Max Tutoring Table of Contents
These descriptions were written by @JustinCEO and are the same as on YouTube. Having them all together enables searching and skimming better than having the text split on separate videos. I’ve posted them before but I forget where.
Tutoring Max #52
Max’s notes Notes | Tutorial 52 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video; discussion about tutoring.
12:00 - Max’s post “Why I Live” http://curi.us/2380-max-microblogging#18534
13:53 - People being cosmically significant versus parochial concerns.
17:20 - Sci-fi genre; taking the setting seriously.
23:08 - Sci-fi/fantasy audience overlap.
29:34 - Impacting humanity’s future.
34:02 - Popularizing something like Paths Forward; ways of making a difference; bottlenecks on getting popular other than how good something is.
38:03 - Things having broad popularity - apple pie; degrees of goodness.
41:48 - IGCs ({idea, goal, context} triples).
47:51 - Ideas as solutions and goals as problems.
53:54 - Making a big impact on humanity is wrong as a primary goal.
1:00:44 - Roark’s goal and needing clients; choice of occupations in modern society.
1:04:27 - Popularity as a goal.
1:05:59 - The media.
1:08:48 - Popularity example - viral photo of guy who looks like Justin Bieber eating a burrito sideways.
1:16:49 - Feynman receiving letters with dubious theories of gravity; catching up to existing knowledge.
1:19:25 - Expecting to make mistakes and trying to do better next time; chess.
1:23:51 - Life being important; not going with the flow; liking the journey.
1:35:15 - Bridging material to canonical material; difficulties in interacting with other people after you change.
1:40:05 - Software and epistemology overlap.
1:50:17 - Bridging gaps in perspectives.
1:53:16 - Tiredness and error rate.
2:02:53 - Trying to create something that lasts decades.
Tutoring Max #51
Max’s notes Notes | Tutorial 51 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:59 - Practicing skills while doing other things.
8:25 - Philosophy and rationality skills can be harder than people think.
12:43 - Academics’ bad use of sources.
22:36 - Type-level programming.
44:07 - Temporarily getting rid of excuses for not doing something; prioritizing philosophy.
50:32 - Fixing bad methods learned in childhood; measuring progress.
1:00:48 - Time management.
1:10:08 - Reevaluating activities in your life.
1:14:12 - Non-judgmental observation.
1:20:04 - Applying new thinking methods to your life takes time.
1:22:42 - Journaling; paying attention to how you use your time and other resources; seeing the negatives of something.
1:31:32 - Cycles of learning and using ideas.
1:36:30 - Prioritization; societal defaults; employees and CEOs.
1:45:18 - Assumptions people make for what matters in companies.
Tutoring Max #50
Max’s notes Notes | Tutorial 50 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
5:44 - Paying attention to doubts and confusion; guessing versus knowing.
11:54 - Discussion of “Thoughts on Error Messages”; writing too broadly. Thoughts on Error Messages | Posts — Max Learning FI
16:52 - Getting criticism; queue of errors.
18:41 - Math problem discussion. Curiosity – Open Discussion 2 (2019)
23:00 - Conflicts of interest; conflict resolution rules. Notes on Conflicts of Interest Scenarios (Tutoring Max 49) | Posts — Max Learning FI
26:40 - Downsides in using force to get what you want.
34:46 - Singular/objective truth; better to be a scientist than a dictator; harmony of interests.
48:09 - Project planning.
54:43 - Breaking things down too small; Goldratt.
57:00 - Considering alternative projects, why project will succeed.
1:06:54 - Making things 10% better as a bad plan.
1:09:17 - CPU improvement as example of major progress.
1:17:52 - Needing a large competitive advantage over existing players.
1:20:51 - Project planning analysis for an app.
1:32:03 - Goldratt thinking tools; focusing steps; current reality tree and future reality tree; testing claims for a project plan.
1:38:34 - Reminder tools and using what you’ve learned.
1:40:57 - Keeping topic sentences in mind while writing.
1:47:13 - Being able to judge outcomes.
1:55:49 - Nginx problem.
Tutoring Max #49 - Conflicts of Interest Discussion
Conflicts of interest discussion: http://curi.us/2380-max-microblogging#18320
Max’s Notes: Notes on Conflicts of Interest Scenarios (Tutoring Max 49) | Posts — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:16 - Beginning of conflicts of interest discussion.
7:59 - What if two people want the same job?
43:35 - Max finds it easier to ask an investigative question compared to a question from a certain perspective.
1:36:23 - Thinking about tough cases, nightmare scenarios in connection with conflicts of interest.
1:39:13 - Multiple candidates running in the same election.
1:43:24 - People being biased and wanting to switch systems based on that; people imagining themselves as the dictator.
1:46:49 - Problem with Flux: not addressing the issue of elites.
Tutoring Max #48
Max’s notes. Notes | Tutorial 48 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:13 - Spaced repetition; maintaining skills.
6:48 - Prioritizing philosophy versus other things.
9:43 - Treating philosophy as urgent.
12:28 - Getting things done in the morning.
14:52 - Going through days intentionally.
18:48 - Reading Atlas Shrugged.
23:30 - Being afraid of what greatness involves.
26:29 - Wanting the easy life.
30:49 - Noticing instances where extra skill would have been useful.
34:10 - Overbooking schedules; having time-flexible projects.
40:10 - Underestimating project duration; 80/20 rule.
44:24 - Buffers & wasting time; eating the overhead; flexible personal projects.
49:58 - People being bad at their jobs; project managers.
53:28 - Importance of not being overbooked; size of buffer.
58:35 - Leading discussions: objective part versus social part; making trees; decisive issues.
1:07:10 - Conflict clouds, evaporating clouds, double cruxes.
1:09:53 - Excessive humility as a source of problems.
1:14:49 - @patio11 tweet regarding ambition. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1311754520217546752?s=20
1:18:49 - What the world is like (in terms of jobs, career paths) and people not telling you the facts; getting work.
1:24:30 - Max’s “The Goal of A Political Party” essay; grammar and writing criticism. What is the goal of a political party? | Posts — Max Learning FI
1:35:45 - Tools for remembering concepts: writing, summaries, bullet points, checklists.
1:42:20 - Goals for a political party; affecting the system in a big way.
1:48:56 - Bullet point writing method.
1:54:07 - Writing an outline first.
Tutoring Max #47
Max’s notes Notes | Tutorial 47 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 Beginning of video; going through Max’s thoughts on Elliot’s essay Debates and Impasse Chains · Elliot Temple
6:28 - Using several partial explanations to communicate a concept.
8:34 - Why partial explanations are not necessarily compromises.
11:24 - Incremental learning; thinking about explaining things to a 5-year-old.
13:35 - Biased analogies.
15:25 - Teaching math correctly from the beginning; math facts versus history facts.
21:54 - Not wanting to think about the relevance of other fields.
25:03 - Gavin impasse chain discussion tree. https://files.fish.xk.io/2020-10-09-gavin-impasse-chain.pdf Original discussion Curiosity – Project Planning Discussion
30:19 - People not knowing prepositions.
35:38 - Max’s perspective on how most people would view the conversation with Gavin.
38:09 - People not liking it when Elliot’s ideas are applied to them.
42:16 - Discussions for mutual benefit; value of familiarity with a variety of perspectives.
48:54 - People continuing to debate rather than addressing discussion problems.
57:09 - How Gavin could have resolved an impasse.
1:05:32 - Gavin misinterpreting a narrow statement broadly.
1:08:30 - Definition of “impasse”; alternative terminology.
1:15:06 - Resolving impasses in general.
1:18:16 - Importance of discussion methodology as a topic.
1:20:15 - Dialogue about the Dart programming language.
1:27:34 - Discussion about Max teaching someone about blockchain.
1:41:47 - People not understanding stuff; withholding answers.
1:44:20 - Origins of money.
1:50:54 - Learning repeatable methods versus specific things.
1:57:03 - Having some trust in the learner.
1:59:08 - Going too fast for your student.
Tutoring Max #46
The discussion written in the video is posted at Curiosity – Max Microblogging
Max’s notes: Notes | Tutorial 46 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video; discussion tree for discussion at Curiosity – Max Microblogging
6:08 - Reading trashy romance novels; alternative things to read that are also easy.
11:10 - PUA knowledge as relevant to understanding romance novels.
