Learning Philosophies
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Learn Depth Wise: Pick concrete projects that are firmly outside of your breadth of knowledge. Then build ruthlessly. You’ll learn everything you need to by constantly asking the right questions.
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Feynman Technique: Try teach the topic to someone who doesn’t know it. You’ll find out pretty quickly where your gaps are. Also, you’ll become a better educator / communicator.
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First Principals: Ruthlessly ask “Why?” to any sentence you say out loud. This is essential.
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Just Start: Don’t paralyse yourself by trying to globally optimise anything, especially your learning. Just start. You’re better off learning something sub-optimally then staying at the beginning (which is technically optimal lol). Take atomic notes.
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Experiment Ruthlessly, Endlessly: Everyone learns differently. This also ties into Productivity. Experiment with every potential variable. Track the results.
- Try more/less hours of sleep.
- Try caffeine / no breakfast / breakfast.
- Try different notetaking methods. Try handwritten or digital.
- Try learning by building. Try learning by watching lectures only. Try not watching lectures at all.
- I found I learn best with good sleep, trying to teaching others and spaced repetition, but you could be different. Never stop experimenting with new methods as well!
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Reach out to experts: There’s literally nothing stopping you from reaching out to someone you admire on the internet and asking them questions (learn how to send a good Cold Email).
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Take Care of Yourself: Drink lots of water. Exercise.
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Snowball your efforts: Work on something really hard for a long period of time. Do it for long enough, and the effects will make you immeasurably better. Ties into Compound Effect.
Things to Learn next:
- Modern reasoning architectures: Strawberry etc.
- Modern TTS architecture
- FunSearch, Romera Paredes, Nature, 2024