FI Learning

For learning with practice. Posts are not private and could end up on Bing.
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 End of Basecamp — I've set up a new forum: https://curi.us/2430-critical-fallibilism-forum The price is a one-time $20 to post (reading posts is free). Discussion should move there now. Thanks. 7
Andy Dufresne Job and Business Progress — I left my job about a month ago. One reason I left my job was that I had a business I started about two years ago with two other people. We each have parts of the business we do and are responsible for. It's not the kind of business most people think of as a production line, but I find it helps ...
Anne B 🛠 The Elephant in the Room — I read The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, by Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson. This is an interesting and important topic to me and there seem to be good ideas about it in the book. From the Introduction: “Here is the thesis we’ll be exploring in this book: We, human beings... 8
Anne B 🛠 Mindfulness Meditation — ingracke wrote: “You can learn some mindfulness meditation techniques for thinking about the feeling, identifying it, identifying the physical sensations and thoughts that you interpret as "frustrated" (or whatever), and sort of "stepping outside" of your thoughts and just viewing them, instead ... 90
doubtingthomas 😊 Motivation podcast — A Discussion but mainly the questions I had about that podcast episode. Things I had difficulty understanding. Edit: Link: https://curi.us/podcast/motivation-and-laziness 1. “The main problem people have which they think is that they are lazy or they lack motivation or whatever is that they're t... 3
Dface [Dface] Trees and Analyzing Paragraphs — Im going to analyze paragraphs here. 12
Elliot, Fallible Ideas curi & Firebench debate part 2 — Part 2 continuing: https://3.basecamp.com/4983193/buckets/20858411/messages/3700597864 (Part 2 because basecamp doesn't support long topics. They start loading very slowly.) 142
Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum Elliot on writing casually — Here are some things Elliot has written about writing casually. Elliot Temple, "Ayn Rand Sez 'Sez'", Objectivism Discussion List (Mar-Apr 2013): “"false as hell" and "sez". what a casual style paragraph, but serious substance. published in a book.  if Rand can do it, why shouldn't the rest of u... 2
doubtingthomas Organizing ideas — The problem of how to organize ideas has been bugging me a lot. I've been trying to find a decent method to organize ideas. I've come up with this new method and I think it solves my problem. I'm writing this post to get feedback but also to get affirmation which is a category-2 thing to do. I h... 14
doubtingthomas 😊 Free market — I fear I'm starting another hit and run discussion so apologies in advance. (I am interested in advice on how to not improve my ability to not have hit and run dis) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 I just watched this video. I really liked production quality of this video and it was ... 5
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 😊 curi & Firebench Debate — Branching from Re: [Dface] Project Steps - FI Learning We agreed to debate until mutual agreement to conclude or an impasse chain of at least length 5. We agreed to an unbounded discussion which can include anything relevant (and anything relevant to that, and anything relevant to that, and so o... 214
Farouk Integrity conflict — My coding tutor/partner will take on a freelance job from someone he knows in a few months. The job is a doing school mgmt software. I don't want to do it because I think I would not be acting with integrity. I don't like the idea of taking money or opportunity from a school. The problem is tha... 54
doubtingthomas 😊 On Szasz. — I'm not clear on what his views actually are. I wanna make sure my understanding related to his field of work is pretty much correct (I have been advising someone who thinks they have a mental illness). As I understand it his field of work included what is called psychiatry in modern medicine whi... 15
doubtingthomas 🛠 A list + plans. — A list to keep track of all the advice I've been given and then make plans out of it. 1. Advice • You must have some idea of what it takes to learn something really well. Also called becoming world class at something or achieving mastery. When trying to learn something, apply the same learning p...
