Deciding what to reply to

[anonymous FI]

I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several
different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to
reply to.

I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than
nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other
people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they
use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?

Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails
first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?


Trying to reply to the best ones isn’t completely straightforward. It
might get hard to keep track of which ones are my favourites.

There can be a lot of overlap in the ideas in different emails. And
often there is more than one email from the same person. So how do I
keep track of which were my favourites? Do I short-list them as I go,
and then go back through and choose the favourites from that? I may end
up doing a lot of re-reading if I do it that way, which seems
inefficient.

Replying as I go along has the advantage of not having to keep track of
anything. But if I have limited time, I might spend that time replying
to lower quality emails.

Maybe I have enough time to read through half the emails, if I am
replying as I go along. If the higher quality emails were in the second
half, I will be missing out on those. I could always get to them later.
But reading and replying to them today would have had value to me.

Also if my read & reply rate is a lot slower than the new email rate, I
will keep getting further behind on list. I think there are benefits to
staying more up to date. (These may be caused by other people being
irrational about how THEY reply and think about things though. Like, I
think that people reply more when a discussion is “fresh”.)

[Elliot Temple]

On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>
> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?
>
> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?

I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.

And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.

And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later, imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What will change? Blank out.)

And people just don't like making decisions. Like they don't want to admit they don't like a post, or have nothing to say about it, or aren't going to reply to it. For various reasons. So instead of admitting that – or doing something to change it like spending some time thinking about what to say (now!) – they just stick it in a queue for later.

NOTE: I have nothing against skimming something really fast to decide if you're going to read it or not. Like REALLY fast. Not reading much of it, just glancing. Takes a few seconds. Let's you see length, amount of new text vs quoting, general topic, and read 2-3 sentences to see what it's like (if you're good at skimming you can often guess which sentences to read before you read them, e.g. it's often the first sentence of the first paragraph of a section. especially if the author is good at writing).

---

I'm not very selective because I write a lot. I often try more to reply to posts I think are good – the kind I'd like to see more of. If you want a certain type of discussion, participate more in that type!

If I was being more selective I'd consider: what problems am I trying to solve by posting? which of those are higher priorities for me? which threads are relevant?

> Trying to reply to the best ones isn’t completely straightforward. It might get hard to keep track of which ones are my favourites.
>
> There can be a lot of overlap in the ideas in different emails. And often there is more than one email from the same person. So how do I keep track of which were my favourites? Do I short-list them as I go, and then go back through and choose the favourites from that? I may end up doing a lot of re-reading if I do it that way, which seems inefficient.
>
> Replying as I go along has the advantage of not having to keep track of anything. But if I have limited time, I might spend that time replying to lower quality emails.
>
> Maybe I have enough time to read through half the emails, if I am replying as I go along. If the higher quality emails were in the second half, I will be missing out on those. I could always get to them later. But reading and replying to them today would have had value to me.
>
> Also if my read & reply rate is a lot slower than the new email rate, I will keep getting further behind on list. I think there are benefits to staying more up to date. (These may be caused by other people being irrational about how THEY reply and think about things though. Like, I think that people reply more when a discussion is “fresh”.)

I've noticed most people here reply way more to "fresh" stuff while ignoring lots of previous threads they never got to. I think it's really bad and shows an unseriousness and just kinda passively responding to what's in front of them. And people write replies that are too long about stuff that isn't important enough instead of just saying 1-2 important things and then putting more attention into better chosen topics instead of just what someone happened to post.

People have so many life problems. For example, every parent here needs to figure out how much money to give their kids. Yet no one here seems to care and actually post much about that until they actually figure out some kinda answer. Instead they just reply to some of the threads in front of them (but not that one. cuz it's "hard"? cuz it doesn't give them the chance to win an argument vs someone they think is wrong? cuz they arrogantly think they are already doing something OK even though they've never exposed their policy to criticism?).

People have all kinds of other problems too and should bring them up more instead of just arguing with whatever someone posted in the last couple days. It's important to have a sense of purpose.

I think one part of the problem is people cargo cult me. They try to do things that superficially look similar to things I do. But they aren't actually the same things. And my problem situation is different than theirs anyway, so even if they were doing some of the same things as me some of it *still* wouldn't make sense.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Alan Forrester]

On 25 Mar 2016, at 03:48, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>>
>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?
>>
>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>
> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.

Doing the reply on the first reading gives you less of a chance to lie to yourself about what you thought the first time. Replying on the first reading exposes more flaws.

> And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.
>
> And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later, imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What will change? Blank out.)

If you genuinely don’t have time to reply for some reason, then you don’t really have time to read properly either.

Alan

[anonymous FI]

On Mar 24, 2016, at 20:48 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI
> <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several
>> different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what
>> to reply to.
>>
>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better
>> than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering
>> how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a
>> strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which
>> ones to reply to?
>>
>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails
>> first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>
> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something
> and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have
> different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something
> important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading,
> it's a different thing.
>
> And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to
> reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which
> I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.

so do you mean that i should always read stuff in a way that i am
actually thinking about how i could reply to it?

i don’t always do that. sometimes when i am reading emails, i am not
thinking about them in that way. no replies come to mind, and i don’t
try to think of any.

i think maybe one reason i do that is because i don’t want to write
emails right then. and i feel like i think of replies now, they will be
wasted. because i am not going to write an email.

sometimes i don’t want to think. i just want to kind of zone out.
sometimes i will just watch tv or go on reddit or something when i am
feeling like that. but sometimes i will read some FI emails. just ones
that are easy to read.

if i am going to zone out either way, is it better to read FI emails
than to go on Facebook or reddit or something? or is it better to do
stuff that doesn’t matter when i am zoning out, and just read FI when
i am willing to actually think about it?

should i try to stop zoning out at all? sometimes i am tired and i
don’t feel like thinking. is that bad? is it just bad if i do it too
much?

> And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later,
> imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What
> will change? Blank out.)

why are they planning on writing replies to stuff they don’t really
want to reply to? can’t they just find emails they do want to reply to
instead?

what kind of emails do people not want to reply to? is it that they
don’t want to reply to emails with criticisms of them, but they feel
like they should reply to those?

> And people just don't like making decisions. Like they don't want to
> admit they don't like a post, or have nothing to say about it, or
> aren't going to reply to it. For various reasons. So instead of
> admitting that – or doing something to change it like spending some
> time thinking about what to say (now!) – they just stick it in a
> queue for later.
>
> NOTE: I have nothing against skimming something really fast to decide
> if you're going to read it or not. Like REALLY fast. Not reading much
> of it, just glancing. Takes a few seconds. Let's you see length,
> amount of new text vs quoting, general topic, and read 2-3 sentences
> to see what it's like (if you're good at skimming you can often guess
> which sentences to read before you read them, e.g. it's often the
> first sentence of the first paragraph of a section. especially if the
> author is good at writing).
>
> ---
>
> I'm not very selective because I write a lot. I often try more to
> reply to posts I think are good – the kind I'd like to see more of.
> If you want a certain type of discussion, participate more in that
> type!

that’s hard. it is harder to reply to high quality posts. it is easier
to reply when some else has made a mistake that is easy to spot and
criticize.

one reason that seems easier is because i am writing about stuff i know
more about when i do that.

replying to higher quality posts means that i am exposing myself to
criticism more. i have to say stuff that i am less sure of. i have to
say new ideas that i haven’t thought through as well. i have to talk
about stuff i don’t understand as well.