14:14 - The fanfic-level quality of even big name romance authors.
19:39 - Approach to discussion going forward.
20:30 - Deficiencies with evolutionary psychology as a field.
31:06 - Approaches to back-and-forth discussions.
36:07 - Keeping a tree up to date as a discussion aid.
39:42 - Replying once as a social behavior; comparison to double-texting.
45:39 - Integrating ideas; lack of intellectual understanding.
56:02 - Making conversations work - doing short chunks.
1:01:56 - People wanting to “win” in discussions sometimes; being okay with losing.
1:04:45 - Respect from authority at a distance.
1:06:04 - Chess handicapping.
1:08:07 - Accepting the learner role; social status issues causing problems in discussion.
1:12:33 - People not wanting credit for revealing errors.
1:15:56 - Conversational track records; people not expecting knowledge with reach.
1:23:18 - Hostility to asymmetric discussion roles.
1:25:04 - Being selective about what you include in a discussion tree.
1:29:14 - Choosing to go in depth on a particular point in a discussion.
1:31:08 - Hostility to treating a conversation as a project worthy of planning and consideration.
1:35:19 - People lying about their openness to criticism.
1:39:37 - Looking at a discussion with Gavin Palmer that reached an impasse. http://curi.us/2321-project-planning-discussion#16695
1:50:59 - Debates and Impasse Chains article. Debates and Impasse Chains · Elliot Temple
1:56:55 - Lack of ideas in field of solving discussion problems.
Tutoring Max #45
The discussion written in the video is posted at Curiosity – Max Microblogging
Max’s notes: Notes | Tutorial 45 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:17 - Speedrunning & mastery.
6:50 - Reading; intentionally doing small chunks.
12:02 - Flow state versus wasting the day away unproductively; getting perspective on your life.
17:30 - Trying meditation.
23:54 - Elliot’s old emotions essay. Fallible Ideas – Emotions
28:39 - Not being too reliant on emotions as motivation.
33:31 - Max reads/reacts to some thoughts Elliot wrote on willpower & following your intuition.
41:28 - Goals, bottlenecks, mental energy.
49:53 - Blaming things on PMS.
54:42 - Giving direct answers to questions.
1:07:05 - Max gives some thoughts related to the genes discussion.
1:31:47 - Looking at a video linked in the genes discussion. Why do women have breasts? - YouTube
1:44:35 - Some comments related to genes discussion.
1:50:00 - Big picture comments on discussion.
Tutoring Max #44 - Debate About Genes and Their Influence Over the Mind
The discussion written in the video is posted at Curiosity – Max Microblogging
Max’s notes: Notes | Tutorial 44 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
This video had lots of writing so it is somewhat quiet for much of the first hour.
0:00 - Beginning of video; progress since last time.
1:11 - Discussion of post-mortem by LessWrong guy regarding lack of math skill Numeracy neglect - A personal postmortem - LessWrong
9:30 - Using discussion to learn about a topic; text debate begins.
30:05 - Writing smaller chunks; labeling chunks as important.
53:55 - Max’s discussion tree.
55:38 - Multi-section replies; discussion mistakes; having a main point.
59:00 - Chats versus discussions; placement of important points.
1:05:36 - People not knowing how their discussions are organized.
1:09:07 - Extent of disagreements not being quite real to people.
1:13:21 - People thinking that it is unrealistic to try to think seriously; dishonesty.
1:15:38 - People being unwilling to read books.
1:32:05 - Making trees as you go along as a discussion tool.
1:33:18 - Intuitively keeping track of discussion trees.
1:37:42 - Learning to change ideas that you picked up in early childhood.
1:41:43 - Lack of skill at managing discussion complexity.
1:43:30 - Resistance against going depth-first in a discussion.
1:46:59 - Lacking the skillset to have a debate but still thinking you’re right.
1:49:13 - Verbal jousting.
1:57:07 - People wanting to win instead of be the learner.
Tutoring Max #43
Max’s notes Notes | Tutorial 43 (goals) | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video; speedrunning.
4:45 - Taking time off.
6:41 - Making money; inflation & savings.
10:25 - Index funds; variance; safe withdrawal rates.
14:41 - Having lots more people; overpopulation concerns.
18:22 - Making money off things you want to do.
19:47 - Recruiting people to do philosophy; number of good people.
23:54 - People with potential.
29:30 - Wanting to save the world versus the Objectivist perspective; Atlas Shrugged.
33:47 - Need for philosophical education.
37:46 - Interfacing with existing institutions.
40:27 - Breakthroughs and the need for a high quality plan.
43:52 - Political activists shouldn’t be the ruling class.
46:03 - Being right doesn’t mean people will listen; getting corrupted.
50:01 - Plans; Silicon Valley; making a better world.
55:29 - Making educational material; Atlas Shrugged moving the needle.
59:43 - Rand’s followers not being very good.
1:00:39 - Fixing teeth; questionable science behind some dental procedures.
1:02:57 - Pandering to people who judge you based on superficial characteristics.
1:07:26 - Looking into downsides of some medical technology.
1:12:16 - Optimizing for helping the best people.
1:15:59 - Popper’s thinking quality versus Rand’s.
1:18:41 - What to read.
1:23:09 - Goldratt’s followers; comments on TCS.
1:26:24 - People being unable to tell the difference between good books like Goldratt’s The Goal and other books. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - 30th Anniversary Edition: Goldratt, Eliyahu M.: 9780884271956: Amazon.com: Books
1:28:59 - Difficulty applying ideas in The Goal.
1:32:32 - Philosophy areas that need work.
1:34:37 - Status quo will defend itself from threats.
1:36:33 - Things that might change society and help progress.
1:40:15 - Western civilization under attack.
1:44:02 - Playing by the rules; people in power cheating.
1:46:01 - Being a public intellectual; Jordan Peterson & the left.
1:50:01 - Getting dismissed as a crank; David Deutsch limiting what he says in public; global warming.
1:56:30 - Changing the world is hard.
Tutoring Max #42
Max’s Learning Report Learning Report: 2020, week 38 | Learning Reports — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:52 - Discussion about LessWrong/getting banned.
6:58 - LessWrong’s sexual assault problem.
8:22 - Effective Altruism; relying on experts.
13:01 - People getting offended when your criticism has a big impact.
14:45 - Rates of progress in learning existing knowledge versus pioneering activities.
17:19 - YouTuber Tom Scott; the Italian Attack in preferential voting systems.
22:51 - Thinking about goals.
27:14 - More on Effective Altruism, figuring out what to donate to.
32:24 - Alimony should be based on consumption, not business holdings.
36:02 - Speedrunning; mastering something.
40:08 - Autopiloting while doing repetitive things.
43:16 - Duet example.
49:30 - Debugging example.
51:37 - More speedrunning/games.
59:45 - patio11 tweet about people tolerating weird interests until those interests make others successful.
1:06:27 - 
Overreaching discussion begins.
1:09:28 - The goal-dependent nature of what counts as an error.
1:11:56 - Designing an airplane example.
1:14:16 - Discussions where someone makes more errors than they are resolving.
1:19:00 - Resistance to answering to other people; asking simple questions.
1:24:16 - Isolating being tilted; minimal test cases.
1:30:04 - Not giving enough considering to prerequisites or project planning.
1:33:10 - Not having a track record of doing anything similar to what you’re trying to do.
1:38:01 - Brainstorming about similarities between grammar learning project and past projects.
1:42:25 - Only having a small number of ways you’re breaking new ground in a project; troubleshooting errors.
1:43:45 - Playing small games for mastery.
1:45:26 - Running into limits of a game.
1:51:11 - People getting mad when asked for project plan.
1:52:55 - Children getting pushed into overreaching.
1:56:13 - Flexible projects.
1:59:41 - Plan for next time.
Tutoring Max #41
Max’s notes. Notes | Tutorial 41 | Tutorial Notes — Max Learning FI
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:27 - “Hello, and welcome to FI” writing by Max.
5:25 - Discussion of “List of Fallible Ideas Evaders” - Curiosity – Fallible Ideas Post-Mortems
10:18 - People objecting to having email addresses public.
15:39 - Elliot’s alleged “history of threats”; LessWrong ban.
26:38 - Moderation cultures at different forums; Hacker News; Reddit; LessWrong.
32:34 - Communicating what you’re in for when you join FI; resources for new members.
