Chris Cal

Category: Uncategorized

  • Subjects Do Not Exist

    First of all, it is important to understand that academic subjects in general do not exist. This is a very important point. Academic subjects do not exist, but are instituted by universities. They are instituted by universities because universities have to pay their professors. And in order to pay their professors they have to appoint them. And so there has to be a certain fiction that one appoints a person who is an expert in a subject. And since he is supposed to be an expert in a subject, the subject itself must somehow exist. But all of this is a fiction. What really exist are problems—not subjects but problems. And when someone is interested in a problem and wants to solve it, then there is something that is really serious. Subjects, like history or economics, are merely conveniences for university administrators: they are really more or less arbitrarily chosen collections of problems that have been ordered merely for the purpose of administering universities and examining students!a function that I think a university should not fulfil, though that is another matter.

    – Karl Popper: Lecture on the Scientific Method

  • What is a Memory System?

    A spaced repetition system or better called a memory system is meant to test whether you can reconstruct an idea (what you want to understand deeper and remember) from a specific piece of information (a prompt) using your internal models (current understanding). A memory system is not a process for “putting information into a bucket.”

      • What is the goal of a memory system?
        To test whether you can reconstruct an idea.
      • In a memory system, what serves as the cue for reconstruction?
        A specific piece of information: the prompt.
      • In a memory system, reconstruction happens from what?
        Your internal models.

    Good prompts help you reconstruct from:

    1. A generative explanation
      A causal story: why the claim is true, what problem it solves, what makes alternatives fail.
    2. Problem-situations and triggers
      The kinds of situations where the idea should come to mind.
    3. Counterfactual structure
      What would be different if the idea were false; what would follow if it were true.
    4. Error boundaries
      Common misapplications, confusions, and nearby false friends.
    5. Procedures / decisions
      What you do differently because you know it, what choice you make, what question you ask next, what you stop doing.

    Ideally, that information is not merely a fact, but an explanation. That is the key question when you design a prompt: What material would reliably let me reconstruct the explanation I want? When the prompt works, repeated reconstruction helps that explanation take hold in the mind’s ecosystem, where ideas survive or fade, influence behavior or do not, and interact with one another.

      • There are 5 handles good prompts let you reconstruct from. Which one says you “have” the idea?
        The generative explanation.
      • Why is the handle, Problem-situations/Triggers, valuable to include as an internal model?
        It lets you know when to use the idea.
      • When should you try to create the 5 memory system handles, during prompt creation or when attempting to understand the idea?
        When attempting to understand the idea.

    Properties of effective reconstruction prompts (based on Andy Matuschak’s Good Prompts)

    • Reconstruction prompts should be focused.
    • Reconstruction prompts test one relation at a time.
    • Reconstruction prompts should be precise about what they’re asking for.
    • Reconstruction prompts should produce consistent answers each time you perform the task.
    • Reconstruction prompts should be tractable.
    • Reconstruction prompts should be effortful.
      • State one thing that could be wrong with the following prompt?
        Good reconstruction prompts test one r_ at a time, should be f_, p_, produce c_ answers, t_, and e_.
        It tests many relationsips / is not focused enough / could be intractable.
      • There are several properties of good prompts but what is the general idea?
        Make the prompt tight, clear, and worth the mental work.

    We prefer explanations because they are often the kinds of ideas that can influence what we do rationally. But no general rule can tell us in advance what material will let a particular person reconstruct a particular idea. The only method is to guess, test, and revise for each individual.

    Why reconstruction? Because you cannot reconstruct what you have never constructed in the first place. You must first understand something at least partially. Reconstruction then reinforces that understanding and may deepen it.

    See also: Andy Matuschak’s Good Prompts (I replace “retrieval” with “reconstruction” based on my understanding of the mind)

    Links to this note:
    Learning

  • Change the Problem Landscape

    Elon Musk’s question, “What did you get done this week?”, has become a meme for productivity.

    Naval has a version of this too:

    A better question is:

    The Work Question

    What problems did you solve, preempt, and set in motion this week – and what did you do to expose your proposed solutions to criticism?

    Don’t just tell me what you did. Tell me how you changed the problem landscape. That is the real measure of useful work. A task list shows activity. It does not necessarily show impact.

    Solving a real problem does not simply remove an item from a list. It changes the situation. It closes some paths, opens others, and reshapes what matters next. Every solution creates new conditions. Every neglected problem has the potential to grow into a worse one.

      • What should our work revolve around instead of activity metrics?
        Problems.
      • Our job is to not only solve present problems but be aware of {{c1::future}} problems too.

    Of course, most real problems are not fully solved in a week. But that is still the right standard. A manager should emphasize outcomes, while making rational exceptions for work that clearly moves a hard problem forward. The point is not to reward people for merely naming the problems they are working on. It is to ask how those problems changed because of their work.

    So yes, results matter. But the results that matter most are not just completed tasks. They change the problem landscape.

      • Our work involves present and future problems, problems created by us and those that are not. What outcomes based question demands one think deeply about the problem landscape?
        What problems did you solve, preempt, and set in motion this week – and what did you do to expose your proposed solutions to criticism?