> If I was being more selective I'd consider: what problems am I trying
> to solve by posting? which of those are higher priorities for me?
> which threads are relevant?

i need to improve my ideas. i need to learn more TCS. i need to learn
more epistemology.

i am good at some things and understand some things well. i can write
posts that sound smart that people think are high quality. but there is
also lots of stuff that i don’t know. so i just don’t write about
that stuff. i don’t reply to posts that would expose my ignorance.

i also need to get better at learning in general. i have been able to do
some learning before. but only when it seems easy to me. i haven’t
ever had to work at it. usually i learn a little bit about something
until it starts to feel hard. and then i just stop learning about it and
find something new to learn about instead. i have done that with lots of
things. like i take up different hobbies because they are easy at the
beginning. but then i quit learning more when they get hard.

it isn’t just philosophy i have this problem with. i have always
avoided doing things that didn’t seem easy to me. i just thought that
they weren’t fun activities. i didn’t think of it as avoiding
something because i wasn’t good at it. i never played sports much. or
video games. because both of those seemed hard when i first tried them.

i need to get better at doing things that seem hard. i am not sure how
to do that. i don’t know how to find that enjoyable. i need to think
about it in a different way. but i don’t know how. i don’t know how
to enjoy things i am not good at.

do you have examples of this (writing too long replies about stuff that
isn’t important enough)?

i worry about posting wrong. so then i don’t want to post anything. i
don’t post very much to begin with. so it seems like what i choose to
post about would be particularly revealing about me. that in itself is
something people could criticize. so i find it hard to post anything at
all.

like, i find posting in general hard. a lot of the time it is hard for
me to come up with anything to say or to write any kind of post. but
sometimes there are posts that would be easy for me to write and send. i
don’t find ALL posting hard. but i don’t want to send those posts.
because i don’t want people to judge me based on what i DO choose to
post. they can see i don’t post very much. so then when i do post
something i am afraid they will think something like: “why would you
break your silence just to write that? that’s not worth writing. there
are so many better emails you could have replied to.”

> People have so many life problems. For example, every parent here
> needs to figure out how much money to give their kids. Yet no one here
> seems to care and actually post much about that until they actually
> figure out some kinda answer. Instead they just reply to some of the
> threads in front of them (but not that one. cuz it's "hard"? cuz it
> doesn't give them the chance to win an argument vs someone they think
> is wrong? cuz they arrogantly think they are already doing something
> OK even though they've never exposed their policy to criticism?).

maybe they think they don’t have very much to say because they
haven’t solved it. and they are waiting for someone who has a better
answer to post. i do that sometimes. i don’t see the point in posting
if i don’t know very much. i feel like i don’t have anything to say
about it.

> People have all kinds of other problems too and should bring them up
> more instead of just arguing with whatever someone posted in the last
> couple days. It's important to have a sense of purpose.

it’s hard to bring up problems. i don’t understand my problems. i
don’t know how to write about them. i don’t know what questions to
ask.

it’s easier to write about things you understand.

> I think one part of the problem is people cargo cult me. They try to
> do things that superficially look similar to things I do. But they
> aren't actually the same things. And my problem situation is different
> than theirs anyway, so even if they were doing some of the same things
> as me some of it *still* wouldn't make sense.

i think that is probably true (that some people cargo cult you).

but there are other issues too. like, people don’t know what good
posts for someone in their position would like like. there aren’t many
good examples of how to learn. it isn’t something that really exists
outside of FI. and most the people on FI don’t write like that either.

you know lots of stuff, so you write like someone who knows lots of
stuff.

some other people know stuff about some issues, and they mostly only
write posts about those issues.

so most the high quality posts on list are by people who know what they
are talking about. there aren’t very many high quality posts by people
who are learning something that they don’t know very much about.

[anonymous FI]

On Mar 25, 2016, at 2:51 AM, 'Alan Forrester' via Fallible Ideas

<fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> On 25 Mar 2016, at 03:48, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas]
> <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI
>> <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several
>>> different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what
>>> to reply to.
>>>
>>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better
>>> than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering
>>> how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a
>>> strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which
>>> ones to reply to?
>>>
>>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the
>>> emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>>
>> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read
>> something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and
>> you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to
>> reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for
>> the first reading, it's a different thing.
>
> Doing the reply on the first reading gives you less of a chance to lie
> to yourself about what you thought the first time. Replying on the
> first reading exposes more flaws.

Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I
have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some
time and think them through before I write an email.

>> And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to
>> reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which
>> I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.
>>
>> And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later,
>> imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What
>> will change? Blank out.)
>
> If you genuinely don’t have time to reply for some reason, then you
> don’t really have time to read properly either.

I don't get this.

Is it because you think proper reading involves thinking up replies?

How long do you think it should take to read properly?

It can take me an hour to write a reply to a fairly short email. I can
read & think about an email faster than that. But actually writing out a
reply is harder for me.

Should I not be reading at all if I don’t have that time?

Or should I be starting drafts every time I read emails? So then even if
I don’t have the time to reply, I at least have something started.

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 3, 2016, at 4:11 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mar 24, 2016, at 20:48 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>>>
>>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?
>>>
>>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>>
>> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.
>>
>> And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.
>
> so do you mean that i should always read stuff in a way that i am actually thinking about how i could reply to it?

no. either read that way. or intentionally decide you aren't going to reply and read a different way.

the thing i said is lying you'll reply later. if you know what you're doing, and you do it on purpose for a reason, ok. if there's some things you wanna read but don't think are good to reply to, fine. have some policy on what to reply to. share it. acknowledge it.

> i don’t always do that. sometimes when i am reading emails, i am not thinking about them in that way. no replies come to mind, and i don’t try to think of any.
>
> i think maybe one reason i do that is because i don’t want to write emails right then. and i feel like i think of replies now, they will be wasted. because i am not going to write an email.

that's a bad attitude. thinking isn't a waste.

> sometimes i don’t want to think. i just want to kind of zone out. sometimes i will just watch tv or go on reddit or something when i am feeling like that. but sometimes i will read some FI emails. just ones that are easy to read.

in general the best way is: if you need to rest, rest. otherwise do stuff. don't half do stuff. that's where the evasions and inefficiencies come in more easily.

> if i am going to zone out either way, is it better to read FI emails than to go on Facebook or reddit or something? or is it better to do stuff that doesn’t matter when i am zoning out, and just read FI when i am willing to actually think about it?

if you have extra emails, sure. read ones that are less important (e.g. less preferred authors), or ones you have no shortage of (e.g. if you have over 500 unread from an author, then it's better to read them in some way than no way).

> should i try to stop zoning out at all? sometimes i am tired and i don’t feel like thinking. is that bad? is it just bad if i do it too much?

don't just waste time. do things with a purpose such as resting or doing productive (according to your values) things you can manage while tired.

>> And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later, imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What will change? Blank out.)
>
> why are they planning on writing replies to stuff they don’t really want to reply to? can’t they just find emails they do want to reply to instead?

maybe they don't want to think. maybe they grit their teeth and force themselves regardless of which thing they are replying to. maybe they don't understand concepts like bringing up topics relevant to their real problems and interests in a simple way, and then writing simple followups where they understand the conversation.

> what kind of emails do people not want to reply to? is it that they don’t want to reply to emails with criticisms of them, but they feel like they should reply to those?

idk i like replying to emails.

>> And people just don't like making decisions. Like they don't want to admit they don't like a post, or have nothing to say about it, or aren't going to reply to it. For various reasons. So instead of admitting that – or doing something to change it like spending some time thinking about what to say (now!) – they just stick it in a queue for later.
>>
>> NOTE: I have nothing against skimming something really fast to decide if you're going to read it or not. Like REALLY fast. Not reading much of it, just glancing. Takes a few seconds. Let's you see length, amount of new text vs quoting, general topic, and read 2-3 sentences to see what it's like (if you're good at skimming you can often guess which sentences to read before you read them, e.g. it's often the first sentence of the first paragraph of a section. especially if the author is good at writing).
>>
>> ---
>>
>> I'm not very selective because I write a lot. I often try more to reply to posts I think are good – the kind I'd like to see more of. If you want a certain type of discussion, participate more in that type!
>
> that’s hard. it is harder to reply to high quality posts. it is easier to reply when some else has made a mistake that is easy to spot and criticize.

just b/c you saw one mistake doesn't mean that's the best thing to comment on.

i think you're using different standards. when their post is worse, you are willing to write a worse reply. but when a post is good, you want to write a higher quality reply. so you make it harder on yourself when replying to posts you think are better.

i think it's this thing you do, not something inherent in replying to different quality posts. (new insight i just thought of!)

> one reason that seems easier is because i am writing about stuff i know more about when i do that.
>
> replying to higher quality posts means that i am exposing myself to criticism more. i have to say stuff that i am less sure of. i have to say new ideas that i haven’t thought through as well. i have to talk about stuff i don’t understand as well.

you don't have to. you can reply to an awesome post saying simple stuff where you know what you mean. you can add things you know about which are relevant. you can ask questions. you can try writing an idea yourself. you can try making some examples to go over some ideas you're learning.

