Created: May 07, 2020
Modified: May 07, 2020
Modified: May 07, 2020
theory of the case
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- Several ideas here:
- When I try to tell a story about what I'd like to change about my life, at a high level, I can come at it from different lenses and directions (many models). But it would be useful to explicit write down a flowchart of all the things I'd like to improve at, and the ways in which they should enable other things. Then once I've worked on one thing for a while, I can come review this, and find inspiration for something else that might now present new possibilities. Getting better at each thing should help me improve at other things (if my theory is aligned with reality). So the benefits of this work compound.
- a bit of a digression: Conceptual graphs. Roam creates a web of thought. Related ideas are connected by links. This gives us a notion of distance between graph nodes. These connections are at a much higher level than we'd get from just word vectors. This should be useful somehow: for understanding the structure of my own thought, or even eventually for training AI systems on higher-level concepts.
- I should Write your own self-help book. Related to production vs consumption. You learn a lot more by writing than by reading. Writing forces you to engage deeply, to internalize the concepts. And it forces you to come up with concepts that fit your situation and your mind, which will always be better than someone else's. Self-help advice is generic. A lot of it is fine, but it's difficult to follow. Advice you invent will be just as 'objectively' good, but you'll have a better idea how to follow it.
- Just outlining some concepts:
- I grew up as a nerd: I felt I was different, smarter, alienated from most people around me. I didn't learn to work with people or to ask for help.
- Working on things that are important to me -> Getting better at those things (because I'll be motivated to improve) -> things become more important (because I like things I'm good at, and it feels like a clearly valuable investment of time) -> virtuous cycle.
- Telling a story for why my work is important is valuable. A story persuades me the work is important (see above), and it helps me relate to and work with other people, since I can convince them the work is important. And being able to relate the work to other people makes it more important: again, a virtuous cycle.
- I can't get there in one step. A story isn't just one story. It's a funnel of connections I build up over time. It can start with some overarching principles, like understanding the cognitive structure of the world, or with a small bit of work that I keep building on. As I make choices at every step about what to do and why, my justifications for those choices become a story.
- I've spent a lot of time developing a web of concepts, and trying to fit them to the texture of the world; both physical and intellectual. I've spent much less time articulating those concepts. Again there's a virtuous cycle. Being able to articulate concepts makes the concepts more valuable, so I'll care more about them and try to develop more.
- It's not that my concepts are wrong, or that they need to be replaced with better concepts. In some cases maybe. But in many cases they just need to be bridged with concepts out there in the world. I can add dimensions to my conceptual system, and use those dimensions to smoothly 'twist' my basis vectors into more common ones.
- Okay, what are the core pieces?
- A. Feeling deeply that my work is important
- comes from: having built up a story that I can articulate
- comes from: being good at it.
- B. Being good at my work.
- comes from: Feeling that the work is important
- comes from: Being able to articulate the work
- also comes from: Learning from people. Working with people. Using time effectively. etc.
- C. Being able to articulate my work and its story
- comes from: feeling that it's important
- comes from: Working with people; developing the work under articulation regularization.
- D. Working with people.
- comes from: being able to articulate my work, its story, why it's important.
- comes from: being proud of my work (being good + acknowledging it)
- comes from: finding people to work with and learn from.
- A. Feeling deeply that my work is important
- Are these the core pieces? Are they actionable directions to push in? I don't know. This might have been a useless writing exercise. But 99% of everything is crap, and every useless writing exercise I do, gets me closer to doing good, useful writing exercises.