doubtingthomas 😊 People you care for. — How do guys deal with the fact that a lot of people one cares about are hopeless? These people that I care about are destined to make a lot of mistakes because of being bad at reason and irrationality. I can kind of see that those mistakes are about to happen. These mistakes will happen in projec... 5
S. Emiya 🛠 Learning Grammar Project — My goal is to master the concepts that ET explains here: https://fallibleideas.com/grammar I would like to share my notes from my first reading.  Did I capture the key ideas?  Any feedback is appreciated. Notes: Two kinds of sentences      simple - action sentence or linking sentence      com...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Induction Diagrams — These might help with understanding BoI vid 4. I might put something like this in 5. Induction tends to assume patterns in data as a starting point that can be found with no prerequisites, but the process looks different if you realize that's mistaken. [image.png]
Anne B 😊 The Little Schemer — The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen Thank you, Justin, for telling me about this book. I read Chapter 1 and I like it. It was good practice to go through the chapter. Two comments: 1. From the Preface: “We do not give any formal definitions in this book. We believe ... 19
doubtingthomas 'Do easy things' is hard advice to follow. — That's what I feel. I haven't thought about it in depth. I started this message board to discuss my confusions and get help on them. Also working this out in writing seems like the right thing to do. First confusion: how can doing easy things help me improve? Here's an example: Adding two number... 11
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 considering limiting basecamp to 20 ppl — due to limited interest and usage, i'm considering reverting the basecamp to a free account. that requires kicking ~14 ppl to get back down to the cap of 20. there are that many who have never posted. i'm happy with the experiment and i think i got some info about what people will and won't do. ... 21
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 Learn BoI – Video 1 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBjKGSmuy1U it's on a new YT channel so hit subscribe and ring the bell! 136
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 Critical Fallibilism Course now on sale — Buy at Gumroad ($880) These 8 videos (16.5 hours) teach my philosophy, Critical Fallibilism, which builds on Critical Rationalism (by Karl Popper and secondarily David Deutsch), Objectivism (by Ayn Rand and secondarily Leonard Peikoff) and Theory of Constraints (by Eli Goldratt). The course is p...
Farouk Small Projects(f) — I read "internet's" small projects post. I think it's a good idea so I'll do the same.  Goal:  Write enough small projects until I can easily write down and succeed at a bigger project like making a website or any other similar project from my web-dev course. Plan:  • Post at least 3 times duri... 18
Anne B SICP — I decided to go back to my work on SICP. SICP is the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which is here.  I had taken a detour from my SICP work to make another website on which to post my SICP answers. I ended up making a website with GitHub Pages, which until then had seemed... 29
internet [internet] Small Projects — this is a place where i will write in the comments when i do small projects. if i have small goals i will also put them in the comments here 13
Farouk Goals on basecamp projects — My goal is to learn how to learn more effectively. I don't know how to better define my goal, in my mind what I really want is to start practicing from the basics.  My biggest problem right now is that I'm not very good at learning, or not as good as I would like and it has a direct effect on my ... 4
Farouk Project steps: IT about IT — Make an idea tree about idea trees:  1. Open Xmind 2. Open idea trees blog post 3. Read the blog post 4. Zoom in on the idea tree image 5. Read the idea tree 6. Write as child nodes the topics you'd like to understand better. In my case, they were Terminology, how to use one, and why to use one. ...
Anne B Karate Project — This is about my overall karate-improvement project. I figuring out how to organize it better so that it’s easily doable for me and also effective and efficient. This project is important to me. I’ve been working on it for a year now. I want to make changes to make my practice more effective. Se... 6
Justin Mallone Trees on Avoiding Being Stuck & Making a Good Effort At Solving a Programming Problem — [Avoiding Being Stuck.png][Making a Good Effort At Solving a Programming Problem.png] 6
Justin Mallone Zelda BOTW tree — I made a tree that shows some high level BotW goals and goes into a bunch of detail on one particular thing I did recently. It took me a little bit cuz of the amount of detail but each individual step was pretty easy. I think it's nice to see how tiny goals relate to bigger goals in a concrete wa... 8
doubtingthomas 👋 What am I working for? — I have a Question/Doubt. I think of becoming good at philosophy (by doing what FI recommends) as a superpower. Once I become great at philosophy I will become great at creating knowledge. What should I expect? What will I be able to accomplish? What are some right expectations to have? Will I b... 1
Anne B Zooming in and out — I want to try some of the stuff in this paragraph, which is part of this post: “Practice zooming projects in and out. Make a basic 2-level project tree (root is project name and children are steps). Then add additional levels above and below. Do this multiple separate ways. And redo the original... 6
Farouk Project steps: solving basic coding challenges — This is what I do.  Since I always solve them, I count them as a project that I currently do that is successful.  1. Check the tags, if it has "algorithms" in it... 2. Click on it 3. Read the instructions. 4. Write what I understood on the top of an Idea Tree 5. Think about what things I need to ...