35:35 - Detailed comments on “Hello, and welcome to FI”; FI not being like other forums.
37:53 - Topic changes on FI compared to other forums.
42:13 - Offending people by pointing out that they’re lying.
43:35 - Assuming you know you can do stuff before you know what it is.
47:02 - Confronting things about yourself (Max).
48:28 - FI standards; nature doesn’t grade on a curve.
52:03 - People wanting to discuss sophisticated topics.
54:11 - People not wanting to label things honestly or make direct requests.
58:33 - How various people came to FI.
1:04:18 - Current FI discussion topics; people working on long-term projects.
1:11:48 - More comments on “Hello, and welcome to FI”.
1:15:43 - People hiding when they’re mad before leaving FI.
1:20:40 - Trying to address people finding FI mean; inferential distance.
1:27:13 - Books to read. Learning from Great Books · Elliot Temple
1:30:26 - Method of discussion being more important than topic.
1:34:16 - Exploratory learning.
1:45:39 - Looking at potential versus accomplishments; David Deutsch & Elliot’s interaction.
1:48:23 - How Elliot engaged with TCS community early on.
1:50:38 - How to approach future sessions.
1:53:33 - How to improve writing.
1:56:21 - People avoiding debating Elliot; having a discussion that is trying to get to a conclusion.
Tutoring Max #40
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:01 - Procrastination discussion.
3:54 - Wanting to reread Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking book (Max); remembering books and having discussions. Amazon.com: Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking eBook : Carr, Allen: Kindle Store.
6:46 - Guided versus self-directed learning; thinking about things yourself before reading answers.
10:02 - Upsides and downsides of self-directed versus guided learning.
13:36 - Keyboard discussion.
15:18 - Speedrunning discussion.
28:46 - Using programming to help speedrunning.
42:23 - Book reading strategies and standards.
46:03 - Rereading books; detailed analyses of shows/films.
51:37 - Why kids rewatch things so much.
53:34 - Confusing audiobook reading of Fabric of reality; text-to-speech versus audiobooks.
57:06 - People not wanting to listen to stuff because they don’t like someone’s voice; vocal fry.
59:40 - People putting effort into how they sound.
1:02:42 - Whether epistemology and evolution are unified.
1:07:08 - Further development of epistemology as a prerequisite for Artificial General Intelligence.
1:08:22 - Whether particular evolutionary algorithms actually do evolution.
1:12:12 - Figuring out what counts as an evolutionary algorithm.
1:14:48 - Things having behavior that the designers didn’t intend.
1:16:47 - Figuring out what creates knowledge - example with thing that digs for treasure chests.
1:18:30 - People being confused about GPT-3; attributing complex personalities pets.
1:22:30 - Focusing on learning the basics; confusion about qualia.
1:24:54 - Light bending through water.
1:27:24 - Discussion about meta discussion; anti-meta people lacking a consistent definition of meta.
1:30:36 - People wanting unwritten rules to limit discussion topics.
1:32:31 - Siloing discussion & anti-meta rules; restrictions on who you can use as an example.
1:36:26 - Anti-meta rules as vague rules to hide social norms under.
1:37:55 - Finding new universalities; breakpoints.
1:41:07 - Writing topics for next time.
1:46:42 - Test driven development.
Tutoring Max #39 - More on Paths Forward
More on Paths Forward, especially for the first hour. http://fallibleideas.com/paths-forward
0:00 - Beginning of video; Paths forwards methods.
1:52 - Asking people if they will propose an alternative method; concrete Paths Forward methods.
5:22 - “Using Intellectual Process to Combat Bias” discussion. Using Intellectual Processes to Combat Bias · Elliot Temple
8:13 - Burdens on your integrity; Paths Forward core concepts vs. implementation.
11:25 - Other people with a debate policy.
15:56 - Considering what it would take for a reasonable third party to trust your objectivity.
18:36 - Paths Forward as an alternative to the social status hierarchy.
20:58 - Social climbers feeling threatened.
23:37 - Betting your career on Karl Popper being wrong.
26:25 - People denying Elliot’s connection to David Deutsch.
28:24 - People being impressed by others from a distance; having your own life.
31:48 - Proxies, bridging arguments.
34:02 - Dealing with well-known arguments.
35:51 - Reading until the first important error.
38:32 - How people might respond to idea of reading to first error.
41:01 - Lack of good literature as evidence; damning large things for small reasons.
43:21 - Not skipping evidence; social words.
46:28 - “Would you be surprised to be wrong about this?”; labeling claims.
48:28 - Bridging arguments, modularity, sample applications.
57:51 - Making it easy for your errors to get corrected.
1:00:06 - Interactive & customized discussion.
1:04:25 - Having a representative of a school of ideas; Ayn Rand Institute’s shortcomings as advocates.
1:09:09 - Paths Forwards resources; unpublished Elliot material; lack of feedback.
1:16:49 - SubscribeStar discussion.
1:19:16 - Having a debate policy.
1:20:53 - Max’s “SI [Solomonoff Induction] murders people. a lot” post & talking to Less Wrong (LW) people about AGI. https://groups.google.com/g/fallible-ideas/c/Z-6WxmN85O4/m/kjZVHILlAgAJ
1:27:47 - Breakpoints & inability to convert some things into each other.
1:30:09 - Differences between number sets; college rankings article. The Trouble with College Rankings | The New Yorker
1:34:13 - More on SI/AGI/Max SI post.
1:44:34 - Difficulty of getting people to carefully engage with your material & take responsibility for trying to understand you.
1:50:11 - LW versus Fallible Ideas attitude to addressing criticism; endorsing other people’s work.
1:53:45 - Discussion breaking down because of blocking problem-solving at the meta level.
1:56:32 - Problem avoidance attitude.
Tutoring Max #38 – Paths Forward
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:15 - What problems is Paths Forward trying to solve?
4:35 - If I’m right and your wrong, how are you going to find out and change your mind?; people being overwhelmed by risky bets.
6:59 - People claiming that your ideas just aren’t high on the list of their ideas to study.
12:26 - People’s failure to say what it would take to change their mind about their priorities.
14:26 - People hiding information about their views.
15:35 - How do we correct our errors? Two broad categories of solutions; destroying one category with policies.
17:32 - Limiting ideas shared for criticism due to limited time, energy, and need for privacy.
19:00 - The easy case: sharing impersonal ideas related to career or major hobby; public intellectuals; not making claims about stuff you don’t have paths forward about.
23:11 - People forming opinions on controversial issues with no record and not being open to discussion.
26:59 - Dual purpose of writing" enabling people to refute your mistakes or correct their mistakes.
28:06 - People not wanting to stick their neck out and not having read the literature on their own side.
32:07 - People should exclude arguments they know are bad when pointing to a body of literature.
34:50 - The meaning of contributing to human knowledge and the unreasonableness of bringing up claims not entered into human knowledge.
38:59 - Taking responsibility for ideas versus deferring to experts.
43:42 - People who claim that they’re just amateurs and shouldn’t have to take responsibility for what they claim.
46:55 - People not putting appropriate disclaimers on their non-serious stuff; wanting to get credit when they get lucky.
50:08 - Expectations for rationality varying by forum; discussion of different online communities.
56:21 - Value of having a shared canon of material that’s been read by many members of the community.
1:00:30 - Lack of places where there is a default of taking responsibility for their ideas.
1:02:53 - If an idea hasn’t been entered into human knowledge, you shouldn’t assume it is correct.
1:04:11 - Making some effort to share your idea.
1:09:11 - Not getting to rationally reject something on the basis of criticisms you have not entered into human knowledge; busyness.
1:11:48 - How to address the idea that giving each idea due process would take too long (Max’s answer - focus).
1:14:19 - Why focus is not enough; danger of throwing out ideas/dismissing people without argument or paths forward.
1:17:29 - Consolidating discussions; Elliot’s debate policy.
1:20:45 - Debate policy as a time-saver.
1:23:46 - Having a bunch of ideas written down as a time-saver; asking for specific citations.
1:27:11 - Debating how to proceed with literature; libraries of criticism.
1:30:08 - Key point: Ideas that refute a category of ideas.
1:37:29 - Elliot serving as an index of written material due to it being hard to find things.
1:38:49 - Using resources like fans to handle inquiries; having multiple layers of proxies.
1:42:41 - Bridging arguments.
