Autodidacts

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Inspired Autodidacts Clubhouse #Salon Notes

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🧠 Inspired Autodidacts is a Facebook group and community of researchers, founders, technologists, venture investors, and more who come together to share our learning goals, systems, and resources. This document reflects a series of salon conversations hosted by Jeremy Nixon , Minn Kim, and other members of the community along with our notes and links for listeners and other autodidacts to explore.

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Salon #1: Reading Habits

Recommended resources:

Recommended books:

Recommended reads:

Grab-bag of ideas:

Salon #2: Techniques for Learning

Recommended resources:

Raw Notes

Salon #3: Techniques for Epiphanies

Raw Notes

Enlightened AI Discussion

Compassionate AI

What can be learned about human autodidacting from machine learning

Autodidacting by specific verticals (music, arts, body, machine learning, writing, etc.)

Experiments share in thing that have most improved the inputs into learning (memory, attention, energy, time, etc.)

What changes have led to great increases in community learning (communal housing, learning groups, book clubs, etc.)

Who are some of the most inspiring autodidacters and inviting them to share their thoughts for 5-10 mins with a Q&A

Specific autodidactors of the past breakdowns (tesla, einstein, etc.)

Frontier/edge autodidacting (what do you do that helps you learn that you don't think others do or is challenging to communicate)

Meta-autodidacting consilience techniques (which are the autodidacting techniques that are most generalizable across fields or irrespective of fields)

Mind-body learning (how do you manage body and mind to optimize learnings across slower and faster modes of learning like system 1 or system 2)

Sleep

Feel free to ping jacob@ideaflow.io

mailto:jacob@ideaflow.io

Experiments as a way to learn. Sharing what we’ve run, results

How to manage (physical) pain to learn better faster

https://effectivealtruismcoaching.com/blog/2020/10/31/being-productive-with-chronic-health-conditions

effectivealtruismcoaching.com

How to remain focused

Balancing information diets

Better mental health

Unlearning. Ideas that broke existing worldviews

Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street is a gold mine -- https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/

fs.blog

4 levels of reading. Syntopical reading most effective for comprehensive understanding of a subject

Pdfdrive

www.pdfdrive.com

Libgen

librarygenesis.net

OpenSyllabus

opensyllabus.org

Hypothesis app

web.hypothes.is

Feynman Technique

strategyumwelt.com

Bookslist.jacobcole.net

bookslist.jacobcole.net

[[[[Jacob Cole] T. K. V. Desikachar’s classic intro to yoga (first 6 pages at http://yoga.jacobcole.net/](http://yoga.jacobcole.net/)). Religiousness in Yoga: Lectures on Theory and Practice](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL894546W/Religiousness_in_yoga?edition=isbn_9780819109675). Extremely lucid outline on the path to transcendence – not actually about religiousness. Transcendence in the spirit of “To transcend motion and stillness is the highest meditation](https://www.wayofbodhi.org/bodhidharma-quote-generosity-n-meditation/)” ~Bodhidharma

[[Minn Kim] How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand](https://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966)

[[Spencer] The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond](https://www.amazon.com/World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional-Societies/dp/0143124404)

[[Rebecca] Revolt of the Public, Martin Gurri](https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millennium/dp/1732265143)

[[Pam Rollin] The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander](https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028)

[[Jai] Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, Jed McKenna](https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Enlightenment-Damnedest-Thing-Trilogy/dp/0980184843/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1Q0CW0F544H8N&dchild=1&keywords=enlightenment+the+damnedest+thing&qid=1611537795&sprefix=enlightenment+the+damn%2Cstripbooks%2C219&sr=8-1)

Designing the web to be a place for people, beyond information. Future of Web Annotation by Linus Lee https://thesephist.com/posts/hypertext/

thesephist.com

Highly experimental extremely low friction web annotation extension

Religiousness in Yoga

Talmud as a super hyper-linked text

“The talmud experiment.” Getting a talmudic understanding of x

Take a group and dive layers deep into the text. David Knuth had people do this for his textbook.

The level of focus on 3 texts - intensive one

The Dao-de-jing

What is the best way to read a text? Writing next to every line of a poem. Annotations.

What software lets us do this? Wikis? [Rachel] App called highlighter, which came up when she thought about how to read with other people

Andrej likes reading reviews

Chat app, new protocols for when you send over thoughts.

Clubhouse teaching - set up a room for teaching a concept

Kahn Academy for peer learning. Drew Bent.

Past information is more valuable

Learning by extracting more

Jeremy’s notes on compressing content

docs.google.com

Deliberate practice: examples in sports, music

Slowing down really important

Anticipating errors

Journal clubs

twitter.com

Fermat’s Library extension

fermatslibrary.com

Reading groups

muratbuffalo.blogspot.com

Participants need to come prepared

Presenter should be prepared

Make/produce something during the discussion for most effective engagement

Active vs passive learning

Retros

When was the last time you were trying to learn something new?

Where to begin?

Set a specific goal and work backwards

How to run a good retro?

How to know when you’re ready to move onto a next phase? When to go from learning the basics to advancing?

Ariel learning tennis. Immersive learning

Visual practicing for activating mirror neurons. Watch an expert play piano/violin/tennis

Mark on feedback loops on subcomponents

Facilitate introspection

Feedback loops are self sufficient

How to focus attention and achieving tasks

Complice.co. Jayanth’s rec. Pomodoro

FocusMate, holds accountability

How to learn well? Inspire myself?

Time constraints. Measure how long a page takes to read. Can plan ahead better.

Brainscape vs. Anki decks vs. Supermemo

http://www.marknagelberg.com/spaced-repetition-newsletter/

www.marknagelberg.com

http://www.marknagelberg.com/anki/anki_webpage_loaded.html

www.marknagelberg.com

Forgetting curve

Practice recalling and amount of time to forgetting lengthens

Recap questions in textbooks

How to decide what is an atomic unit of info (e.g., in an Anki deck)?

Mode of processing :

Remember visually/spatially “see the words in my mind” The memory palace

Remembering while distracted

Remembering in a contextual environment. Imagine when you might need the knowledge

Book rec: Metaphors we live by

Learning Python the Hard Way

Applied learning. If learning to program, build a program

YouTube as an underrated resource

Learn from an expert and/or learning from someone who recently learned the subject

Pair programming as a great option of working through a problem together

Emotional valence has an impact on memory

Learning by analogy. Analogy as core to cognition

www.youtube.com

Michael would give himself a question to ponder before sleeping. Upon waking, go running, meditate, and then have an answer

Richard Hamming You and Your Research

Creativity

Create an environment that the question and potential answers is able to unfold without interruption

Intensity important. Intense focus vs. diffuse attention

Period between sleeping and waking

Taichi and skilled meditators, chi gong

Simulated annealing

Hypnogogia

Identify which emotional states may be most generative

Hypomania

Creativity and divinity

“Talent hits a target no one can hit. Genius hits a target no one can see.”

Jacob’s book rec: Stealing Fire

www.amazon.com

Ecstatic technology

OODA loop

Freedom app, cut off internet as an aide to time boxing

“Coffeehouse effect” for the ambient “noise”

Walks in nature. Walking good for the creative brainstorming vs deep, focused thinking

Andrew Huberman

Homolateral crossover technique (a bit like self-EMDR) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvpDfWqL1s

www.youtube.com

Alan Worsoff -- Having good mental RAM

Visualization and mental simulations. Can intense visualizations be trained such that you can run the simulation in your mind instead of reality?

Visualizations super helpful in musical instrument training