Farouk I began using idea trees — Months ago I decided to not try to do idea trees because I felt like learning to do so would take too much time.  I decided to learn them once I got comfortable with normal writing. Last week I began using them for coding challenges. I can't fully self-evaluate if I use them the right way, but s...
Anne B Thoughts vs feelings — curi wrote: “Feelings and thoughts are different things. Commonly, "I think X" is a way to claim X, while "I feel X" isn't. E.g. if I say "I think rats are scary", that's a claim about the nature of rats. Whereas if I say "I feel scared by rats", then I'm talking about me rather than making an o... 6
internet [internet] PROJECT: refill water bottle — my water bottle is at like 20% of its max capacity it needs to be refilled. so the project is to refill it. how do i refill it? 1. grab water bottle 2. goto kitchen 3. goto sink 4. unscrew waterbottle lid 5. turn on faucet 6. put water bottle under faucet for 7ish seconds 7. rescrew lid ok th... 1
internet overpowered project idea — you could like take something you were already gonna do, then turn it into a project on basecamp. so like: if u were gonna get food, you could turn that into a project, and then the doing part of the project is so easy you were literally already gonna do it! if you are turning a project you wer... 2
internet [internet] SUPER EASY PROJECT! — DUDE I JUST THOUGHT OF A SUPER EASY PROJECT! ok so im playing a game called genshin impact there is an area of the map called "Liyue" this area has chests in it i only have 725/>1000 chests! so the project of getting to 825 chests seems like it would be ez! ok so thats the project. win cond... 10
Anne B 😊 Negative feelings about FI — Continuing the conversation here from March 15 and March 16, 2021. 44
Dface [Dface] Trees and Analyzing Paragraphs (was Project Steps) — Im going to practice project steps here 82
Justin Mallone Learning mode versus professional mode — Mentioned this idea in another thread. Dictated some thoughts using Otter and then wrote out a few thoughts with reference to my dictation. I may add more. I think I have different modes in which I approach projects. Two of them are learning mode and professional mode. I don't think having diff... 2
internet i dont post much — i dont post much on basecamp. im not sure why. THIS WAS AN EZ MESSAGE! 19
Farouk Project steps: eating. — A few days ago I began to pay attention to how I eat, from chewing to swallowing.  I just googled the correct names of the parts of the mouth to make it easier to communicate Correction. It is actually easier to explain using references like front teeth instead of "incisors". I'll continue like ... 5
Justin Mallone Arrogance about what will help — Sometimes I'm reluctant to try different things when I'm stuck cuz I don't think they'll help. But if I'm stuck then that means I don't know how to solve the problem, so on what basis am i so confident about what will or won't help? 1
Dface [Dface] Project Steps: Getting Ready for Work — Getting ready for work: •Wake up •Take a shower •Brush teeth and hair •Eat Breakfast •Make lunch •Drive to work Zoom in Waking up: •Wake up not sleepy •Check what time it is •Get out of bed on time Zoom out Have an ok day: •Get ready for work •Go to work •Go home and rest my body •Play video ...