1:47:46 - Asking if any written refutations of a book exist.
1:49:35 - People wrongly feeling safe by holding the mainstream view.
1:51:31 - Getting referred to a book being an opportunity to 1) learn something or 2) refute something.
1:54:47 - Taking responsibility for the literature you cite.
1:56:43 - People having trouble resolving a single idea.
1:58:03 - Session wrap-up.
Tutoring Max #37
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:04 - Importance of having good ways to organize discussions over time when dealing with time limitations.
3:14 - LessWrong related discussion.
17:39 - More on having discussions over time.
22:05 - Improving reading habits; the effort-efficiency of listening to audiobooks.
25:53 - Perfectionism and setting your standards too high; resilient skills.
29:44 - Discussing Bitcoin; problems with Bitcoin.
33:36 - The problematic basis for Bitcoin’s valuation; comparison to Apple.
40:03 - Tutoring session logistics and plans.
46:52 - Value of discussion in figuring out problems.
50:02 - People’s negative attitude to short replies.
52:44 - Beginning of discussion on tutorials themselves - what’s worked well, less well, etc.
55:55 - Three stages of learning; tutorials as demonstrations of how one can learn things.
1:01:32 - Doing trees for debates in a Yes/No way.
1:05:35 - Emotional issues, motivation.
1:08:34 - Usefulness of thinking about different resources like mental energy, physical energy etc.
1:10:57 - Doing check-ins throughout the day to align your actions with your explicit goals.
1:12:47 - Giving yourself permission to abort harder tasks.
1:20:33 - Value of tutorials for rapid progress.
1:23:16 - The potentially destabilizing consequences of learning new things for other parts of your life.
1:24:48 - Writing things down before you change too much; records of Elliot’s early stuff.
1:34:00 - Projects for upcoming sessions.
1:39:25 - Dealing with pressure; criticism of “fun criterion”.
1:42:44 - Difficulty of alternative lifestyles.
1:45:10 - People’s judgment about what’s fun being determined by convention; misleading nature of “fun criterion”.
1:51:39 - Plan for next session: Paths Forward; expectations for future tutorial scheduling.
1:56:26 - Learning about Objectivism.
Tutoring Max #36
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:29 - Looking at Max’s big idea tree on Solomonoff Induction; getting value out of post-mortems.
5:02 - Thinking about goals in writing replies (in the context of some of Max’s replies to AnneB).
14:49 - People claiming they’ll discuss problems before quitting the FI community and then not following up.
20:08 - The impossibility of actually knowing the size of a “small” error until you come up with a solution.
31:27 - Jumping into detail versus starting with a higher level overview.
33:42 - Max talks about his attempt to try to bridge the gap between two systems; Elliot discusses why that can be hard at 34:57.
39:04 - Understanding people’s systems and figuring out if there’s a “native way” to do what you want to do at 39:04; Goldratt’s thoughts on presentations at 40:40.
43:50 - Discussion regarding Richard Ngo’s thoughts on democracy; discussions of some problems with LessWrong.
57:44 - Detailed discussion of article by Ngo begins; Max tries to write a summary from memory at 59:24 until 1:05:04.
1:06:29 - Discussion of some details of liquid democracy in light of Ngo article - delegation, public funding etc.
1:14:49 - Max’s goals for a reply to Ngo article.
1:21:18 - Difficulty finding people to talk to who have considered issues in detail and are patient; narrowing down the positions someone might have with questions at 1:22:31.
1:25:21 - Coming up with a plan for achieving Max’s goals for a reply to Ngo article; information needed for deciding to take various actions at 1:28:30.
1:30:22 - Considering what actions are worth taking independent of someone else’s interaction with you; multi-purpose actions versus parochial posts at 1:33:57.
1:35:24 - Filtering people out by asking if they’ll claim to be important, serious, and interested in the discussion.
1:36:08 - Max’s story of an unpleasant interaction on Twitter with an academic; weight-of-the-evidence views and judging books at 1:37:28.
1:39:58 - Looking at previous discussions you’ve had that worked; figuring out the “minimum viable product”.
1:43:13 - Goals for discussion differing; short-term model versus FI model of building up an archive over time in an organized way with canonical material.
1:45:29 - Splintered public discussion with everyone talking about their own pet ideas versus focusing on fewer ideas.
1:47:31 - Value of interactive discussions versus books.
1:48:26 - Discussion of message from friend about The Beginning of Infinity.
1:51:07 - Discussion of writing down some questions down as you go when reading something; people intending to read a book twice and then failing; importance of some types of questions at 1:53:19.
1:58:29 - Writing down every major problem.
Tutoring Max #35
0:00 - Progress since last time.
3:15 - Max and Elliot’s Social dynamics checklists.
10:47 - Breaking rules and social status.
22:34 - Going through Elliot’s checklist.
25:43 - Congruence.
28:39 - Popularity.
29:56 - Reactivity.
31:28 - Compliance; Elon Musk example; hidden effort; pop star at a concert not counting as work.
40:10 - Attacks on value.
45:54 - Analyzing social dynamics in detail seeming mean; people not wanting responsibility for their autopiloted behaviors at 48:01.
49:52 - Being forgiving of mistakes when trying to improve.
1:00:35 - Dishonestly raising challenges to someone and then not replying if they pass the challenge.
1:12:08 - LessWrong people not engaging with what Elliot was saying.
1:18:17 - What the consequences would be if a major line of argument for evolution got refuted; how to look at multiple arguments for evolutionary theory at 1:22:32.
1:25:33 - Eliezer Yudkowsky being a fan of many-worlds interpretation.
1:33:27 - LessWrong poster Donald Hobson’s unproductive approach to trying to continue the conversation.
1:45:06 - Trying to fix someone without pointing out an error; supposed limits of Goldratt’s chain metaphor; people thinking other people can’t disagree with them.
1:53:31 - curi draws a diagram and discusses chains, conjunctions, disjunctions, and bottlenecks.
Tutoring Max #34
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:23 - Looking at some writing of Max’s on a technical paper related to Bitcoin.
1:58 - Goal of writing, how this project fits in with other goals.
11:58 - Using more accurate words when paraphrasing.
17:57 - Discussion of fungibility and Bitcoin.
25:23 - Distributed consensus.
47:05 - Max’s perspective on the usefulness of the writing exercise; Elliot talks about how his approach to writing would be different at 52:44.
58:16 - Looking at Kieren discussion as example of approach where parties each ask and answer a question.
1:03:04 - Less Wrong social analysis on TAG replies.
1:08:25 - Things to keep in mind when doing social analysis.
1:17:03 - Neediness; acting above someone.
1:20:49 - Looking at the word “even” in a LessWrong reply.
1:23:39 - Typos signifying low effort.
1:26:46 - Moving to johnswentworth replies.
1:35:23 - Elliot explains why he mispredicted what would happen in the discussion; lying to soften criticism, encourage people; looking at comment history at 1:39:08.
1:46:35 - Goldratt discussion.
1:54:45 - Social analysis checklist on johnswentworth.
1:59:53 - Elliot summarizes Less Wrong replies he got.
Tutoring Max #33
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:05 - Progress since last time.
3:30 - Looking at more LessWrong discussion.
13:26 - Paraphrasing main points to make nicer discussion trees.
27:44 - The Critical Rationalist definition of rationality as being about methods of thinking and error correction.
35:05 - Making simple messages that communicate successfully and then working your way up.
41:35 - Discussion of Max’s question barrage.
46:17 - Brainstorming a reply; not skipping steps at 49:07.
55:51 - Brainstorming different positions people have on assumptions and the inability to justify all your assumptions.
58:52 - Allegedly obvious bases for justification such as “I think, therefore I am”.
1:02:53 - Figuring out disagreements with a conversation partner.
1:12:02 - Critical Rationalism’s approach to dealing with assumptions.
1:18:25 - Binary/deterministic ideas versus probabilistic ideas.
1:30:19 - Turing completeness.
1:40:35 - Encoding ideas; LessWrong epistemology and the Oracle in Fabric of Reality.
1:46:26 - Lack of LessWrong representatives who will debate and resolve issues.
1:49:08 - Talking about advanced issues and skipping steps; reducing candidates for source of error at 1:51:37.
Tutoring Max #32
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:38 - Progress since last time.