    Email example

    Subject:
    Weekly Check-In: The Work Question

    Body:
    Each week I’ll ask you one question:

    What problems did you solve, preempt, and set in motion this week – and what did you do to expose your proposed solutions to criticism?

    This is not a task list. I’m not asking for a summary of activity. I’m asking how your work changed the situation. That is the standard I want us aiming at, because useful work is not just doing things. It is making progress against real problems.

    I do not expect every week to produce a perfect answer. Some weeks are groundwork. Some important problems take longer than a week to move. The bar is high on purpose, but clear thinking and honest judgment matter more than forcing a strong-looking report.

    Solved: What problem did you close? What changed, and how do you know?

    Preempted: What problem did you see coming and act on before it arrived? What likely would have happened otherwise?

    Set in motion: What new problems or conditions now exist because of this week’s work or lack of action? Which are the healthy next problems created by progress, and which are consequences of delay or inattention?

    Criticism: How far did you push your ideas?

    Keep your answer short and precise. I value clarity over length.

    Links to this note:
    The Pursuit of Productivity
    Don’t Protect Your Ideas
    Documenting the Work Question, Replacing the Portfolio

  • Dont Become A Monster

    Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil:

    “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

  • Brett Hall on Goals

    Brett Hall: In our times, rapid progress comes not from setting goals, but overcoming the *unexpected*. 

    Goals are a kind of prophesy & can be coercive, so quickly choosing “failure” over *achieving them* must be a “goal” of any rational goal setting methodology to preserve error correction.

    Brian: Can you elaborate? Is the idea that hewing too close to achieving a goal, particularly one far in the future, causes errors to go uncorrected because you’re not adjusting to the problems right there in front of you at the time?

    Brett Hall: Yes & if gurus, life/business coaches, etc are to be believed we need goals: a “5 year plan” or some such. 

    • Get this job, 
    • Make that income. 
    • Etc 

    But human minds create new preferences continuously though guru logic casts choosing those as failure (to be goal-oriented).

    If one sticks to a goal because they’re being “disciplined” & it’s part of the grand plan (for success, happiness, whatever) – that’s an error. Worse: it’s anti-rational: it actively prevents errors being corrected and suppresses creativity in the service of “achieving a goal”.

    Brian: But there are some goals that you may want over the course of years and that take years to achieve, right? House, marriage, kids, etc. for many. Or what about the persistence needed to, say, get a gold in Judo at the Olympics? Seems like there’s got to be a middle ground.

    Brett Hall: If each day one wakes & enthusiastically decides the “goal” ostensibly set is best & most fun (& not worked towards because one is solely being focussed/driven/disciplined) – that’s different. “Goal” there labels a different thing: daily human choice determining life, not a plan.

    It may help some (eg your Olympian) to know what it takes to “have the fun” they want (like a pilot’s checklist for landing) & “plans” do help the depressed & confused: those who *don’t know* what they want. But those are exceptions “that prove the rule”: people don’t need goals.

    (In those exceptions a “plan for success” is like “Wittgenstein’s Ladder”: once depression is gone or you don’t need to remind yourself of a “gold medal” to be excited to get to the gym & train, the plan can be thrown away as it’s not needed to get what is *really* wanted: joy).

  • Mental Health Depends on Knowing Which Problems to Reject

    What if mental health, motivation, and even joy depended not on solving problems, but on knowing which ones not to accept?

    I think about the tweet below a lot. Particularly the part about “the existing nasty pressure on young people to conform by being ‘remarkable’.”

    How many of your “problems” emerged from your creative engagement with the world? Problems are soluble, but they should be your problems. You have the right to reject problems imposed on you.

    See also: A Genuinely Felt Problem is the Most Powerful Generator of Creative Problem-Solving that Exists

  • Problem

    A problem exists when a conflict between ideas is experienced (Deutsch).

    Links to this note:
    Mental Health Depends on Knowing Which Problems to Reject
    Change the Problem Landscape
    Become More Demanding

    Needs: expand explanation

  • Being Realistic

    Being realistic isn’t taking what you hope for and then shrinking it down until it feels safe. It’s about making the story truer and closer to reality. Being realistic means using your best understanding of how things work and then trying hard to find what’s wrong with that understanding so you can improve it. A wildly ambitious plan can be more realistic than a “modest” one if it’s backed by a better explanation and has survived more criticism.

    Being unrealistic means thinking or saying, “Here is the story I’m going to believe and stick to because I like it, I’m afraid, or I just don’t know.” What’s implied is that you’re doing this not because it’s the best explanation, but because you’re avoiding looking for ways your story might be wrong.

  • You don’t have to have the prettiest things

    You don’t have to have the prettiest things. But you cannot have anything bad or ugly. No chemical blue dawn dish soap container, no lime green sponge. Remove ugliness and even a messy space will look inviting.

    – Simon Sarris

    Needs: Expand explanation

  • Knowledge

    We often think knowledge is just facts or information we’ve acquired through education or experience. But David Deutsch has thought of knowledge as information with causal power i.e. information that has the power to make things happen. I also think of knowledge this way.

    Knowledge has only ever been created by two processes: evolution and creativity.

    We can change our future by creating knowledge. In that sense, knowledge gives us a power once imagined only in magic and myth.

    See also: The Beginning of Infinity

    Links to this note:
    Explanatory Knowledge