Justin Mallone Mistakenly defaulting to working on something too complicated — I was trying to figure out a problem in Simply Scheme. I defaulted to using a data set that consisted of a tree with 44 nodes in order to figure it out. After a while I realized that was a mistake and that I should use a simpler example, so I made my own data set with 6 nodes. I made progress usi... 16
deroj Engineering an Empire — I like this show so far. I would say that it’s main theme is “triumph of the human mind over nature”.  Each episode seems to start by introducing some problem(s) that ppl had in a specific place back in the days and then tries to explain how these problems were solved by feats of the human mind t...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Dface Learning Plan — Hi Dface, let's start with some questions. You don't have to answer. Skip or give less detail for whichever you want. (Note for other people: I already know some stuff so this isn't just a generic set of intro questions.) Country? Age? I don't care exactly. I'm guessing early 20s. If you were 3... 34
Elliot, Fallible Ideas fouxdefafa banned — fouxdefafa joined and started intentionally trolling, e.g. screwing with other people's todo lists. I removed him. If this recurs, I'll have to disable the public invite link and only let people in by request. Why would someone care to harass FI? Who is behind it? If you're curious, see here.
Dface [Dface] How to kill the first boss of Dark Souls 3 — How to kill Ludex Gundyr the 1st boss of Dark Souls 3: •Make your way behind Gundyr's back  •Stay there no matter what •Dodge his attacks while staying behind him •Beat him up and always have extra stamina  •His second phase is actually easier just stay behind him no matter what and beat him up •... 4
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 My Replies To Other People Apply To You — Most of what I say to anyone applies to you. This is on purpose. So if you're trying to do activities here (that are related to my suggestions) and get feedback, etc., you can get more info from my responses to everyone, not just to you individually. You can find my posts from my individual use... 1
Anne B Project: Do some micro-projects and report on them — Goal: Get used to noticing learning-focused micro-projects that I do already. Get used to thinking about the steps I do in those projects. Reflect on projects in general. Details: • What counts as a micro-project? I’ll start by aiming for projects that take less than three minutes to complete. ... 67
Dface [Dface] Project Steps: Making my phone farm for me — Making my phone farm items for me on a PS4 Game: •Load up Ps4 game •Turn on app on phone that auto taps where I position it to. •Connect phone to PS4 via remote play app •Make a sequence where my phone moves the virtual controller a certain way that my in-game character goes and collects items. •... 1
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 The Most Important Stuff Now Goes in Docs & Files — I put my important posts in the Docs & Files section and organized them in folders. This will make it easier for people to find the best info to focus attention on. I won't have stuff in multiple places in the future. If it should go in Docs & Files I'll put it only there. I had to copy/paste t... 1
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💯 Project Steps — I've been reading people's project step posts. A few general comments: Judging Project Plans I can see that people don't have clear enough ways to judge what is success or not. But there can't be a simple answer key for good project plans. So you need to develop some judgment that lets you eval...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 How To Find Stuff on Basecamp — This is mainly for people who aren't reading the majority of things. (I'm mostly using the Activity and Hey! (notifications) feeds myself.) 1. Go to the Message Board. 2. Look for topics by Elliot. 3. Read the titles. 4. Click the ones that sound useful or relevant (hopefully that includes projec... 2
deroj [deroj] Project Steps — Here Elliot wrote: “Think about some projects you already do, which you understand pretty well (nothing complicated or confusing), and write down the steps. Post it to the Message Board at the FI Learning Basecamp (not as a comment below).” I will post project steps for small, easy projects in ... 34
Jesse Nichols Slightly meta about project management and software — Has anyone read the basecamp shape up book (https://basecamp.com/shapeup), would you recommend it? I've read a bunch of Goldratt and find it strange that they aren't into Kanbans, which I love as a general task management tool but basecamp only supports through 3rd party plug ins. But then again ... 1
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Level of Detail Flexibility — Being able to zoom in on details, or zoom out to the bigger picture, is a key skill for looking at projects. For zooming out, the same activity can be: - a project - a sub-tree within a larger project - a single node within a much larger project For zooming in, an activity can be: - a project... 8
Justin Mallone Project steps — Trying this out (will post replies to this post) 2