6:40 - Going through a Less Wrong discussion between Max, MakoYass and TAG and making a tree.
19:56 - Tagging discussions in trees.
31:15 - Labeling when you are replying with thoughts on the general topic rather than replying to a specific point.
42:49 - Max uses a complicated example; figuring out the minimum features an example needs at 45:33.
48:15 - Grammar analysis of a Max sentence in the discussion.
54:00 - Mastering things at a slow rate first and then speeding up; typing practice; learning juggling.
59:30 - LessWrong’s broken double-quoting and bad copy-pasting.
1:02:30 - Attitude issues affecting LessWrong discussion.
1:10:48 - Trying to sort out a mess of a discussion versus keeping the conversation under the control in the first place; psychological issues and lack of patience affecting conversations.
1:21:45 - Max and TAG talking past each other and using “relevant” to refer to different things; people jumping back to the original topic of a discussion rather than resolving a sub-tree at 1:30:48.
1:34:19 - Conversation would be difficult to fix for Elliot even understanding what the problem was (further clarification on this point at 1:39:46).
1:35:42 - Making an idea tree to keep track of discussions.
1:41:01 - People not wanting to clear up misunderstandings enough.
1:55:15 - “Would I say this to an 8-year-old, who I liked, who was curious about this stuff?” as a question to ask before you write a response to someone.
Tutoring Max #31
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:18 - Progress since last time.
4:33 - Continuing Analyzing Lies Ray Scott Percival (RSP) analysis.
10:18 - RSP’s unclear use of “safe space”.
12:39 - RSP bringing up lightsabers; the significance of RSP discussing “being given” a lightsaber at 15:48.
21:34 - RSP throwing arguments at people; RSP’s attitude towards having arguments as being like drinking or partying.
24:06 - What philosophers actually are in our society versus what they should be.
31:39 - RSP thinking fighting is fun when you’re winning; the common attitude of not wanting a challenge using the gaming industry at an example.
41:33 - Speedrunners showing how easy console games actually are; finding movies hard to watch.
44:49 - Judging communities by whether they discover any other good ideas or are just one-hit wonders.
57:31 - Taking a look at Elliot’s email re: RSP from 2017.
1:00:44 - RSP exaggerating how much some scientists value Popper; comparison to Deutsch’s advocacy of Popper; second pass at 1:09:37; third pass at 1:11:02.
1:13:26 - Going through Elliot’s analysis of Lulie Tanett (LT).
1:17:39 - LT’s complicated writing hiding a lack of argument; LT having the tone of a wise person giving a lecture; comparison to a person who knows he is clueless and writes accordingly.
1:23:31 - LT misusing the argument from The Beginning of Infinity that problems are soluble.
1:27:21 - LT hinting that she is David Deutsch’s representative and misrepresenting how good the situation is behind the scenes.
1:31:37 - Elliot sums up’s LT’s post.
1:35:49 - Grammar stuff - relative adverbs.
1:38:57 - Less Wrong thread.
1:44:07 - Discussion of Max writing practice piece “Medical Diagnoses and Arguments of Support.”
1:55:51 - Summary comments about piece from Elliot.
Tutoring Max #30
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:28 - Progress since last time.
2:15 - Analyzing the Ray Scott Percival (RSP) reply in Analyzing Lies discussion.
9:43 - Determining when someone should have known better; social climber subcultures; Critical Cafe forum problems.
15:31 - Facebook being terrible.
24:04 - RSP bragging about being extroverted; bragging as relative social status elevation; RSP’s fake concession at 25:39.
30:46 - RSP’s book “The Myth of the Closed Mind” and RSP’s close-mindedness.
36:55 - RSP’s pro-fighting attitude.
40:49 - Being able to have a discussion and think you won.
48:02 - RSP’s apparent skepticism.
50:31 - The economic calculation debate and the influence on Marxism.
55:26 - RSP going off topic.
1:07:05 - RSP’s metaphorical violence and bad attitude towards discussion.
1:26:00 - David Deutsch’s idea of reach.
1:31:55 - Next focus and time remaining on intensive tutoring.
1:34:19 - Schedule management and prioritizing.
1:39:56 - Avoiding firefighting mode; showing other people your plan.
1:44:47 - The importance of a reading book habit; Heinlein books at 1:49:23.
1:53:44 - Debate trees; multi-person debates being harder to organize and more chaotic.
Tutoring Max #29
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:03 - Picking up Analyzing Lies Lulie Tanett (LT) analysis from last time.
2:19 - Making a try at understanding something yourself first before looking at other people’s answers for comparison.
3:52 - Summing up analysis so far.
6:58 - “social status or bureaucracy” LT quote: false dichotomies; how does bureaucracy persuade people? at 8:08; appealing to social status/bureaucracy at 9:!3.
14:04 - “apparent premise” analysis; academia having flaws at 16:07; LT setting herself up as an impartial judge at 17:38; fairness of LT’s characterization of Birner at 19:03; what Birner’s actually responding to at 24:56.
27:33 - Difficulty of tracking down papers without university academic paper access.
30:15 - LT claiming building intellectual communities is easy; LT cheerleading for forum at 33:07.
34:28 - LT claiming you don’t need to be an academic to engage with academia; story about rich self-trained philosopher guy hiring academics; LT’s use of the idea that problems are soluble at 37:48; LT reframing the debate & dangers of social networking at 39:46.
40:54 - Advantage more consistent/evil people have - Ayn Rand quote re: compromise.
48:14 - Institutional academia versus academia.
52:21 - Exuberant promoter/social type; academic social culture at 54:50; extrovert versus introvert at 56:53.
1:00:28 - LT focusing on superficial traits compared to Birner focusing on core traits.
1:02:18 - LT quote re: not taking clash of ideas seriously; possible meaning of not taking clash seriously at 1:04:24.
1:07:00 - Feynman story about math textbooks.
1:09:59 - Discerning the meaning of LT statement “But truth is connected”; two interpretations at 1:14:04.
1:20:02 - Where is David Deutsch writing about Critical Rationalism?; LT moving the goalposts at 1:23:23.
1:23:52 - People opposing the Beginning of Infinity (BOI) worldview after reading and liking it; global warming “skepticism.”; CO2 not directly trapping meaningful heat at 1:26:42; Easter Island story and alternative to traditional narrative at 1:29:52.
1:32:17 - Raising standards causing lack of any production.
1:33:45 - Many people not liking BOI; LT’s claims regarding craving for Popper/CR/BOI type ideas at 1:35:57.
1:39:14 - Hostility to Rand.
1:41:58 - LT’s claims re: people turning to Popper to understand various issues.
1:44:26 - Claiming you’re doing well if you’re not; SENS example.
1:47:33 - LT quote re: “very fertile ground”.
1:51:50 - People getting “interested” in ideas and not taking them very far versus people taking seriously stuff in e.g. academia.
1:54:24 - LT’s social dynamics.
Tutoring Max #28
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:14 - Progress since last time; Analyzing Lies Birner quote discussion.
14:32 - Using trees versus using paraphrasing.
28:48 - Moving on to Lulie Tanett (LT) quote; “spirit” of the post.
37:16 - Characterizing something as a premise; pretending you’re revealing something that’s already been explicitly stated.
42:42 - Evaluating whether two of LT’s statements contradict.
48:47 - LT ignoring Birner’s argument.
55:05 - Analyzing “there’s always a way of explaining an idea that isn’t off-putting; it’s not fundamentally the case that people dislike criticism.”
1:22:45 - Analyzing "(What they dislike is something more like: being trapped; being called bad; having problems that destabilise/overwhelm; etc; disliking criticism.
1:34:57 - Going through life “ironically”; sarcasm.
1:39:28 - LT’s position on criticism and the Analyzing Lies analysis.
1:44:48 - Possibility of unbounded progress; social networking versus unbounded progress.
1:50:26 - Multi-pass method.
2:00:53 - Response to chat comment.
Tutoring Max #27
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:11 - Progress since last time.
5:44 - The name critical rationalism.
10:00 - Tutoring session logistics & beginning of writing session criticism.
17:38 - Risks of using a timer.
20:37 - Writing so that your reader doesn’t have to double back.
23:57 - People having different goals for their reading other than learning, such as signaling tribe membership.
31:16 - Taking account of flow when deciding how much to edit.
46:13 - People’s different attitudes towards discovering new stuff versus learning stuff that’s already known.