>
>> If I was being more selective I'd consider: what problems am I trying to solve by posting? which of those are higher priorities for me? which threads are relevant?
>
> i need to improve my ideas. i need to learn more TCS. i need to learn more epistemology.

why? which ideas?

all of TCS? all of epistemology? or which parts?

> i am good at some things and understand some things well. i can write posts that sound smart that people think are high quality. but there is also lots of stuff that i don’t know. so i just don’t write about that stuff. i don’t reply to posts that would expose my ignorance.

but didn't you just expose some of your ignorance by saying this (in reply to something!)?

you're talking about a mistake you make with trying to hide ignorance. there are some things that, if you knew them, you'd stop making that mistake. but you're ignorant of them. and you just exposed that.

> i also need to get better at learning in general. i have been able to do some learning before. but only when it seems easy to me. i haven’t ever had to work at it. usually i learn a little bit about something until it starts to feel hard. and then i just stop learning about it and find something new to learn about instead. i have done that with lots of things. like i take up different hobbies because they are easy at the beginning. but then i quit learning more when they get hard.

a good place to practice learning something hard is computer games. if you find doing it the first time with philosophy too difficult.

> it isn’t just philosophy i have this problem with. i have always avoided doing things that didn’t seem easy to me. i just thought that they weren’t fun activities. i didn’t think of it as avoiding something because i wasn’t good at it. i never played sports much. or video games. because both of those seemed hard when i first tried them.
>
> i need to get better at doing things that seem hard. i am not sure how to do that. i don’t know how to find that enjoyable. i need to think about it in a different way. but i don’t know how. i don’t know how to enjoy things i am not good at.

it's fun figuring stuff out.

lots of dumb people figure some things out. you could too if you kept working on it.

>>> Trying to reply to the best ones isn’t completely straightforward. It might get hard to keep track of which ones are my favourites.
>>>
>>> There can be a lot of overlap in the ideas in different emails. And often there is more than one email from the same person. So how do I keep track of which were my favourites? Do I short-list them as I go, and then go back through and choose the favourites from that? I may end up doing a lot of re-reading if I do it that way, which seems inefficient.
>>>
>>> Replying as I go along has the advantage of not having to keep track of anything. But if I have limited time, I might spend that time replying to lower quality emails.
>>>
>>> Maybe I have enough time to read through half the emails, if I am replying as I go along. If the higher quality emails were in the second half, I will be missing out on those. I could always get to them later. But reading and replying to them today would have had value to me.
>>>
>>> Also if my read & reply rate is a lot slower than the new email rate, I will keep getting further behind on list. I think there are benefits to staying more up to date. (These may be caused by other people being irrational about how THEY reply and think about things though. Like, I think that people reply more when a discussion is “fresh”.)
>>
>> I've noticed most people here reply way more to "fresh" stuff while ignoring lots of previous threads they never got to. I think it's really bad and shows an unseriousness and just kinda passively responding to what's in front of them. And people write replies that are too long about stuff that isn't important enough instead of just saying 1-2 important things and then putting more attention into better chosen topics instead of just what someone happened to post.
>
> do you have examples of this (writing too long replies about stuff that isn’t important enough)?
>
> i worry about posting wrong. so then i don’t want to post anything.

that doesn't make sense. you can get better at posting if you work on it. if you don't work on it, you'll stay bad at it!

> i don’t post very much to begin with. so it seems like what i choose to post about would be particularly revealing about me. that in itself is something people could criticize. so i find it hard to post anything at all.

you seem more interested in

- what other people think about you
- what flaws other people know about you

than

- how good you are
- what you think

> like, i find posting in general hard. a lot of the time it is hard for me to come up with anything to say or to write any kind of post.

no it's not. you have plenty to say. you block it. the problem isn't with coming up with ideas, it's with suppressing your ideas.

> but sometimes there are posts that would be easy for me to write and send. i don’t find ALL posting hard. but i don’t want to send those posts. because i don’t want people to judge me based on what i DO choose to post. they can see i don’t post very much. so then when i do post something i am afraid they will think something like: “why would you break your silence just to write that? that’s not worth writing. there are so many better emails you could have replied to.”

you broke your silence to work on posting step by step, doing things that work for you. that's good. send those easy posts and be proud. you may be surprised where they lead.

>> People have so many life problems. For example, every parent here needs to figure out how much money to give their kids. Yet no one here seems to care and actually post much about that until they actually figure out some kinda answer. Instead they just reply to some of the threads in front of them (but not that one. cuz it's "hard"? cuz it doesn't give them the chance to win an argument vs someone they think is wrong? cuz they arrogantly think they are already doing something OK even though they've never exposed their policy to criticism?).
>
> maybe they think they don’t have very much to say because they haven’t solved it. and they are waiting for someone who has a better answer to post. i do that sometimes. i don’t see the point in posting if i don’t know very much. i feel like i don’t have anything to say about it.

say why you think you don't know. ask a question. say why you think it's important and you want an answer – or why you think it doesn't matter.

those suggestions were easy for me to think of. i think it's easy to think of categories of things to say. i think you're making excuses and lying to yourself about your actual problem.

>> People have all kinds of other problems too and should bring them up more instead of just arguing with whatever someone posted in the last couple days. It's important to have a sense of purpose.
>
> it’s hard to bring up problems. i don’t understand my problems. i don’t know how to write about them. i don’t know what questions to ask.
>
> it’s easier to write about things you understand.

go to the edge of what you understand and ask a question or otherwise do a next step. ez.

>> I think one part of the problem is people cargo cult me. They try to do things that superficially look similar to things I do. But they aren't actually the same things. And my problem situation is different than theirs anyway, so even if they were doing some of the same things as me some of it *still* wouldn't make sense.
>
> i think that is probably true (that some people cargo cult you).
>
> but there are other issues too. like, people don’t know what good posts for someone in their position would like like.

i think, if you read carefully, this sentence says that posts are active agents which like things.

i think it was supposed to say "would look like" at the end.

> there aren’t many good examples of how to learn. it isn’t something that really exists outside of FI. and most the people on FI don’t write like that either.

if you play computer games with me, you can see examples of learning.

> you know lots of stuff, so you write like someone who knows lots of stuff.

sometimes i play computer games i'm bad at, so you could see that.

> some other people know stuff about some issues, and they mostly only write posts about those issues.
>
> so most the high quality posts on list are by people who know what they are talking about. there aren’t very many high quality posts by people who are learning something that they don’t know very much about.

you could read the archives to see what i wrote when i knew less. you could see lots of my learning process there.

also sometimes i write about learning games i'm bad at.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 3, 2016, at 10:11 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mar 25, 2016, at 2:51 AM, 'Alan Forrester' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On 25 Mar 2016, at 03:48, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>>>>
>>>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?
>>>>
>>>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>>>
>>> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.
>>
>> Doing the reply on the first reading gives you less of a chance to lie to yourself about what you thought the first time. Replying on the first reading exposes more flaws.
>
> Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some time and think them through before I write an email.

i frequently just write shit for list. learn in discussion, instead of trying to do it b4. i think this is good. if i'm learning in a good way, it'll work fine. if i'm learning in a bad way, doing that silently alone would be worse. i'd want to reveal how i'm fucking up learning and get criticism!

i did this when i was new, too. don't think it's just something i can get away with because i already know a bunch.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Rami Rustom]

On Apr 4, 2016, at 12:11 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mar 25, 2016, at 2:51 AM, 'Alan Forrester' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On 25 Mar 2016, at 03:48, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>>>>
>>>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?

i don’t have time to apply a method like that. i reply to stuff somewhat randomly.

e.g. Teresa replied to my post about appeasing people out of embarrassment. when i read it i was on my phone and didn’t feel like starting a draft, so i marked it unread. and then a few days later Russ replied. Then I replied to Russ. And I had extra time at that point, and I wasn’t tired or had any other distractions, so I replied to Teresa too.

>>>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>>>
>>> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.
>>
>> Doing the reply on the first reading gives you less of a chance to lie to yourself about what you thought the first time. Replying on the first reading exposes more flaws.
>
> Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some time and think them through before I write an email.

in those situations, i always start a draft and put a few words to help me remember my thought. usually i do this on my phone (since i’m usually reading on my phone). sometimes i also go through the entire post and write stuff like “delete” as an instruction to delete a section.