heroLFG (Gavin Palmer) Project: Teach My Son Chess — My son is 5 years old.  I started teaching him chess last week.  He has asked me to play chess with him last night and this morning.  I am trying to start by teaching him to identify each piece and the moves they can make.  I am ignoring the castle move where the king gets to do a strange excepti... 4
heroLFG (Gavin Palmer) Helping End Cannabis Prohibition — I received a newsletter from NORML and sent a message to my representative: https://norml.org/act/alabama-take-action-in-support-of-medical-cannabis 2
heroLFG (Gavin Palmer) Election Integrity — I called my Congressman Mo Brooks on January 25, 2021 and requested a meeting about Election Integrity.  I was told that Congressman Brooks tries to speak with people from my area once per month, and my information was forwarded to his Deputy Chief of Staff for scheduling. I followed up on Febru... 6
Anne B Project steps projects — I'll use this message thread to post steps for projects, as suggested in this post. 30
Anne B Project steps: putting gas in your car — Steps for putting gas in your car: • When the gas in your car starts getting low, think about when and where it'll be convenient for you to get gas before it gets too low. Take price or quality or brand or attached convenience store or clean bathrooms into account if those are important to you. •... 3
Anne B Project steps: changing a light bulb — Steps for changing a light bulb: • If the old light bulb is hot, wait until it cools off. • Unscrew the old light bulb. • Look on the old light bulb to see what wattage it is. • See if you have any new light bulbs with that same wattage. • If not, buy some and wait until you have it before moving...
Anne B Small projects — Elliot wrote: “You're not listening to my advice and it's ambiguous how purposeful that is. I suggested smaller projects, achieving many clear successes, and gaining experience with successful projects. You're now planning to do an even bigger, harder project. You're not trying to build up to i... 6
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💯 Write Quick Tiny Replies — One of the best things people could do here is write lots of short (1-3 sentence) replies, primarily in reply to me. Having "discussions" is hard. Reading what other posters say and benefitting from that is hard (takes significant critical thinking skills and good judgment and time management). ... 21
Anne B Project plan: organizing a list of karate stuff — I’ve been practicing karate at home and keeping practice notes. I’ve also kept a list of things from my practice that I’ve worked on and want to remember.  I want to start a project using this list of things to remember. I want to go through the list and color code it according to how well I’ve ... 4
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Sources of Organization Followup — In my Sources of Organization topic, people have talked about examples of organization. That’s a good start for thinking about it. I’ll approach it in a more systematic, complete way. I uploaded my article and slides in the Docs & Files section of Basecamp and I also blogged the article at https:...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Lambda School + Truckers Make 90k! — https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-american-dream-as-a-service Interesting article about Lambda School. They teach coding and you pay with an income-sharing agreement (with fairly small/reasonable payback max limits and only if you get a well-paying coding job), not tuition. Article says how t... 6
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Learning Things to Mastery — http://curi.us/2402-achieving-mastery-when-learning-plus-followups 2
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 😊 Ambitious Goals — Replying to heroLFG from Introductions - FI Learning “My ambitious goal is something like “help create a future where all people have access to an abundance of clean water without forcing anyone to do things they don’t want to do”.” That goal is so ambitious it might as well be maximizing squir... 8
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Support Elliot's Work — If you appreciate this Basecamp, you can support me at: https://www.subscribestar.com/fallible-ideas
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 Email Forwards — I forwarded some FI emails to Basecamp using the Email Forwards feature. If you like them, you can find more similar writing at http://curi.us/ebooks in the FI and other archives. You can share your favorites from the archives so others can see and discuss them. Post them in the Message Board or...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Sources of Organization — Learning, progress or achieving a goal requires organized effort. That means it's not random, aimless, chaos. For example, the scientific method organizes thinking and action so that scientists learn about nature. It's known for being particularly organized and for being much more effective than... 18