51:46 - Moving on to Analyzing Lies material.
1:03:55 - Self-analyzing the quality of your own points.
1:26:26 - Boundary between Critical Rationalism and Elliot’s ideas.
1:28:20 - Objectivist view on personality types; Atlas Shrugged quote.
1:37:26 - Analyzing song lyrics.
1:40:24 - Autodidactic learning; anti-book-learning attitude.
1:43:29 - Department of Justice deciding that Yale discriminating against whites and Asians; bad thinking in the world.
Tutoring Max #26
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:14 - Progress since last time; attempting to explain simple things writing examples (some examples: “Why shouldn’t you look at the sun?” and “What is swimming?”).
3:32 - Importance of considering audience; no perfect way to write.
38:43 - Importance of identifying with the problem situation for figuring out what details to include.
42:35 - Paragraph breaks as a means of providing organization.
55:54 - curi does some of Max’s writing prompts for contrast; discussion and comparison starting at 1:06:35.
1:09:24 - Writing like how people talk; point of simple writing exercise; lacking clear goals.
1:12:56 - Max and curi write about how to use a microwave; discussion at 1:15:57.
1:18:44 - Max and curi do a brainstorming session about how to prepare dinner after a microwave breaks.
1:23:55 - Max and curi brainstorm about brainstorming topics.
1:29:28 - Max and curi brainstorm about getting a date with a stripper; discussion at 1:36:01.
1:40:48 - Breaking up a question into parts; standard dating advice for normal girls having limited utility for strippers.
1:43:12 - Max and curi brainstorm about budgeting; discussion at 1:50:22.
Tutoring Max #25
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:36 - Progress since last time; analyzing writing example about why pots get empty when you boil water.
22:20 - Writing consistency; having a purpose or goal; brainstorming.
26:55 - Communicating an approximation.
44:37 - Analyzing writing example about why mirrors show an image of yourself.
51:37 - Writing session: explaining division.
1:26:41 - Describing something versus explaining something.
1:41:17 - Elliot’s version of explaining division.
1:46:02 - Writing and editing communications as an ongoing process relevant to philosophy; wikiHow as examples of simple step-by-step explanations.
1:56:53 - Understanding what you like about activities that you suspect are not a good use of time.
Tutoring Max #24
0:00 - Progress since last time; Mises paragraph.
10:02 - Analysis of confusing academic language regarding Szasz.
19:23 - Scaling down/finding your baseline.
24:03 - Picking a topic to write about.
33:11 - Explaining math concepts; confusion about fractions/ratios/percents; possible things to write about.
43:44 - Natural breakpoints in discussing a topic; ratio of public to private writing.
48:25 - Brainstorming solutions.
51:34 - Analyzing short stories; building on low level errors versus getting low level details right.
1:05:20 - Not destroying the method of correcting mistakes; connecting rationality and morality.
1:10:04 - Rationalist versus traditionalist attitudes to social norms.
1:14:22 - LSAT question discussion; bad-question writing; people not expecting literalness.
1:30:35 - Explicit, rational analysis of social dynamics.
1:32:15 - reCAPTCHA illustrating sloppiness/low standards.
1:39:30 - Amount of error correction you should do for other people.
1:43:26 - Miscommunications; marriage.
1:47:40 - Thinking for yourself; error made on your own versus ten truths accepted on faith.
1:52:27 - People’s reaction to Rand; BioShock; hiding disagreements.
1:58:36 - Trump.
2:01:11 - Stuff to do for next time.
Tutoring Max #23
0:00 - Progress since last time.
3:26 - What a universe is; David Deutsch’s view.
9:13 - Physics is local.
12:56 - Tourette’s syndrome; understanding Szasz and psychiatry.
16:56 - Scientists versus social controllers; people wanting “treatment” for mental illness.
18:27 - Having skill to look into things efficiently.
Tutoring Max #22
0:00 - Progress since last time.
3:17 - Considering having a child; time constraints; co-parents.
8:43 - Analysis of debate regarding coronavirus.
15:02 - Organizing a discussion tree.
20:23 - Attacking quality of idea before giving criticism.
24:28 - Establishing goalposts.
29:00 - Putting burdens on conversation partner; asking for disclaimers.
34:06 - Meta discussion.
39:52 - Putting things in trees to find non-sequiturs; trees as a teamwork builder.
46:20 - Backing people into a corner versus winning the main point.
54:11 - Directly responding to points people bring up.
59:14 - Bringing up too many things at once.
1:11:12 - Focusing on attacking someone else’s position versus focusing on finding major problems.
1:18:04 - Thinking about your goal in a discussion.
1:23:57 - Getting a couple of examples of a problem before bringing it up the third time.
1:31:25 - Sticking to claims you’re confident about or hedging them in advance.
1:35:55 - Feeling like more of an FI community member; getting accustomed to norms; talking to other people.
1:43:12 - Eli Goldratt’s forum; lack of participation in forums; lack of appreciation for free ice cream.
1:51:18 - Goldratt not charging according to value offered; obstacles to implementing Theory of Constraints.
Tutoring Max #21
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:34 - Analysis of chapter in “Possible Minds” book written by Stephen Wolfram; looking at the topic sentence of each paragraph. Lots of detailed points and criticism.
35:42 - Comma mistakes and a tip.
39:39 - Goals have objectivity.
46:14 - Time is scarce even with immortality.
1:00:13 - Inability to predict content based on topic sentences; what poor quality of essays in “Possible Minds” says about the world.
1:09:25 - Practicing text analysis; value of looking at topic sentences; difficulty of checking things in certain fields; importance of being able to judge for yourself whether you’re getting something right; less structured ways of evaluating things.
1:20:52 - Recognizing extraterrestrial intelligence; similarity of bridging gap with an alien and with an infant; universality versus mind design space.
1:26:33 - Mind-uploading.
1:29:49 - Further projects - text analysis & analyzing a debate.
1:36:34 - Using trees to analyze & manage debates.
1:42:18 - People often not being on the same page; people having low standards for communication and understanding; social norms.
1:47:40 - Management books discussion; value of a manager in meetings; cost of meetings & having objectives.
Tutoring Max #20
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:12 - Grammar discussion begins.
2:00 - Analysis: “I can explain”; different models of analyzing this sentence.
7:55 - Analysis: “I can explain the acronyms if need be”; verbals and auxiliary verbs.
15:17 - Auxiliary verbs, tenses, finite and non-finite verbs.
24:46 - Subjunctive.
32:01 - Analysis: “It is a poor argument of my superior reason, that I am unable to make justice be apprehended and felt in the most necessary cases, without the intervention of blows”; how much time to spend analyzing sentences; expletives.
46:48 - Pattern: verbal serving as an object and also having its own subject and an object.
58:15 - Analysis: “So Alice, I just wanted to add, this sentence would have a parenthetical if the point wasn’t to be an example of a sentence with a parenthetical.”
1:19:02 - How to learn grammar effectively.
1:24:01 - Analysis: “I’m going to steal that kid’s lollipop whether you like it or not.”
1:32:47 - Analysis: “Both rugby and football are popular.”
1:42:00 - What is “both”?
1:47:36 - Quickly reviewing other examples for major errors.
1:59:46 - Making progress with grammar; high error rates.
Tutoring Max #19
0:00 - Progress since last time, grammar discussion.
8:50 - Special cases in English.
15:41 - Flux white paper text analysis begins.
18:15 - References within a sentence.
39:02 - The relationship between how often you use a statement and how much it communicates; more at 45:21.
54:21 - The low quality of people’s answers to studies when their answer doesn’t matter much for their life; more at 1:00:18 re: virtue signaling.
1:14:56 - How small incremental steps can lead to big fundamental changes; adding special cases at 1:18:50.
1:21:04 - Physicists, special cases, and the simpleness of reality.
1:34:27 - Correlative conjunctions.
Tutoring Max #18
0:00 - Mapping out bingeing games issue.
3:49 - Likes and dislikes re: games; something not being ideal versus being a major problem; disruption of other activities.
6:14 - Arbitrary activities in life.
10:15 - Lacking a goal for the game activity that is better than the projects being set aside; integrating things into life and having a mix of activities in terms of mental energy/difficulty level.
19:42 - People getting stuck.
24:36 - How to not waste your time and energy budgets by doing a mix of stuff.