>>> And if you're reading without thinking enough to have thoughts to reply, and going "I'd totally reply if I took this seriously, which I'll do on a second reading later", that's bad.
>>>
>>> And people save stuff they don't really want to reply to for later, imagining somehow (magically) they will want to do it later. (What will change? Blank out.)
>>
>> If you genuinely don’t have time to reply for some reason, then you don’t really have time to read properly either.
>
> I don't get this.
>
> Is it because you think proper reading involves thinking up replies?
>
> How long do you think it should take to read properly?
>
> It can take me an hour to write a reply to a fairly short email. I can read & think about an email faster than that. But actually writing out a reply is harder for me.
>
> Should I not be reading at all if I don’t have that time?

no. often i read FI even if i have just a minute.

so for example i may decide that i’m done with an FI post. or i may decide that i’m going to mark the post unread so that i give it another go when i have more time. or i may decide that i’m going to start a draft and make a some notes (which may take only 1 minute).

> Or should I be starting drafts every time I read emails? So then even if I don’t have the time to reply, I at least have something started.

do you mean that you should start drafts every time you read an email and want to reply?

— Rami

[Kate Sams]

what exactly is “shit” which you would write when you were new? stuff you didn’t think thru very well? how are half formed ideas different than vague ideas?

Like when I wrote about “fake negative” in the other thread, I would call that a half formed idea. There was a feeling that if I would have thought about it more, there might be more to understand there. I could sense this lack of a really “solid” understanding. Doesn’t that mean there is some vagueness there?

But I posted the “fake negative” idea anyways. Then comments were made about “fake negative”. I thought “ya, ‘fake negative’ isn’t right, I gotta think about this more.” So I did and created a much clearer understanding of the issue. I thought this process worked out fine and am not persuaded that I shouldn’t have posted it.

But in the “Vague Ideas” thread, on Apr 3, 2016, at 4:38 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> fuck vague ideas. focus on stuff where you know what you're saying/thinking. talk about that. if you don't know what a sentence means, stop being interested in it. it'd be better to post only sentences where you do know what they say.

and

> And you should say stuff where you actually know what you mean. Don't jump ahead to stuff where you get lost and confused. You will learn more when you say stuff you can deal with well, rather than just throwing confused vague words out there.


How is what you are talking about here different than half formed ideas?

Suppose someone didn’t understand static memes well, but talked about them. They only had a partial understanding of them. In this case, it’d be better for them to not talk about static memes at all.

Do you think this is different than when someone has half formed ideas (a partial understanding) and talks about them?

One thing that could be different is that the *purpose* of posting your half formed ideas could be to get help on figuring them out. While if you are just randomly talking about concepts which you don’t understand without the focused purpose of figuring them out, then that’s a mistake.

If there is confusion or vagueness or unclarity with any of the words or concepts that you are using, then your purpose should be to figure that out or else just don’t talk about it.

And it’s possible to work thru that vagueness and confusion by using about concepts that you do understand.


I have another thought.

On Apr 3, 2016, at 2:23 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> But you aren't going to learn much in that case cuz you were just saying vague crap.
>
> It'd be much better if you said at the beginning that you're just saying vague crap and won't learn much from criticism.

Unless vague crap is hugely different than half formed ideas or writing shit that you haven’t completely thought thru, I think you CAN learn from writing your vague crap.

But the key needs to be that your *purpose* is to understand the vague crap better. So you ask questions about it. And explain your current partial understanding on it. And present your goal of wanting to get more clarity on it.

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 4, 2016, at 6:12 AM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 4, 2016, at 2:16 AM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 3, 2016, at 10:11 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mar 25, 2016, at 2:51 AM, 'Alan Forrester' via Fallible Ideas <fallibl...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 25 Mar 2016, at 03:48, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 23, 2016, at 12:14 AM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I started a couple of different threads, and now I have several different replies in both of them. I don’t know how to choose what to reply to.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I know that I can just reply to anything, and that would be better than nothing. And that is what I plan on doing. But I am wondering how other people have solved this problem. Does anyone have a strategy that they use to keep track of emails and figure out which ones to reply to?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you just reply as you go along? Do you read through all the emails first, then go back and reply to the ones you think are best?
>>>>>
>>>>> I reply as I go along. I think that's important. If you read something and save it for later, then you have to reread it and you'll have different ideas than the first time. If you want to reread something important, great, but that doesn't substitute for the first reading, it's a different thing.
>>>>
>>>> Doing the reply on the first reading gives you less of a chance to lie to yourself about what you thought the first time. Replying on the first reading exposes more flaws.
>>>
>>> Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some time and think them through before I write an email.
>>
>> i frequently just write shit for list. learn in discussion, instead of trying to do it b4. i think this is good. if i'm learning in a good way, it'll work fine. if i'm learning in a bad way, doing that silently alone would be worse. i'd want to reveal how i'm fucking up learning and get criticism!
>>
>> i did this when i was new, too. don't think it's just something i can get away with because i already know a bunch.
>
> what exactly is “shit” which you would write when you were new? stuff you didn’t think thru very well? how are half formed ideas different than vague ideas?

"shit" means "stuff". do you know the phrase "get shit done"? do you think this is a regional vocabulary difference? i'd be somewhat surprised if it is within the US.

the OED has definition 3b for "shit"

> orig. *U.S.* Things, stuff, *esp.* personal belongings (freq. with a possessive adjective).

or do you know "shit" means "stuff", and you'd ask the same question anyway? i can't tell. your text is unclear to me.

from what i can tell your question has something to do with my posting history. why don't you just read some of it and look for whatever it is you want to know? why are you asking me?

> Like when I wrote about “fake negative” in the other thread, I would call that a half formed idea. There was a feeling that if I would have thought about it more, there might be more to understand there. I could sense this lack of a really “solid” understanding. Doesn’t that mean there is some vagueness there?
>
> But I posted the “fake negative” idea anyways. Then comments were made about “fake negative”. I thought “ya, ‘fake negative’ isn’t right, I gotta think about this more.” So I did and created a much clearer understanding of the issue. I thought this process worked out fine and am not persuaded that I shouldn’t have posted it.

you should never post some text where you don't know what that text means, and it's your text. you can post text you don't understand if it's a quotation.

the broad general picture is you should go the edge of your clear understanding (no further) and work from there, using only steps that make sense to you at the time you do them.

> But in the “Vague Ideas” thread, on Apr 3, 2016, at 4:38 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> fuck vague ideas. focus on stuff where you know what you're saying/thinking. talk about that. if you don't know what a sentence means, stop being interested in it. it'd be better to post only sentences where you do know what they say.
>
> and
>
>> And you should say stuff where you actually know what you mean. Don't jump ahead to stuff where you get lost and confused. You will learn more when you say stuff you can deal with well, rather than just throwing confused vague words out there.
>
>
> How is what you are talking about here different than half formed ideas?
>
> Suppose someone didn’t understand static memes well, but talked about them. They only had a partial understanding of them. In this case, it’d be better for them to not talk about static memes at all.

you can (and should) say only things you do understand, now, to help learn about a topic you don't know everything about.

an example from Heroes of the Storm:

say you understand several roles for heroes. you know what they are, how to play them, why they work, etc. let's call two roles "backline" and "midline". you are clear on them.

then Greymane comes out. he's a shapeshifter hero. sometimes he has a ranged attack, but sometimes he has a melee attack.

at first you don't understand Greymane. you don't know what his role in the game is. you don't know how to think about him or how to play him.

you might ask someone a question like, "Do you think of Greymane as more of a backline or midline character?"

here you are saying something about a topic you don't understand yet (Greymane). but you clearly understand every word of what you said. you know what you're asking.


it's not necessary to go understand Greymane on your own before discussing him. you can learn about him in discussion. if you try to figure it out on your own before talking about it, that's actually super anti-discussion. it tries to do most of the learning in a pre-discussion phase, and relegates discussion to a secondary relatively unimportant role for after you already know a lot.

there's no need to ever say any nonsense, vagueness, stuff you don't understand, etc, etc, just because you are talking about a topic where you don't have all the answers.