Anne B Potential project: Exercise to reduce back pain — Problem: For the past week or two, I've had middle back pain. I think it's from hunching over too much, but I don't have particularly good reasons for thinking that. I've had this issue in the past and not done much about it and it has gone away. This time it seems worse and longer-lived. Ritesh... 14
Anne B Project Steps: Doing the Dishes — Doing the dishes: • Start when the pile of dirty dishes looks like about enough to fill the dishwasher. • Take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and put them away. • If any of the supposedly clean dishes are not clean, scrub them and/or put them with the dirty dishes to be washed again. • ... 3
Farouk How I cook breakfast quickly. — 1. Wash my hands 2. Take out the small and big frying pans. 3. Put each in the stove. 4. Turn on the stove 5. Oil the small pan 6. Get the tortillas from the fridge 7. Put the tortillas on the big pan 8. While they are heating, get a bowl 9. Get 3 eggs 10. Break the eggs into the bowl. 11. Throw ... 6
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 How To Use To-do Lists Here — Individual to-do items can be by assigned to people (e.g. yourself) but the to-do list itself isn't assigned. So let's name lists with your name at the front in brackets. E.g. if I wanted to make a project about eating cereal, I'd name the to-do list like this: “[Elliot] Eating Cereal” Then pe...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💯 Write Down Projects (Example + Instructions) — Eating a bowl of cereal is a small project. It has multiple steps which are organized/synchronized/coordinated to work together to achieve a goal. The steps are something like: - get bowl - get milk - get spoon - get box of cereal - pour cereal - pour milk - close and put away cereal - close an...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Using Automatic Check-ins — I created some automatic check-ins. Pick the ones you like and add yourself to the list of people being asked that check-in question. I subscribed everyone to two generic check-ins. You can unsubscribe from being asked those if you prefer. You can add your own check-in questions. Just deselect ... 5
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Why Do Projects? — A project is organized effort to achieve a goal. This is more effective than disorganized effort or effort that isn't aimed at a goal. Learning requires achieving goals like "understand this" and "figure out how that works". Goals can be small things. Answering one question is a goal. Reading f...
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Benefits of Sharing (and Risks) — Why would you want to share your thoughts and projects here or anywhere on the internet? What are the benefits and downsides? Benefits The largest benefit of sharing is putting your ideas in words. And not just any words, but words that other people who don't know you could understand, which ma... 4
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 Expectations — This is a free group. Basically, you're going to get out of it what you put in. I'm not here to lead your personal projects. Basecamp provides organizational tools and I and others may provide some tips, but your progress is up to you. If you want to accomplish something, you can make a To-do li... 3
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 😊 Getting Into Management — This quote is from the Introductions topic: “Goal Job – to get out of labor and get into managerial position.” Why do you want a managerial position? There are multiple positive things about it so it's hard to know which ones appeal to you. Have you done anything to make it happen? E.g. have y... 3
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 I just paid for unlimited members — We're currently at 18 out of the 20 people allowed on the free plan.
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💡 Doing a Project — Here are some steps for doing a project. These are somewhat ordered but there is flexibility: • Brainstorm goals. They should be clear enough that you can tell pretty unambiguously whether you succeeded or not. Don't just start with a single goal and never consider any alternatives. • Think criti... 2
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 📢 Plan for Basecamp — I made this Basecamp project because I think people should treat learning more like an organized project, and a project management tool can help people do that. Feel free to make todo lists for yourself and use other features like creating scheduled check-ins for yourself or opting yourself in t... 25
Elliot, Fallible Ideas 💯 Project: Time Tracking — Step 1: Track Track your time. There are many ways to do this. One is: twice a day, write down what you did since the last checkin. One sentence or bullet point per activity is fine. Writing/guessing how long you did it is optional. To remember to do it twice a day, set alarms on your phone, or... 6
Elliot, Fallible Ideas Introductions — Introduce yourself here. Here are some options for info you could share: • Why are you here? What are you looking for? • Learning goals at FI. • History with FI. • Background knowledge (what you already know, what you're good at). • Projects already completed. • Projects in progress. • Resources... 12