Learning Report: 2020, week 34

Date: 2020-08-22

Analyzing Lies:
- Tutorials 28, 29, 30 are mostly reviewing Analyzing Lies material (28, 29 on LT’s comment and 30 on RSP’s).
- I’ve been watching more of the Analyzing Lies videos, a bit like podcasts. It’s been somewhat inconvenient trying to do the analysis before watching the videos b/c I can’t necessarily tell what’s safe to watch (no spoilers).
- I’ve been thinking about dishonesty, criticism, and when to apply criticism regarding dishonesty. There are significant differences between some instances of dishonesty and others, though I’m not clear what they are, yet.
I’ve been practicing some basic locksport (lock picking for recreation). I had some false starts getting in to it in highschool and a few years ago, but opened my first proper lock this week. I think it’s a skill where learning methodology can play a big role, so am curious to see how I go. I’m using this as a lower-effort way to spend time.
I’ve been having a discussion on LW about DD’s ideas from an AGI presentation. The discussion is particularly focused on epistemology though. MakoYass and I are sort of trying to understand more about each other’s point of view. The discussion feels relatively non-accusatory / non-debate-y which is good, but I think he’s overreaching a bit and not explaining Bayesian Epistemology very well. Part of that is reflected in his somewhat stream-of-conciousness style. I’ve provided a list of points re: CR which I think are points of difference between BE and CR, and brought up some ideas from yes/no philosophy like the goal-get-a-pet example. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bsteawFidASBXiywa/misc-raw-responses-to-a-tract-of-critical-rationalism
I started some analysis of Santa Claus is Coming to Town; it’s mostly about threatening children.
- I had some trouble with grammatical analysis, particularly that of “watch out” in “you better watch out” and the repeated “you better” throughout the chorus. I think I’ve come up with good explanations for what they mean though.
I got some feedback from Mum regarding How can we write to better communicate ideas? which I haven’t properly evaluated yet. She suggested cutting a bunch out, though, which I thought was funny considering the post was an expansion of my earlier version.

misc:

I wrote a python script to create standard learning report posts. (I didn’t really learn much (datetime’s isocalendar maybe?) but might be useful)
Time management has been somewhat poor, but I have got a few things done I needed to, like cleaning up my place and doing some tax stuff.

things I’m unhappy about:

I haven’t done any writing practice this week
I haven’t read more of The Choice

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