think is really bad and gaslight-y.
I donāt know where the debate ended up about where covid-19 came from but I remember the idea that it mightāve come from a lab was put down a lot and it was claimed to be refuted when I thought it wasnāt. 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 couldnāt talk about certain issues.
time: 1:02pm
Were they perhaps concerned about the safety of using someone elseās finger pricker or something? Iām assuming itās not a fresh non-sterile pricker each time. Though that sounds weird now I say it.
Whatās a ādrug charge under the schoolā ? 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
He seems so gross and annoying. Also, wtf was that comment about how women used to be babies around 0:25.
Okay thatās over an hour. And iāve got 5 comments. I spend too long on the first few I think. I wasnāt just trying to find quick ones like I couldāve.
Iām gunna try again and be quicker.
My second round took 80 mins and I made 7 comments.
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.
Iām not sure why you donāt post more often. Is everything great and this is your self-pacing that youāre 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?
Iāve got a number of threads that I feel the need to reply to but Iām also a bit stuck on each of them.
Iāve had a few stalled attempts at replying to each of them. Iāve ended up being avoidant.
This seems like a recurring thing. I read back over recent advice youāve given and notice I havenāt really taken it to heart:
I often find it hard and unpleasant to reply to things if I donāt just think of something to say quickly. I havenāt really learned to just try posting some stuff even if itās bad or incomplete. I have some resistance to that I think.
Perhaps if Iām stuck, instead of replying to things directly, I could analyse what is in the post that Iām considering replying to.
For example you posted:
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 donāt know if this helped. Maybe with some different ones it could.
I think Iāll post what I got stuck with on the mfdm article shortly. But going back to the original topic, Iāll answer your questions.
No there are problems.
Some things start off okay but then I get stuck and then I end up with something that I donāt think is worth posting (itās usually like half done and seems weird to post, like Iād be missing the point of what Iām replying to or ignoring it or something). Then I try move on to something else and think Iāll go back to it but then itās kinda the same because I guess I havenāt changed anything. I guess Iām hoping some new thoughts occur to me but they usually donāt. Sometimes Iāll do an explicit thing like brainstorm but it doesnāt usually help.
Not particularly busy no. Iām stuck on some stuff. And Iām struggling with organisation a bit.
No I think I have enough to do. But
Itās hard to tell because I think my interest depends on whether Iām having trouble or not.
When an attempt stalls, Iād suggest saying that and putting some thought into whatās going on there.
If it was a 5% rate, maybe you could ignore it, but if itās 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.
Have you tried explicit brainstorming? If so, what happens? Itās 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 donāt know. I think I need to pay more attention when Iām having trouble responding to something. I canāt 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 Iām trying to make myself say something. Maybe Iām not really clear or convinced on why posting a lot is good? Maybe thatās a sign Iām just not interested? I think itās 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 donāt know if something needs a reply or not. Like someone will respond to me and theyāll add some extra points but then I donāt 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?
Yeah itās happening a lot more than 5% I think.
yes, i agree. rule of thumb: if you get stuck in the same way 3+ times, you should focus some attention on figuring out whatās going on. if you get too often without knowing if each time is the same or not, then you should also investigate more. (youāre allowed to investigate before 3+ times. itās fine to but also fine not to.)
Well what do you want?
Writing is one of the main activities of philosophy. Itās useful for writing alone, writing to explain stuff to others who you arenāt 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 isnāt strictly required. An illiterate person could think and talk about philosophy. But writing is very useful today and itās generally more convenient than talking when dealing with other people over the internet.
Iām guessing youād also have some similar issues with talking. Iām 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 wouldnāt fit with tutoring well because itād largely leave me out.
Youāre 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 donāt have to help me. Youāre the customer and Iām the service provider. You donāt need to worry about whether Iām bored. You donāt have to supply interesting or useful feedback to me. You can skip whatever activities you want and Iāll only push back if I think itās important to your learning, not to get some benefit for myself.
When I reply to you, itās intended to be useful to you in some way: interesting, educational, correcting something, sharing an idea, giving you opportunities to think and talk more. Iām generally trying to inspire more philosophical thoughts and sometimes discussion, but thatās not always going to work. I try to get people to think about things more, see angles they didnāt think of, learn something, and maybe be able to understand more next time.
I like to give some opportunities that arenāt assignments because youāve 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 donāt want to be a micromanaging central planner, just an advisor.
You may want to give me feedback or be helpful as a fan. But donāt stress yourself out about that. Donāt 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, donāt 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 isnāt an obligation. But for the short term forum interactions, you should definitely optimize them for your learning, not for me.
1 Like
Cool. Iāll make an effort to do that.
This question is hard for me.
Posting/discussing is fun and doesnāt 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 itās 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 shouldnāt feel so pressured to respond to everything, and should feel more free to, like you say, skip things. And should just follow what Iām interested in more? Iād 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 Iām scared that Iāll find out that I donāt want philosophy, that I donāt like the activities much. I get worried that thatās true. And I get worried that Iām the kind of person that will avoid being that honest with themselves so they donāt find that out. Iāve noticed those kinds of thoughts are in the background of other conflicts I have had. Like maybe I just donāt want to do thing X but I for some reason donāt want that to be true and think I should want it, and have put lots of resources in to X, etc.