it's *really bad* to

1) say anything where you don't know what you mean (clearly, well)

2) have methods of learning that are anti-discussion via having a major pre-discussion phase where you try to learn a lot of stuff before you'll discuss anything.

basically one can and should always be able to discuss something, now, while saying only things one understands clearly.

and if you're using ideas where you don't know what you mean, doing it alone won't help. they are just as bad alone as they are in a discussion.

the right methods are fundamentally the same alone or in discussion. (which implies you can always discuss right away). having different methods for discussion-with-others and self-discussion is really bad. reason is reason. it should be the same.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[anonymous FI]

On Apr 4, 2016, at 15:49 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:


> you should never post some text where you don't know what that text
> means, and it's your text. you can post text you don't understand if
> it's a quotation.
>
> the broad general picture is you should go the edge of your clear
> understanding (no further) and work from there, using only steps that
> make sense to you at the time you do them.

i am confused about this.

i am not sure how to write about it.

i have thoughts about it that are kind of confused and i’m not sure
about them.

i don’t know what it means to only write about stuff that you
understand well. like, right now i am trying to write about something
that i don’t understand. and i don’t know how to do that using your
advice.

you gave an example of talking about something you are unsure about.
your example seemed fine to me. but it seemed a lot more straightforward
than the issues i have. i don’t know how your idea would look with
more complicated ideas.

i have this idea that it is possible to write about ideas i am unclear
about if each individual thing i say makes sense to me. and that can
include writing half-formed thoughts i have if i am clear about the fact
that i am trying to understand them. that i am not sure about them. if i
do that it seems similar to using quotations of things that i don’t
understand. like, i can give my half-formed thoughts as quotations, and
ask if they make sense.

but i don’t think that is what you mean. or if it is, it’s not clear
to me. because in other posts you have said that people shouldn’t say
vague ideas at all. even if they say that the ideas are vague. that it
is better to say they are vague than to say the ideas without saying
they are vague. but that it would be even better to say the vague ideas
at all.

like on April 2, 2016 at 11:23pm in the thread Vague Ideas you said:

> It'd be much better if you said at the beginning that you're just
> saying vague crap and won't learn much from criticism.
>

> In that case it's also generally better to ask more questions instead
> of asserting stuff.
>
> And better to keep things simpler and say stuff you do understand,
> rather than overreaching and trying to say more complex stuff that you
> don't understand. If you don't know what something means, just don't
> say it. Say stuff that isn't vague in your mind and work with that and
> make progress from there.

and

> focus on writing short posts using concepts where you actually know
> what you mean. that's way better than sending vague stuff.

i take that to mean that it would be better to not say stuff that seems
vague to you at all. even if you are clear that you are talking about
vague stuff that you aren’t sure about. which i think would apply to
this post that i am writing. because i say stuff in it that feels vague
to me. but i don’t know how to talk about this stuff better.

> 2) have methods of learning that are anti-discussion via having a
> major pre-discussion phase where you try to learn a lot of stuff
> before you'll discuss anything.

this is what i normally do. i don’t know how to talk about things in
words before i understand them better. i will read about things and try
to think them through before i discuss them with other people or even
write them down. sometimes i will be able to write some parts of the
ideas down in bullet points. but they won’t be clear full thoughts.

> basically one can and should always be able to discuss something, now,
> while saying only things one understands clearly.

i really don’t know how this works. in the example you gave the person
had a question that they could ask. the question made sense and used
ideas they already knew. they asked how those ideas applied to this new
case.

but when i have things that i don’t understand i have ideas that i
don’t even know how to put into words. i can sort of half think of
them. and try to describe them. but i don’t always know how to connect
them to things that i already understand. maybe i am just thinking
wrong.

if i think about them more i can figure out how to connect them to
things i already understand. but sometimes that takes time. and that is
what i do in the pre-discussion phase. i don’t know how to do that in
discussion with someone else without saying things that are muddled to
me.

> and if you're using ideas where you don't know what you mean, doing it
> alone won't help. they are just as bad alone as they are in a
> discussion.
>
> the right methods are fundamentally the same alone or in discussion.
> (which implies you can always discuss right away). having different
> methods for discussion-with-others and self-discussion is really bad.
> reason is reason. it should be the same.

i don’t know how to do them the same. i can think without using words
and sentences. i don’t know exactly how it works. but i can think
about things without being able to say in words exactly what i am
thinking. i can’t discuss with other people without using words.

lots of my thinking is in words. but i know there are things that i
think about that i can’t put into words. i mostly notice this when i
am learning something new that i am confused about. when i am thinking
about something i don’t understand well.

[Kate Sams]

Since it makes sense to you, would you say that for each individual thing you say you know what you mean (clearly, well)?

even if you are unclear on the overall ideas which you are trying to piece together and you feel vagueness?

> and that can
> include writing half-formed thoughts i have if i am clear about the fact
> that i am trying to understand them. that i am not sure about them.

i agree with this. if I am clear on my purpose of trying to understand vague and confusing stuff in my mind, i think writing about half-formed thoughts is possible and helpful in creating a clearer understanding.

My guess is that half-formed thoughts are not a problem, as long as each individual thing you say makes sense to you. You need to understand the reason *why* you said what you did. You need to know *where you were going with something you said* when working thru the vagueness and confusion.

Like most of this is a bit unclear to me. I don’t feel like I have a good understanding of what Elliot is talking about, and it feels sorta vague in my mind right now. But each sentence I say here makes sense to me as a part of my **process** of trying to think thru my unclear ideas. even if I feel an overall vagueness and lack a solid understanding of these ideas.

…

> like on April 2, 2016 at 11:23pm in the thread Vague Ideas you said:
>
>> It'd be much better if you said at the beginning that you're just
>> saying vague crap and won't learn much from criticism.
>>
>> In that case it's also generally better to ask more questions instead
>> of asserting stuff.
>>
>> And better to keep things simpler and say stuff you do understand,
>> rather than overreaching and trying to say more complex stuff that you
>> don't understand. If you don't know what something means, just don't
>> say it. Say stuff that isn't vague in your mind and work with that and
>> make progress from there.

I don’t understand this last line and it seems to contradict my idea about how it’s ok (and I think *good*) to work thru confusing, vague, and unclear ideas via discussion.

Unless Elliot means only say stuff where the individual things you say make sense to you and you know what you mean by them as you try to work thru your vague confusion? is that it?

> and
>
>> focus on writing short posts using concepts where you actually know
>> what you mean. that's way better than sending vague stuff.
>
> i take that to mean that it would be better to not say stuff that seems
> vague to you at all. even if you are clear that you are talking about
> vague stuff that you aren’t sure about. which i think would apply to
> this post that i am writing. because i say stuff in it that feels vague
> to me. but i don’t know how to talk about this stuff better.

my best guess at this point is that feeling vague and confused on the topic (which is how I also feel right now) is different than writing stuff where you don’t know what you mean. it’s important that each individual thing you say makes sense to you.

I can’t think of any other way to get from half-formed, vague, unclear ideas —> formed, well-understood, clear ideas other than via discussion and thinking (self-discussion).

Ideas don’t just automatically start out fully formed and clear.

So my guess is the problem comes from saying words and phrases and concepts where you don’t really know what you mean and each individual thing does not make sense to you.

Like if someone says “Why did you say it like that?”, you should be able to give an answer to explain why you were coming at the problem the way you were, even if you were way off.

But what I still don’t understand is what if that knowledge needed to explain why something makes sense to you or what exactly you mean by something is hard to put into words? then I guess keep thinking until you can get some words down which can be criticized.

[Kate Sams]

On Apr 4, 2016, at 6:49 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> On Apr 4, 2016, at 6:12 AM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 4, 2016, at 2:16 AM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 3, 2016, at 10:11 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some time and think them through before I write an email.
>>>
>>> i frequently just write shit for list. learn in discussion, instead of trying to do it b4. i think this is good. if i'm learning in a good way, it'll work fine. if i'm learning in a bad way, doing that silently alone would be worse. i'd want to reveal how i'm fucking up learning and get criticism!
>>>
>>> i did this when i was new, too. don't think it's just something i can get away with because i already know a bunch.
>>
>> what exactly is “shit” which you would write when you were new? stuff you didn’t think thru very well? how are half formed ideas different than vague ideas?
>
> "shit" means "stuff”.