27:39 - Stuff getting easier when you’re not operating near the edge of your abilities; getting bored and losing focus.
37:45 - Overspending energy and overcorrecting; doing period self-check-ins to try to spend time on more productive things; more at 43:14.
47:39 - Doing easier activities; validating your tiredness level.
53:40 - Tutoring as a helper role.
59:36 - Switching scheduling policies and how you organize your day is a big change that will take a while.
1:00:38 - Debating on less wrong.
1:03:01 - Value of talking with people.
1:05:55 - Text/grammar analysis of some Max writing.
1:09:45 - Goldratt’s chain metaphor; finding bottlenecks.
1:13:05 - Inferential distance; variance in idea quality.
1:17:01 - Popper’s bad political ideas; paradox of tolerance.
1:22:50 - Taking into account what the audience you are writing for already knows.
1:26:08 - Figuring out grammar errors; avoiding skipping steps.
1:34:11 - Dealing with other people’s errors.
1:34:53 - Text analysis of Yudkowsky passage.
Tutoring Max #17
0:00 - Beginning of video.
3:11 - Missing sleep; bingeing games.
11:23 - Difficulty determining whether you are making progress.
16:33 - Philosophy as a soft discipline.
19:43 - Choose-your-own-adventure goals & standardized goals; grammar resources.
29:13 - Being able to find your own resources.
36:28 - Writing goals; initial barriers to entry.
42:38 - Learning comes in steps.
44:42 - Remembering your goals; categorizing them; specifying goals in detail with effort estimates
48:40 - Calibrating the effort to the task.
51:21 - Emotions, motivations, interest, warning signs.
53:22 - Brainstorming (discussion and brainstorming session).
1:08:42 - Comments on brainstorming; more hierarchical/categorized versus freeform brainstorming; value of concretes.
1:15:18 - Being too abstract; learning philosophy and finding concretes.
1:20:10 - Project planning example.
1:28:42 - Working within limits being seen as weakness.
1:32:03 - Being able to operate when you’re not at your best; going slower; writing down more steps.
1:47:45 - Value of sleep.
1:50:22 - Keep trying different things to make progress; viewing steps positively.
Tutoring Max #16
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:11 - Grammar; linking verbs versus action verbs.
13:20 - Motivation and procrastination; not being fully persuaded about how you should spend your time.
16:52 - Making excuses; temporarily putting things off versus doing so repetitively; rationalism and fighting with yourself.
21:58 - Not doing as much intellectual stuff as you think you should be; valuing non-intellectual things; not assuming you know the answer of what activities you should do.
26:49 - Explaining video game binges; playing familiar games; reward cycles; setting your own goals.
33:26 - Guided progressions versus guiding your own progression.
37:15 - Avoiding fighting with yourself; being a neutral arbiter and making changes.
44:01 - Different ways of engaging with games.
45:25 - Incomplete criticisms of social stuff leave people conflicted.
48:17 - Lack of correct methods reducing effectiveness of people’s attempts to engage in intellectual activities (like reading); self-discipline.
57:14 - Having a queue of activities; overestimating your ability to get things done.
1:02:40 - Testing for burnout.
1:07:32 - Having a variety of activities; not putting pressure on same resource.
1:14:17 - Relationship between tiredness and your skill set.
1:18:47 - Proxies for mental effort and avoiding burnout; evasion.
1:26:21 - Disappointment & self-image; clash between cultural expectations about what’s hard & reality.
1:32:39 - Increasing your budget for activities; diminishing returns on increasing budget; doing things more efficiently.
1:37:16 - Doing things more efficiently examples: book reading, spellcheck, GPT3.
1:45:37 - Limits of budget metaphor; making sure things you’re spending budget on are actually valuable.
1:49:41 - Error; scheduling flexibility; incremental change.
1:54:51 - Splitting activities.
Tutoring Max #15
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:24 - Progress since last time, tiredness.
5:01 - Criticizing Max writing - Australian Constitution article; unnecessary modifiers.
37:34 - Criticizing Max writing - “Appearance is never worth sacrificing one’s integrity for.”
42:10 - Dishonest animal indicators; peacock’s tails.
46:04 - Social skill as honest versus dishonest indicator.
1:08:44 - Editing styles & having goals.
1:19:23 - Writing for generic audiences versus more specific contexts.
1:30:32 - Stating clear goals and asking people if their feedback addresses the goal.
1:32:19 - Using time effectively; asking people why their point is importance and worth time.
1:45:23 - FI people losing confidence.
1:51:19 - Bringing up too much stuff; finding limited chunks to discuss; lack of philosophical education.
1:53:51 - Political innovation not the world’s bottleneck; people liking to sound clever.
Tutoring Max #14
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:18 - Australian Constitution section tree discussion and analysis.
44:36 - Passing social tests while being smart and correct.
49:36 - Communicating complicated good ideas by relating it to tradition and common sense; political silencing.
52:32 - Government influence on people’s ideas through schools.
58:29 - Analyzing whether various left-wing stuff follows from gender being socially constructed.
1:08:51 - Old and new ideas of feminism re: femininity.
1:12:53 - What if physical strength differences were socially constructed?
1:19:57 - The left doesn’t address difficulty of changing culture.
1:25:04 - Left’s position as: “We could change this, therefore we should ignore it”.
1:28:44 - Not wanting things, oppression, brainwashing, delegitimizing preferences.
1:41:38 - Analyzing arguments in detail.
1:47:02 - Companies redistributing the women in a field.
1:51:31 - Men improved more from feminism than women did due to receiving criticism.
1:56:37 - Focus on female beauty causing problems (e.g. for Twitch problems); women’s role in teaching and parenting.
Tutoring Max #13
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:11 - Introductory comments/activity since last time.
5:06 - Goldratt method for finding root problems.
11:49 - Early ideas related to Yes/No philosophy.
14:17 - Meaning of lack of replies on FI & how to handle.
16:22 - People getting angry at meta.
19:58 - Committing to discussing a topic to resolution.
28:13 - Analyzing a Steven Pinker paragraph (for next hour).
1:24:42 - Finished tree of Steven Pinker paragraph.
1:27:33 - Pinker intentionally overcomplicating his writing to impress people.
1:29:25 - Discussion structure trees; comparing trees as a method of getting on the same page in a conversation.
1:34:57 - Criticism of Pinker’s writing as confused, empty, and oriented around impressing others.
Tutoring Max #12
(Max’s timestamps)
0:00:00 inspiration, journaling, and note taking
0:22:37 brief discussion of fallibility of maths
0:25:30 recap of material from last tutorial
0:27:50 brief discussion of universality
0:31:20 yes/no purpose and limits and more recap
0:55:00 converting continuums to digital via breakpoints
1:07:00 avoiding coercion and methods of coming up with new options
1:22:00 We Can Always Act on Non-Criticized Ideas
1:27:00 converting positive arguments to negative arguments
1:39:45 converting continuums to binary or digital via breakpoints
1:43:00 moving judgements from problems/solutions into goals
1:53:00 libraries of criticisms / patterns of error
2:06:00 margins of error on breakpoints
2:10:00 more discussion generally and on journaling and inspiration
related links:
Tutoring Max #11
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:19 - Amounts of goodness.
7:26 - Error correction, analog systems, degree arguments.
10:23 - Vagueness about problems & decisive arguments.
15:19 - Why do people want degree arguments?
25:42 - How do we get more decisive arguments?
30:16 - Reaching conclusions in light of fallibility.
34:39 - Background goals.
37:40 - Focus & compound goals; excess capacity.
44:45 - Binary factors & excess capacity.
49:38 - Breakpoints.
53:33 - Rounding & pseudo-breakpoints.
57:08 - Expressing more precision than you have.
1:00:00 - Crow epistemology.
1:01:19 - Maximization & minimization problems; conversion factors.
1:03:44 - Compound goals & having many factors on different scales without conversion factors.
1:13:30 - Decision charts.
1:15:50 - Changing the compound goal.
1:17:43 - What if many solutions meet our criteria?
1:23:53 - Direct & indirect solutions.
1:26:06 - Grammar.
1:36:22 - Weighing, strong & weak arguments, survival advantages as a conversion factor.
1:44:31 - Hard to vary.
1:48:22 - Adaptation & hard to vary.
1:53:58 - Structural similarities across universes & knowledge.
