On Dec 28, 2014, at 6:40 PM, Elliot Temple <
cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> On Dec 27, 2014, at 2:47 PM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <
petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't say I'm wary of FI. I think FI is good. FI is like science applied to ideas and emotions and politics and more. It's applying the scientific method to human problems. And by "science" I mean the kind of science that actually leads to progress.
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>> I just find it really hard either to personally apply FI, or to understand it well enough to apply it myself.
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> so you mean you think stuff you don’t understand and don’t know how to get value from is good.
Yeah. I feel FI is good ("emotionally") and I don't have any logical "voice in my head" saying otherwise, so I think I'm thoroughly persuaded. Any issues with that description of what's going on inside me?
> you’re assuming a conclusion you don’t actually know.
Well, I'm not aware of a conflict inside me on this topic, so in what sense don't I know it? Is the issue that I don't "actually know" that FI is good because my understanding of it is so weak?
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> i very much doubt you make this mistake fully consistently.
I'm not sure what it would mean to think this way ("make this mistake", as you say) fully consistently. To paraphrase Oliver Heaviside, I don't know how digestion works but I still eat. I will sometimes use math theorems or computer science algorithms that I can't prove the correctness of. Is that related to wat you are saying here?
>> Also, it kind of depresses me when people here expect me to be able to answer a question that I don't know how to answer, which happens pretty often.
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> you’re wrong. people asking a question doesn’t tell you whether they expect you to be able to answer (to some particular standard you haven’t mentioned but have in mind).
Hmm, interesting. Why do people ask questions that they don't expect the "target" to be able to answer? I have a few guesses - maybe they want to show the target (or other people) that the target can't answer the question, or maybe they want to make a point to other people who do know the answer.
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>> I often feel like I get asked a calculus question in pre-algebra class. And I feel like I'm letting either them or myself down by saying "I don't know”.
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> that’s your idea, not theirs, and you’re basically blaming them and running into problems by putting (imagining) words in their mouths and ideas in their heads.
Sometimes I do think people's questions are unreasonable and blame them. Other times, though, I think they are reasonable, and it's me who lacks the necessary ability to look inside myself and give a good answer. I don't know why I sometimes think one way and sometimes the other.
>> But on the other hand if I embark on some project to get a better answer, who knows how long that will take? For now I've compromised on just answering the way I would if they asked me in person. That way at least the dialog can continue.
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> why didn’t you try asking stuff about how to deal with it? asking about methods?
I'm not very good at thinking about or asking about methods. The concept seems really foreign to me. Maybe because I don't see myself as doing things according to a method at present. But maybe that is a method in itself -- just a very inexplicit method? As I understand the word "method", I don't think I'm conscious of the methods I use in most areas of my life. When writing a program or a piece of music, I just kind of write it. When I play video games I'm also not aware of the "methods" I'm using. Well, one method is if I die I try not to get upset and just try again. Does that count as a method? It's all fuzzy and vague to me.
If anyone has recommendations on good ways for a beginner to get a handle on methods, I'm all ears.
>> I don't blame FI for my problems in learning FI. I blame myself.
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> Explicitly.
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> But in reality, maybe you do blame FI some and are now making it worse by carelessly lying about it with zero argument.
True - I can't rule out the possibility that I've lied to myself about it. It's easier to fool oneself when one's ideas aren't interlinked/integrated, and mine aren't.