Are you calling it “shit” because it's stuff you didn’t think thru very well?

That’s my best guess, but I wanted to clarify that.

Anon wrote how he likes to take some time to think thru his ideas before writing an email. And your response was “i frequently just write shit for list”. My impression is that you are saying you learn IN discussion rather than putting in a lot of thought pre-discussion.

What are the upsides of writing stuff you don’t think thru very well, especially for someone new?

What are the downsides of writing stuff you don’t think thru very well, especially for someone new?

Does writing stuff you didn’t think thru very well conflict with the idea of only saying things you understand clearly?

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 5, 2016, at 1:52 PM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 4, 2016, at 6:49 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 4, 2016, at 6:12 AM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 4, 2016, at 2:16 AM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Apr 3, 2016, at 10:11 PM, anonymous FI <anonymousfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Is it bad to want to think about something before you reply? Sometimes I have some ideas that seem kind if half formed, and I want to take some time and think them through before I write an email.
>>>>
>>>> i frequently just write shit for list. learn in discussion, instead of trying to do it b4. i think this is good. if i'm learning in a good way, it'll work fine. if i'm learning in a bad way, doing that silently alone would be worse. i'd want to reveal how i'm fucking up learning and get criticism!
>>>>
>>>> i did this when i was new, too. don't think it's just something i can get away with because i already know a bunch.
>>>
>>> what exactly is “shit” which you would write when you were new? stuff you didn’t think thru very well? how are half formed ideas different than vague ideas?
>>
>> "shit" means "stuff”.
>
> Are you calling it “shit” because it's stuff you didn’t think thru very well?
>
> That’s my best guess, but I wanted to clarify that.

no. if i meant that, i would not have clarified the meaning as "stuff". the word "stuff" does not imply or suggest inadequate thinking.

your "best guess" here makes no sense.

focusing on getting misled by me using one word in line with the OED doesn't seem productive to me.

i already posted at some length about what i mean, what my point is, on this topic. you are trying to interpret me in line with some of your thinking that i disagree with. you're doing this contrary to both my position on the topic, and my specific clarification of this wording.

> Anon wrote how he likes to take some time to think thru his ideas before writing an email. And your response was “i frequently just write shit for list”. My impression is that you are saying you learn IN discussion rather than putting in a lot of thought pre-discussion.

learning in discussion has nothing to do with not thinking things through or saying vague nonsense. you have a false dichotomy in your mind. you're trying to read *implications* of what i said, according to your views that i've been arguing against. i dispute they are implications.

you can think in discussion.

you can say things you have thought through, without stopping to think pre-discussion, by keeping your initial statements simple.

lots of options here.

> What are the upsides of writing stuff you don’t think thru very well, especially for someone new?
>
> What are the downsides of writing stuff you don’t think thru very well, especially for someone new?
>
> Does writing stuff you didn’t think thru very well conflict with the idea of only saying things you understand clearly?

this stuff is all wrong. the whole way of thinking of it is no good.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 5, 2016, at 3:14 AM, anonymous FI wrote:

> On Apr 4, 2016, at 15:49 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>
>> you should never post some text where you don't know what that text means, and it's your text. you can post text you don't understand if it's a quotation.
>>
>> the broad general picture is you should go the edge of your clear understanding (no further) and work from there, using only steps that make sense to you at the time you do them.
>
>
>> you can (and should) say only things you do understand, now, to help learn about a topic you don't know everything about.
>>
>> an example from Heroes of the Storm:
>>
>> say you understand several roles for heroes. you know what they are, how to play them, why they work, etc. let's call two roles "backline" and "midline". you are clear on them.
>>
>> then Greymane comes out. he's a shapeshifter hero. sometimes he has a ranged attack, but sometimes he has a melee attack.
>>
>> at first you don't understand Greymane. you don't know what his role in the game is. you don't know how to think about him or how to play him.
>>
>> you might ask someone a question like, "Do you think of Greymane as more of a backline or midline character?"
>>
>> here you are saying something about a topic you don't understand yet (Greymane). but you clearly understand every word of what you said. you know what you're asking.
>>
>>
>> it's not necessary to go understand Greymane on your own before discussing him. you can learn about him in discussion. if you try to figure it out on your own before talking about it, that's actually super anti-discussion. it tries to do most of the learning in a pre-discussion phase, and relegates discussion to a secondary relatively unimportant role for after you already know a lot.
>>
>> there's no need to ever say any nonsense, vagueness, stuff you don't understand, etc, etc, just because you are talking about a topic where you don't have all the answers.
>>
>> it's *really bad* to
>>
>> 1) say anything where you don't know what you mean (clearly, well)
>
> i am confused about this.
>
> i am not sure how to write about it.
>
> i have thoughts about it that are kind of confused and i’m not sure about them.
>
> i don’t know what it means to only write about stuff that you understand well. like, right now i am trying to write about something that i don’t understand. and i don’t know how to do that using your advice.
>
> you gave an example of talking about something you are unsure about. your example seemed fine to me. but it seemed a lot more straightforward than the issues i have. i don’t know how your idea would look with more complicated ideas.
>
> i have this idea that it is possible to write about ideas i am unclear about if each individual thing i say makes sense to me. and that can include writing half-formed thoughts i have if i am clear about the fact that i am trying to understand them. that i am not sure about them. if i do that it seems similar to using quotations of things that i don’t understand. like, i can give my half-formed thoughts as quotations, and ask if they make sense.
>
> but i don’t think that is what you mean. or if it is, it’s not clear to me. because in other posts you have said that people shouldn’t say vague ideas at all. even if they say that the ideas are vague. that it is better to say they are vague than to say the ideas without saying they are vague. but that it would be even better to say the vague ideas at all.

putting half-formed thoughts in quotations is ok.

but in the bigger picture, you should de-emphasize vague thoughts in your thinking. you should adjust how you think to have fewer vague thoughts and to give them less attention.

what replaces vague thoughts? clear, simpler thoughts. lots of confusion comes from being overly ambitious. it works better to start simple, get things mostly right, and build on that with small, simple steps. this keeps the amount of error much lower.

> like on April 2, 2016 at 11:23pm in the thread Vague Ideas you said:
>
>> It'd be much better if you said at the beginning that you're just saying vague crap and won't learn much from criticism.
>>
>> In that case it's also generally better to ask more questions instead of asserting stuff.
>>
>> And better to keep things simpler and say stuff you do understand, rather than overreaching and trying to say more complex stuff that you don't understand. If you don't know what something means, just don't say it. Say stuff that isn't vague in your mind and work with that and make progress from there.
>
> and
>
>> focus on writing short posts using concepts where you actually know what you mean. that's way better than sending vague stuff.
>
> i take that to mean that it would be better to not say stuff that seems vague to you at all. even if you are clear that you are talking about vague stuff that you aren’t sure about. which i think would apply to this post that i am writing. because i say stuff in it that feels vague to me. but i don’t know how to talk about this stuff better.

vague stuff isn't very productive. there's better places to direct your attention.

i think you may be mixing up:

1) confusion or vagueness about a topic overall

2) confused or vague individual thoughts or statements

i see how you'd have (1) while writing your post. but as i read your post, i'm not seeing much (2). it seems like you're taking the topic and approaching it with a bunch of conservative statements where you know what you mean and understand what your sentences say. and i think focusing on that – keeping it simple, avoiding overreach, asking questions you understand, stating things you do know about – is much more productive than saying some vague confused big stuff.

>> 2) have methods of learning that are anti-discussion via having a major pre-discussion phase where you try to learn a lot of stuff before you'll discuss anything.
>
> this is what i normally do. i don’t know how to talk about things in words before i understand them better. i will read about things and try to think them through before i discuss them with other people or even write them down. sometimes i will be able to write some parts of the ideas down in bullet points. but they won’t be clear full thoughts.

you can ask things like, "i don't know what X is. so i don't know how to talk about it yet. how does it relate to stuff i do know about? can you explain X in terms of things i already understand?"

just ask for what you want. if no one wants to provide it, ok, no problem, go read stuff. and i have nothing against reading a bunch. but if discussion is available that offers what you ask for then that'd be good. doing both discussion and reading, instead of just reading, has advantages. more back-and-forth can get some misconceptions found and addressed faster. and in a discussion you can get answers targeted to your questions.

i don't really get what people find hard about asking for what they want. confused about a topic and don't know how to talk about it or what to do, besides give up on discussion? ASK. say that and ask if the other guy knows how to proceed with the discussion and make it work. if you need some kinda guidance to proceed, ask for it. if no one in the discussion knows, then ok try something else. but lots of times people will have some replies that can help you proceed.

