Published on January 6, 2025 3:59 AM GMT
I. The Mysterious Stranger
Hi! I'm Midius.
I finished with university applications yesterday. I've lurked on LW since sophomore summer, but never made an account or posted. For the first time since then, I have almost no obligations. With nine months till university starts and no intention of wasting them, I'm going to become a vampire.
Since rationality is the most impactful meta-skill, it's first on my hit list. Better decision-making improves everything and will certainly change how I go about my other studies.
Here's my plan for January.
IIa. Instrumental Rationality
Sequences I plan to work through and why:
- Hammertime: I was planning to work on the exercises from the CFAR handbook, but since alkjash wrote practical guides for each, I expect them to be more useful.Luminosity: Reflective self-awareness has a lot of potential - tight feedback loops are crucial to rapid improvement.Feedbackloopfirst Rationality: Same as luminosity.
I'd love to listen to recommendations if you have any.
IIb. Reading
I've read the Sequences, but little else. I'm going to start by reading through the most popular books from the CFAR reading list. That includes The Scout Mindset, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Superforecasting, Focusing, Influence, What Intelligence Tests Miss, and Decisive. Beyond that, I'm planning to read Language in Thought and Action and Gödel, Escher, Bach.
I've placed requests for these at my library and I expect them to arrive before Wednesday. I'll create a git repo sharing my notes and Anki.
IIc. Arational Instrumental Skills
These aren't directly related to my rationality practice, but are still very important. First among these is formatting LW posts. Then learning to touch type, getting used to Anki, and writing better. Social skills are important too. Here's an unordered list of some others.
- Fermi estimates,Idea generation,Getting better at visualization, andReading better,
I thought of these during a single Yoda Timer. I'll think of more as I go.
IId. Blogging
I'm writing daily to keep myself accountable, develop an online log, and get feedback. If you spot mistakes or areas of improvement, please criticize me. If you don't want to do it in public, there's an anonymous form below.
Because this is my first long-form post, I spent ~1 hr writing it. In the future, I'll timebox writing the post to 25 minutes and I'll spend a further 25 minutes daily improving my writing.
How? By reading about writing, examining my writing, and iterating.
For now, I'll write about what I'm learning while studying rationality; I'm not sure what else to talk about yet. I might write reviews of lab automation papers - I haven't seen anything about them on LW.
III. Hammertime Update
Yesterday, at first glance, I found 72 bugs. After an hour unpacking them, I discovered 274 more bugs. Some are easy to fix; some are harder. I'll see how it goes. In line with the assignment: my weirdest bug is that I sometimes chew on paper while working.
Onward.
Anonymous feedback form: https://www.admonymous.co/aproteinengine
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