I think also, Iām a little lost on what it is Iām focusing on right now with tutoring. I guess Iāve just been trying to like participate with forum stuff, though itās not been that explicit in my mind. That obviously uses skills like writing and reading and analysis etc. But Iāve not been sure when Iām 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 youāre currently helping me with?
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. Iām convinced on the value of writing.
I want to say philosophical things yeah. I want to have philosophical things to say. Is your question here more about the āin any mediumā part or the āphilosophical thingsā 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 Iād 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. Iād like to know how to discuss what Iām learning and explaining what I understand and look for errors with others.
If you mean in music, I donāt know how to do that and canāt teach it. Sounds very hard. If you mean saying philosophical things about music, I donāt really know about that either but it sounds significantly less hard.
yes
Psychological stuff like this is out of scope of my tutoring. Iām not a therapist. I donāt 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 itās 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.)
If you donāt want philosophy but think you should you can always try to change. That doesnāt imply any particular resolution to the conflict, any particular side winning.
If you donāt want philosophy but donāt realize it, thatās just going to be confusing and make it harder to resolve the conflict and solve the problem.
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 youāve 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.
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Oh no I didnāt 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 donāt know if that could be done without lyrics) I donāt think itās 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.
Thatās okay I understand. I donāt 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? Iām trying to filter less when I write and share and itās been helpful so far I think. I guess something to be worried about there is whether I understand properly the scope of tutoring.
Okay cool. I think I want to do this with the MFDM post mortem for the Milton Friedman article. Iāve stalled a few times on that. Iāll revisit today and have a think about what Iām having trouble with there.
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 Iām not completely convinced in the sense that I feel like I understand some things, but itās not just obvious when I think about it that I couldnāt maximise these three factors, so I think that means Iām misunderstanding something. It feels like a fact I know but that I donāt feel, you know? Like I feel like itād be dishonest for me to convince someone why they couldnāt maximise multiple factors, because I donāt know it.
So what am I having trouble with right now? I donāt really know what the next thing to do is. Iāll 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 postās worth of notes that I didnāt share. I donāt know why. I think I had to leave for work for the day and thought Iād get back to it tomorrow but didnāt? It mightāve 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
Yup I knew that those were the factors originally being talked about. And yes I think theyāre different dimensions.
Iām read through the article more and made some notes:
So I get that you canāt add unlike terms. And, in the same way, that you canāt add things together from different dimensions; you canāt add profits, product quality, and workplace quality together.
So why canāt you maximise these things? Because they have to first be combined somehow in order to maximise them? Why? Why canāt you maximise them without combining them?
Well because maximising all three of them means maximising some combination of them. If weāre 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 weāre considering.
This is the problem from the MFDM Math article:
The article considers combining them with addition. It concludes that we canāt 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 donāt necessarily correspond to anything useful. Also, if weāre considering different combinations of different factors, multiplying them will give different units; unlike terms, so they couldnāt be ranked (to rank terms they need to be like terms.)
(Why is it that we need a useful term? Why couldnāt we seek to maximise (profit * workplace quality * product quality)? I guess it doesnāt really make sense, like what is that unit but just each thing multiplied together? But whatās 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 weāre trying to find a unit that corresponds to something we care about? Because thatās part of our goal?)
(I think that multi-dimensional units and whether they are arbitrary or not is interesting. Itās 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 Iām not sure what my immediate goal is. Iām going to change what Iām doing and brainstorm how to break this down next.
- what I didnāt understand previously
- why i thought I did understand it
- whatās going on there
- how the article relates to the problem
- any issues iām 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 thatās a good plan. Iām going to start again on this tomorrow. Iāll 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?
Feel free to post about whatever!
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You can only maximize multiple factors when a solution maximizes all of them individually. In general, you shouldnāt be trying to maximize multiple factors, and actually usually no factors because you just need to cross some breakpoints not maximize.
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 itās better, maybe not (the numbers mean nothing taken totally out of context and are not comparable to each other), but it doesnāt maximize all 3 things. It doesnāt maximize the third thing.
You can do that. But then youāre maximizing that single quantity, not each of the 3 factors. If you maximize their multiplicative product, then youāll pick the first option from my example numbers, and therefore pick less of the third factor, so you wonāt maximize the third factor.
There is also the question of why youād want to maximize that particular math formula related to the factors and not one of the infinitely many other formulas that uses the factors.
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 youāll maximize none of the individual factors, so itās quite different than maximizing individual factors.
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 weāre 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 Iām not super sure so thought Iād ask for your input.
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 youāre 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.
Right so multiplying them together like that gives us a new single thing that we can maximise. Itās 3 things combined, but how theyāre combined is important: are they combined in such a way that maximising their product maximises each factor individually? No. Okay thatās 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:
Mineās different in that itās about factors of different dimensions (no biggie). Theyāre both about combining them.
I think I donāt 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 Iāve 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 youāve combined them reflects what your goal is. Like whether multiplying them together actually works for maximising each factor individually. It doesnāt work for maximisation because there are multiple ways to maximise your score that it that donāt necessarily involve every factor being maximised.
You can maximize 1 thing. You canāt 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.
There is no way with unrestricted factors.
And thatās not the right problem/goal. You donāt need to maximize anything, let alone multiple things.
It seems like youāre trying to untangle non-CF epistemology, which canāt be done. Try thinking in terms of binary factors instead. If the only values are 1 and 0, maximization loses its appeal.