>> basically one can and should always be able to discuss something, now, while saying only things one understands clearly.
>
> i really don’t know how this works. in the example you gave the person had a question that they could ask. the question made sense and used ideas they already knew. they asked how those ideas applied to this new case.

if you don't know how to proceed like i'm saying, you could ask about approaches to learning this discussion skill. that's a next step that you can talk about, now. right? what's hard about that? or if you're vague on what this discussion skill is, and how it could help, then you could ask for an explanation of what it is before talking about how to learn it.

> but when i have things that i don’t understand i have ideas that i don’t even know how to put into words.

try using *only* the ideas you can put into words and seeing what kinda productive stuff you can accomplish. focus on just the clear stuff. it's better.

> i can sort of half think of them. and try to describe them. but i don’t always know how to connect them to things that i already understand. maybe i am just thinking wrong.
>
> if i think about them more i can figure out how to connect them to things i already understand. but sometimes that takes time. and that is what i do in the pre-discussion phase. i don’t know how to do that in discussion with someone else without saying things that are muddled to me.

consider all your non-muddled tools and try to see what you can accomplish with those. i think it's more than you realize. and it'd end up really productive b/c you wouldn't spend any time dealing with muddles. you'd just deal with easy, clear stuff for each step. so the steps forward you do would go way smoother.

>> and if you're using ideas where you don't know what you mean, doing it alone won't help. they are just as bad alone as they are in a discussion.

self-discussion is discussion.

>> the right methods are fundamentally the same alone or in discussion. (which implies you can always discuss right away). having different methods for discussion-with-others and self-discussion is really bad. reason is reason. it should be the same.
>
> i don’t know how to do them the same. i can think without using words and sentences. i don’t know exactly how it works. but i can think about things without being able to say in words exactly what i am thinking. i can’t discuss with other people without using words.
>
> lots of my thinking is in words. but i know there are things that i think about that i can’t put into words. i mostly notice this when i am learning something new that i am confused about. when i am thinking about something i don’t understand well.

try paying way less attention to your *vague* hunches, emotions, intuitions, etc. pay more attention to the things that make more sense and have a more well-defined and actionable meaning.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Elliot Temple]

On Apr 5, 2016, at 1:21 PM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 5, 2016, at 6:14 AM, 'anonymous FI' anonymousfa...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 4, 2016, at 15:49 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

>> like on April 2, 2016 at 11:23pm in the thread Vague Ideas [Elliot] said:

(please don't give attribution lines with "you" instead of someone's name. it gets really unclear to track who wrote it once it's in quoting.)

>>> And better to keep things simpler and say stuff you do understand,
>>> rather than overreaching and trying to say more complex stuff that you
>>> don't understand. If you don't know what something means, just don't
>>> say it. Say stuff that isn't vague in your mind and work with that and
>>> make progress from there.
>
> I don’t understand this last line and it seems to contradict my idea about how it’s ok (and I think *good*) to work thru confusing, vague, and unclear ideas via discussion.

stop spending your time focused on your own vague, confused bullshit. focus on the better parts of yourself and make progress with them.

> Unless Elliot means only say stuff where the individual things you say make sense to you and you know what you mean by them as you try to work thru your vague confusion? is that it?

why are you even trying to work through the vague confusion? stop spending your life focused on the worst within you.

why not pick a productive, clear goal that you understand and work on that? do something good.

just because you thought something doesn't mean it's important. if you can't state a clear reason that your vague introspective topic is important, then work on a topic where you can make a clear argument it's a worthwhile topic.

>> and
>>
>>> focus on writing short posts using concepts where you actually know
>>> what you mean. that's way better than sending vague stuff.
>>
>> i take that to mean that it would be better to not say stuff that seems
>> vague to you at all. even if you are clear that you are talking about
>> vague stuff that you aren’t sure about. which i think would apply to
>> this post that i am writing. because i say stuff in it that feels vague
>> to me. but i don’t know how to talk about this stuff better.
>
> my best guess at this point is that feeling vague and confused on the topic (which is how I also feel right now) is different than writing stuff where you don’t know what you mean. it’s important that each individual thing you say makes sense to you.
>
> I can’t think of any other way to get from half-formed, vague, unclear ideas —> formed, well-understood, clear ideas other than via discussion and thinking (self-discussion).
>
> Ideas don’t just automatically start out fully formed and clear.

actually they do.

you guess stuff and you reject the bad ones (like the ones that are unclear).

some of the guesses are good ideas (including being clear), so they survive criticism.

you can think of the creative process kinda like: brainstorming a list of ideas, and then throwing out all the ones with flaws like being unclear, and keeping the ones that are already clear (and other good stuff like relevant).


it's like some genetic mutations create something good (now) and those are the ones that get anywhere. basically, every biological-evolution step to build up a complex feature (like an eye) has to itself be a good, sensible thing that works on its own.


if Joe told you an unclear idea, you wouldn't be like "oh hmm let me try to work with this and somehow make it'd good." you'd say it's not a helpful starting point. it doesn't have value. forget it and brainstorm some other ideas that actually make sense.

but when it's your own idea, you give it a special status. you guys like the smell of your own bullshit. you think it's important to ponder crap when it's your own.


if you have a vague thought, criticize it for being vague, reject it, and move on.

the only reason to pay attention to it is if you have an argument – that is clear and sensible and you can defend in debate right now – that you should try to develop that particular vague idea further. some clear reason it's promising or important in some way. you also need to have a process for approaching the vague idea which you understand, which makes sense, and which has some clear path to being productive.

in general you have no such argument for why and how to approach your vague ideas. so forget about them and focus your attention on stuff that matters such as meaningful ideas.

in general you should be working on problems where you know what the problem is and why it matters (clearly, now). vague crap, like superstition, never helps anything.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com
www.curi.us

[Justin Mallone]

On Apr 8, 2016, at 6:51 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> On Apr 5, 2016, at 3:14 AM, anonymous FI wrote:
>
>> On Apr 4, 2016, at 15:49 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> you should never post some text where you don't know what that text means, and it's your text. you can post text you don't understand if it's a quotation.
>>>
>>> the broad general picture is you should go the edge of your clear understanding (no further) and work from there, using only steps that make sense to you at the time you do them.

...

>>> there's no need to ever say any nonsense, vagueness, stuff you don't understand, etc, etc, just because you are talking about a topic where you don't have all the answers.
>>>
>>> it's *really bad* to

...

>>> 2) have methods of learning that are anti-discussion via having a major pre-discussion phase where you try to learn a lot of stuff before you'll discuss anything.
>>
>> this is what i normally do. i don’t know how to talk about things in words before i understand them better. i will read about things and try to think them through before i discuss them with other people or even write them down. sometimes i will be able to write some parts of the ideas down in bullet points. but they won’t be clear full thoughts.
>
> you can ask things like, "i don't know what X is. so i don't know how to talk about it yet. how does it relate to stuff i do know about? can you explain X in terms of things i already understand?"
>
> just ask for what you want. if no one wants to provide it, ok, no problem, go read stuff. and i have nothing against reading a bunch. but if discussion is available that offers what you ask for then that'd be good. doing both discussion and reading, instead of just reading, has advantages. more back-and-forth can get some misconceptions found and addressed faster. and in a discussion you can get answers targeted to your questions.
>
> i don't really get what people find hard about asking for what they want. confused about a topic and don't know how to talk about it or what to do, besides give up on discussion? ASK. say that and ask if the other guy knows how to proceed with the discussion and make it work. if you need some kinda guidance to proceed, ask for it. if no one in the discussion knows, then ok try something else. but lots of times people will have some replies that can help you proceed.

I think a lot of people don’t wanna ask for what they want cuz they are afraid of bothering other people.

Maybe they don’t see why anyone would be interested in replying to their question. So they don’t ask it, cuz they don’t want to be a bother.

I do not know whether anon has this problem. But I think it is a common enough thing that someone on the list probably has this problem.

If your question is interesting enough to you for you to want to ask it, then maybe it will be interesting enough for someone to reply to. Maybe it won’t be, but why not give it a chance?

You might not get the exact sort of reply you expected, though. You should be open to that.

Like, you might ask a question, and then get asked what problem you are trying to solve, or why you wrote the question in one way and not another.

Maybe if people have an attitude of seeing any given question they ask as a potential jumping off point to a thousand related topics, instead of only thinking about responses within a very narrow set of possible subject matter, then they’ll see how their questions could be valuable more easily. And post more without worrying about being a bother.

-JM

[anonymous FI]

one reason people don’t want to ask questions is because other people
can be mean. sometimes other people will be mean to you if you ask a
question they think you could have just looked up yourself.

there are things like the website let me google that for you:
http://lmgtfy.com

i think people use that to make fun of the person who asked the
question.

the definition for “letmegooglethatforyou” in urban dictionary is:

> let me google that for you, meaning, "Holy fucking shit. Google that
> yourself. Don't fucking ask me."

people get mad if you ask them questions that they think you should have
just googled yourself. they think you are bothering them.

> You might not get the exact sort of reply you expected, though. You
> should be open to that.
>
> Like, you might ask a question, and then get asked what problem you
> are trying to solve, or why you wrote the question in one way and not
> another.

that is another reason people don’t like asking questions.

sometimes someone will think that they will probably get criticized if
they ask a certain question. if they ask how to do something, other
people might ask why they want to do that thing. or tell them that doing
it is a bad idea.

they don’t want to discuss if it is a good idea or not. they just want
to know how to do it.

> Maybe if people have an attitude of seeing any given question they ask
> as a potential jumping off point to a thousand related topics, instead
> of only thinking about responses within a very narrow set of possible
> subject matter, then they’ll see how their questions could be
> valuable more easily. And post more without worrying about being a
> bother.

yes, i agree.

if someone wants to learn about how to live their life better in
general, then asking questions in a place where you can get criticism is
really valuable. and it would be valuable to the other people reading
the list, not just the person who originally asked the question.

[Kate Sams]

On Jul 8, 2016, at 6:18 AM, 'Jordan Talcot' jordan...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> i care about what people see and think of my process. not what my
> process actually is. that is second handed
>
> i want it to look like i learn more quickly than i do. like i make less
> mistakes than i actually do. that is faking reality.
>
> i think i may also want to fake reality to myself. if i make a mistake
> privately, it is easier to lie to myself about it. i can pretend that it
> was less of a mistake than it really was
>
>
> there are practical issues that are affected by people seeing my process
> and my mistakes tho. people treat me differently when i show my
> ignorance.
>
> usually i write posts about things that i am already good at and know
> how to explain. people think i am a good poster when i post as myself.
> (i know this from feedback.)
>
> but then when i post my problems as anon, people treat me completely
> differently. they think i am dumb. they don’t think i know what i am
> talking about.
>
>
> i accidentally sent an anon reply as myself earlier. i didn’t mean to
> do that. i am sending this one as myself too. it is a reply to the same
> thing, so i think it will be obvious it is still me. so there is no
> point trying to hide it.
>
> overall it is a good thing. it is good for me to not hide. it would have
> been better if i had just sent as myself in the first place, instead of
> being afraid.
>
> it is good for other people to see too. the people who think Jordan is
> smart and the anon is stupid. they all have problems too. they just
> aren’t writing about them as honestly

how does that logically follow? why would ppl who think Jordan is smart and anon stupid be the ones who aren’t writing about their own problems as honestly?

one thing that’s good for others to see is someone being honest, especially since ppl lie to themselves a lot. mb you meant something like that.

something to consider tho is that *they* shouldn’t really concern you. if you want some advice from a fellow secondhander who’s working on this nasty problem, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT THEM. don’t go down that road of “they just aren’t writing about them as honestly (as I am).”

i don’t know if there was any tiny bits of secondhanded thinking in what you wrote or not. probably not. but just FYI, watch for times when you find yourself comparing yourself to other people, especially since you know that you have some secondhandedness in you.

hypothetically, let’s say you were doing that. do you see how that’s like exchanging one image you wanted ppl to think “smart Jordan” and replacing it with another image you wanted ppl to think “honest, rational Jordan”.

can anyone find any FH quotes related to this? like how Keating compares himself to other men, while Roark compares himself to his own standards. i remember reading something recently, but i don’t know where.


also, do you have a plan to try to address your secondhandedness? what do you think of Rand?

[Jordan Talcot]

On Jul 8, 2016, at 6:15 AM, Kate Sams <ksam...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jul 8, 2016, at 6:18 AM, 'Jordan Talcot' jordan...@gmail.com
> [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>> it is good for other people to see too. the people who think Jordan
>> is
>> smart and the anon is stupid. they all have problems too. they just
>> aren’t writing about them as honestly
>
> how does that logically follow? why would ppl who think Jordan is
> smart and anon stupid be the ones who aren’t writing about their own
> problems as honestly?

because no one on here is writing about their own problems honestly.
except maybe elliot. everyone else is much much worse than elliot.

some people write about their problems, but you can tell from their
emails that they aren’t being honest.

other people just don’t write about their own problems. but i know
they must have bad problems they aren’t writing about. otherwise they
would be better.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jul 8, 2016, at 2:13 AM, 'Jordan Talcot' jordan...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> On Apr 24, 2016, at 15:35 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us
> [fallible-ideas] <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 24, 2016, at 2:28 AM, 'anonymous FI'
>> anonymousfa...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
>> <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr 9, 2016, at 15:08 PM, Elliot Temple cu...@curi.us
>>> [fallible-ideas]
>>> <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Apr 5, 2016, at 9:35 PM, 'anonymous FI'
>>>> anonymousfa...@gmail.com [fallible-ideas]
>>>> <fallibl...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>>> for my current problem about showing my process: i think that i
>>> don’t
>>> like the idea of writing emails partly because i don’t want people
>>> to
>>> see my mistakes.
>>>
>>> showing my process seems even worse than writing emails. it gives
>>> people
>>> even more opportunities to see my mistakes. i have even less ability
>>> to
>>> correct the mistakes before they see. i would rather just show the
>>> world
>>> a more polished product. i don’t want them to see the process.
>>
>> do you care if people see OLD mistakes? does it bother you if the
>> mistake is obsolete? do you still care after you fix that mistake?
>
> yes
>
> maybe if the mistake was from like 15 years ago i wouldn’t mind people
> seeing it. but i don’t want people to see recent mistakes, even if
> i’ve fixed them.
>
>> are you worried people will see mistakes and you'll be stuck and keep
>> doing the same mistakes?
>
> i don’t think so
>
> i don’t want them to see mistakes at all, even if i think i will be
> able to change and stop doing those mistakes.

your attitude sucks.

are you aware you’re a people? do you try hide mistakes from yourself too, or just from other ppl? that is, are you trying to never learn anything, or just never get any help with learning from anyone else?

Elliot Temple
www.elliottemple.com

[Jordan Talcot]

i mostly think about hiding mistakes other people.

i assume i hide some things from myself. but i’m not as consciously
aware of that.

i sometimes notice that i was stopping myself from thinking things. but
that usually comes up when i want to stop myself from *saying* them - it
is easier to not say things if i just block myself from thinking them in
the first place.

> that is, are you trying to never learn anything, or just never get any
> help with learning from anyone else?

i want to learn things on my own, privately.

that doesn’t work out well in practice tho. it is hard to learn
without being willing to talk things through or ask questions.

it is easier with something that has a lot of learning resources. like
programming or math or something. but even that is hard if you are
unwilling to publicly make mistakes.

learning FI without being willing to make public mistakes is even harder
though.

Jordan

[anonymous FI]

On Mar 23, 2018, at 1:06 AM, Jordan Talcot <jordan...@gmail.com>
wrote:

how are you gonna fix this stuff? any leads on solutions? any obstacles
blocking ur attempted solutions that u want help with?