Tutoring Max #10
0:00 - Beginning of video.
2:53 - More Szasz manifesto structure analysis.
25:38 - History of mental illness.
29:56 - People glossing over what they’re reading; understanding how things fit together; stream of consciousness writing; organizing writing.
35:46 - Analysis of first sentence of Declaration of Independence.
41:44 - Taggart Terminal sentence aside (passage from Atlas Shrugged).
44:11 - Declaration analysis continued.
1:01:32 - Taggart Terminal analysis.
1:08:22 - Focusing on structure before content.
1:25:56 - Measurements, policies and processes; verbalizing ideas; doing things on medium timelines.
1:33:32 - Modularizing writing; importance of structure in dealing with knowledge; the right structure as a timesaver.
1:40:00 - Grand visions for discussions as beginnings of infinity; having grand goals but bad methods.
Tutoring Max #9
0:00 - Beginning of video.
4:09 - Grammar. Analyzing “John pet his dog and cat with vigor.”
7:04 - Verb phrases.
15:52 - Grammar: “I like reading non-fiction books out of order”; discussion of “out of”.
19:47 - Theory of Constraints/Objectivist/Critical Rationalist overlap & toolset.
25:40 - Value of rereading and outlining books; density of Beginning of Infinity at 29:05.
32:46 - Looking at a past Max writings.
52:55 - Origin of Flux movement and influence of The Beginning of Infinity.
Tutoring Max #8
0:00 - Grammar. Analyzing sentence “Nobody’s ever been bothered by being dead.”
5:10 - Analyzing sentence “He was waiting for the rain to stop”; curi’s analysis at 7:30.
9:04 - Analyzing sentence “Assuming you’re an adult, there are some things you’re already good at judging.”
21:23 - Discussion about progress/goals/stuff to focus on.
23:39 - Analyzing a Szasz sentence; Elliot’s analysis compared to Max’s at 36:04.
43:00 - Methods for analyzing paragraphs; outlines.
46:04 - The structure of different types of writing and putting them into trees.
Tutoring Max #7
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:17 - Progress since last time; understanding books.
5:30 - Constitution of Australia example; best stuff to practice with.
9:48 - “The Choice” discussion and next steps.
14:27 - Grammar analysis of “My broken speakers don’t work for making sound.”
22:54 - Grammar analysis: “FYI, working at the CIA is cooler than the FBI.”
38:02 - Value of question-asking method of sentence analysis.
39:38 - “Lying” article analysis.
Tutoring Max #6
0:00 - Beginning of video.
1:28 - Guessing parent/child relationship percentages for a typical paragraph; Elliot’s answer at 17:08.
6:00 - Analyzing example paragraph from “The Choice”.
20:32 - Analyzing Elliot’s “Lying” article.
28:43 - Reading only the topic sentences as an editing technique.
37:58 - The value of being verbose for clarifying.
48:22 - Elliot’s writing structure as coming from intuition and general principles as opposed to an explicit editing step.
51:07 - Correcting writing errors.
58:57 - Value of giving indications to the reader what your reasoning is early on.
Learn grammar article:
Idea trees:
Tutoring Max #5
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:42 - Progress since last time; initial comments on “The Choice”.
5:16 - Grammar.
15:28 - “The Choice” discussion; different schools of rationality.
25:00 - Controversial themes of “The Choice”; the issue of brain power; complex reality being simple at 30:01; gravity example at 33:34.
36:15 - Project management; constraints.
40:40 - Dealing with volunteers.
41:42 - Mental energy as a constraint vs. time.
46:19 - What makes discussions work or fail.
54:42 - Agreeing early to shut down discussions.
Tutoring Max #4
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:30 - Tutoring logistics, introductory comments.
6:01 - Grammar.
9:19 - Example: “Let us talk about a different way.”; imperatives and implied “you”
14:24 - Indirect objects & appositives.
18:59 - Example: “I seriously think that Ayn Rand was wise.”; two functions of “that” & ways to depict in tree.
26:56 - Ways of teaching sentence patterns.
28:19 - Example: “You can find more stuff which is similar or related and work on that.”
42:09 - Example: “After you throw a small, red ball, while you sing, you should stamp your feet loudly, and you should clap your hands energetically, if it’s still daytime.”
1:01:18 - Transition to philosophy discussion.
1:03:55 - Making tree from Szasz Manifesto paragraph.
1:39:25 - Elliot’s Szasz tree.
Learn grammar article:
Idea trees:
Tutoring Max #3
0:00 - Beginning of video.
0:28 - Progress since last time.
2:26 - Making s-expressions; reviewing grammar exercises.
11:55 - Example: “I went to a fancy university, yet I’m still quite ignorant.”
16:19 - Example: “If universities are full of uncurious professors, don’t attend one.”
33:21 - Overreaching.
42:27 - Should have way of checking your success in objective way.
48:09 - Overreaching perspective: People do too much stuff that’s too hard.
51:00 - Overreaching perspective: People do stuff that’s too sophisticated and clever.
52:49 - Overreaching perspective: Proceeding while missing prerequisites, failing at prioritization.
1:04:48 - Doing error correction for other people.
1:08:01 - Overreaching perspective: Trouble self-evaluating.
1:10:35 - Expanding what you can judge objectively; using external help to help you judge success and failure; not putting all your eggs in one basket.
1:13:21 - Easier to judge objectively when you can use measurements.
1:18:51 - Ruling out theories; evolution example.
1:23:03 - Figuring out relevant measurable objectives; developing skill and judgment.
1:32:34 - Bad reactions to idea of overreaching; prerequisites and common ground.
1:37:26 - Buffer management and project planning; startup culture.
1:42:25 - Positive framings of overreaching-related issues; prerequisites; solid building blocks, programming example (lower level functions).
Learn grammar article:
Idea trees:
Tutoring Max #2
0:00 - Grammar article discussion.
6:37 - Example: “John put the toy soldier in the compartment in the box on the shelf in his room.”
11:22 - Example: “The delicious cake with berries unfortunately fell onto the dirty floor from the table.”"
16:21 - Verbs in “John had been playing golf.”
21:01 - Ways to use verbs/actions in a sentence.
32:30 - Prepositions as functions of nouns that output modifiers.
37:40 - Conjunctions.
42:37 - Diagram of “Max drank too much.”
52:40 - Value of study and learning principles over relying on intuition (applied to grammar).
58:16 - Idea tree goals & structure; brainstorming & refinement.
1:05:15 - Non-judgmental introspection.
1:08:00 - Bias, static memes, adding objectivity.
1:13:44 - Changing intuitions.
1:20:28 - Processes for adding objectivity.
1:27:24 - Things that interfere with fixing fundamental mistakes; public intellectuals having less of an excuse.
1:32:44 - Reaching conclusions with incomplete information.
1:34:58 - Overreaching, being at beginning of infinity, having a sense of ignorance putting you ahead of the game.
1:40:40 - Social ladder climbing and feeling threatened by acknowledging mistakes/problems.
1:49:29 - Normal social contexts & rational discussion.
1:51:37 - People underestimating the complexity of rational thinking & philosophy.
Learn grammar article:
Idea trees:
Tutoring Max #1
0:00 - Beginning of video.
4:29 - Introductory questions.
9:22 - Grammar. Brief overview of Part I of Elliot’s grammar article.
16:28 - Two patterns for sentences.
19:36 - Ways to think about verb phrases.
22:37 - Example: “John tried to pass his test.”
28:19 - Relative pronouns/clauses.
34:22 - Example: “The ferocious dog chased three cats over the chair.”; making tree at 48:41; S-expression at 50:36.
38:25 - Figuring out what modifiers modify.
55:44 - Communication and relying on other people knowing what you mean.
57:21 - Modifier ambiguity: applying to verb versus applying to entire sentence.
1:03:06 - Brief overview of Part II of Elliot’s grammar article; complex sentences; conjunctions.
1:07:11 - Prepositions.
1:11:24 - Coordinating & subordinating conjunctions; swapping the order of clauses at 1:15:25; two models of conjunctions at 1:17:37.
1:26:45 - Purpose of subordination with example; connection between writing and conceptual complexity.
1:32:08 - Part III of grammar article. Gerunds & participles.
1:47:08 - Infinitives.
1:57:37 - Importance of using dictionaries.
Learn grammar article:
Idea trees: