> A lot of human civilization can be understood as a way of creating more and more incentives for more and more complex positive-sum interactions.
this seems right to me, but wildly less so then the others in that list. i’m confused why this is in your “so confident its true that i basically don’t think about it at all” list.
(also, i would be keen to read an andy-essay on the topic!)
Interesting! I'm wondering if it depends on the type of material being presented. I find that the conversational aspect of the podcast can it make it easier to explore various ideas.
Great article. Two minor quibbles. I'm not sure learning through Audiobooks is actually effective. Retention seems to be much lower than actual reading. Secondly, I'm not sure that economics is any more "real" than Marxism. We just live in a society that has bought into the collective delusion of classical economics, which makes it more useful than Marxism, at least in the West, but doesn't make it any more true. There are just too many contradictions between economics and ecology for it to really hold up.
Audiobooks are definitely worse than regular books but you also don't get to read regular books while you walk, so imo you should compare them to music or other things you'd be listening to. I think classical Marxism doesn't hold up because the labor theory of value isn't useful as a way of measuring how people are being taken advantage of, and a lot of more contemporary Marxist theories seem to oscillate between implicitly assuming the LTV is still useful or just running with the implications of it and completely ignoring it otherwise.
I would argue that you should be using things like walks for contemplation/absorption of what you've learned that, rather than shoving in more knowledge. Of course if you have to listen to something, audiobooks (preferably something you've already read) are better than music.
Interested in reading more about your ideas on Marxism. Have you written an article about this topic on the blog?
- https://aliabdaal.com/anki-guide/ (this is an Anki course that really helped me out a lot when I was starting out, as I was really intimidated by the tool and all it's features. It feels weird to do a "course" for just one tool but out of all the Anki-related resources out there this is by far the best one)
Redactle is a surprisingly good fun entry point into learning from Wikipedia and testing your knowledge about the world. An example of connecting a particular day's Redactle to my knowledge of China and how I expanded my knowledge as a result is here: https://www.eleanorkonik.com/p/on-the-diplomacy-of-steppe-princesses
My main issue lies in your use of the word “useful”. “Useful” learning is hard to define and I couldn’t find it here and it seems to learn, it rests on that.
On writing to learn: I picked up from How We Learn by Benedict Carey about the "fluency illusion", how you can really feel like you've understood something but actually you've got nothing substantial internalised at all. What you've written here about writing to learn, its SO true.
Just today I was trying to get down some thoughts on Luigi Mangione, and what felt like a clearly delineated work of analytical genius in my mind had turned into mush by the time my fingers got involved. What an awful feeling!
most of the second half (tools) i’d heard before in other places, but most of the first half (mental strategies) was new to me. enjoyable to read, too!
> Most people most of the time avoid situations that are such direct reminders of their own limitations. I’ve come around to thinking that being good at powering through these hits to your ego is a core life skill, and just avoiding hits to your ego is maybe the main way you can get stuck and stagnant in life. … you should focus on choosing material that will actually help you learn, setting clear specific goals for what you’re hoping to learn, build systems that test whether you’re actually learning, and try to become more psychologically resilient to feeling stupid and bad in a new subject.
> It makes it easier for me to learn about macroeconomics knowing that I have a strong network of friends who will hang out with me even if I don’t know the deal with macroeconomics.
> Don’t be afraid of starting off with an incredibly simplistic narrative of the world. You just need to add complexity to it later.
the one part i most cleanly disagree with was:
> Commit to strong beliefs when you’re first learning about a new subject and then adjust them over time, instead of staying uncertain the whole time
seems like this requires a pre-req of being really really good at updating on new evidence, which isn’t hard to develop. i think a practice of steelman sessions — where you “pretend” to hold one strong view, then seek out the arguments that pop out as most damaging to your pretend-beliefs; then switching — retains most of the benefits, is a bit more inneffecient, but also ~totally avoids the failure modes you described.
lol again, i forgot to describe the failure mode explicitly: i would worry, with the method you described, that i would accidentally hole myself arbitrarily into one set of beliefs, without being able to adequately update away from them
Seems you are more interested in appearing knowledgeable than being curious. If you were genuinely interested in Marxism you would not consider it a waste of time.
By my count I've read about 4,500 pages of material by Marxists at this point, it was a big focus for me in undergrad. If I need to read more to be considered curious I guess I'm not curious. I was curious because it claimed to be a uniquely powerful explanatory system for understanding the world, and it became much less interesting to me when it clearly failed to provide that.
I feel your post tries to optimize the amount and quality of learning, and because of this optimization has lost sight of the joy of learning for its own sake
> A lot of human civilization can be understood as a way of creating more and more incentives for more and more complex positive-sum interactions.
this seems right to me, but wildly less so then the others in that list. i’m confused why this is in your “so confident its true that i basically don’t think about it at all” list.
(also, i would be keen to read an andy-essay on the topic!)
Kinda just threw that one out there tbh
hahaha check
Do you find you retain much from audiobooks and podcasts? I listen a lot but retain very little.
Unsure! I think I've retained a lot more from them than podcasts but a lot less than written material but it's pretty opaque.
Interesting! I'm wondering if it depends on the type of material being presented. I find that the conversational aspect of the podcast can it make it easier to explore various ideas.
Great article. Two minor quibbles. I'm not sure learning through Audiobooks is actually effective. Retention seems to be much lower than actual reading. Secondly, I'm not sure that economics is any more "real" than Marxism. We just live in a society that has bought into the collective delusion of classical economics, which makes it more useful than Marxism, at least in the West, but doesn't make it any more true. There are just too many contradictions between economics and ecology for it to really hold up.
Audiobooks are definitely worse than regular books but you also don't get to read regular books while you walk, so imo you should compare them to music or other things you'd be listening to. I think classical Marxism doesn't hold up because the labor theory of value isn't useful as a way of measuring how people are being taken advantage of, and a lot of more contemporary Marxist theories seem to oscillate between implicitly assuming the LTV is still useful or just running with the implications of it and completely ignoring it otherwise.
I would argue that you should be using things like walks for contemplation/absorption of what you've learned that, rather than shoving in more knowledge. Of course if you have to listen to something, audiobooks (preferably something you've already read) are better than music.
Interested in reading more about your ideas on Marxism. Have you written an article about this topic on the blog?
Would like to! It was a big focus for me in undergrad. I'm in a lot of agreement with this article specifically https://substack.com/home/post/p-148904734
Incredible post. You couldn't have chosen a better thumbnail to lure someone like me in.
Some more resources and links that that folks might find relevant if they liked this:
- https://www.pearlleff.com/in-praise-of-memorization (probably the best blogpost I've read about the value of having things memorized, very short and convincing)
- https://aliabdaal.com/anki-guide/ (this is an Anki course that really helped me out a lot when I was starting out, as I was really intimidated by the tool and all it's features. It feels weird to do a "course" for just one tool but out of all the Anki-related resources out there this is by far the best one)
- https://x.com/karpathy/status/1756380066580455557 (great Karpathy post that echoes some of your points)
- http://www.perell.com/podcast/tyler (one of my favourite podcast episodes ever where TC talks about "entry points" of getting into things)
insanely high yield essay
Well elaborated !
write to learn ✏️✏️✏️✏️
Andy, this was excellent. Thanks for writing this. I went down the rabbit hole and checked out Andy Matuschak's work: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
I also really enjoyed the work that Andy has done with Michael Nielsen on 'executable books': https://quantum.country/
Quantum County was built in 2019, but I think this structure is still fascinating probably more achievable with the recent progress in LLMs.
Redactle is a surprisingly good fun entry point into learning from Wikipedia and testing your knowledge about the world. An example of connecting a particular day's Redactle to my knowledge of China and how I expanded my knowledge as a result is here: https://www.eleanorkonik.com/p/on-the-diplomacy-of-steppe-princesses
This is really cool!
I think there's a potential addition of what Michael Rosbash says at 21:14 here https://youtu.be/jIkk4nCmLNY?si=EO1aSKoLVaAfh-AA&t=1274
Brilliant and clear article. I will read this multiple times. It resonates
Amazing writing.
My main issue lies in your use of the word “useful”. “Useful” learning is hard to define and I couldn’t find it here and it seems to learn, it rests on that.
What is your opinion on what useful learning is?
It’s pretty context specific! Don’t really have a good answer
On writing to learn: I picked up from How We Learn by Benedict Carey about the "fluency illusion", how you can really feel like you've understood something but actually you've got nothing substantial internalised at all. What you've written here about writing to learn, its SO true.
Just today I was trying to get down some thoughts on Luigi Mangione, and what felt like a clearly delineated work of analytical genius in my mind had turned into mush by the time my fingers got involved. What an awful feeling!
great essay!
most of the second half (tools) i’d heard before in other places, but most of the first half (mental strategies) was new to me. enjoyable to read, too!
some quotes that i found particularly striking:
> Most people most of the time avoid situations that are such direct reminders of their own limitations. I’ve come around to thinking that being good at powering through these hits to your ego is a core life skill, and just avoiding hits to your ego is maybe the main way you can get stuck and stagnant in life. … you should focus on choosing material that will actually help you learn, setting clear specific goals for what you’re hoping to learn, build systems that test whether you’re actually learning, and try to become more psychologically resilient to feeling stupid and bad in a new subject.
> It makes it easier for me to learn about macroeconomics knowing that I have a strong network of friends who will hang out with me even if I don’t know the deal with macroeconomics.
> Don’t be afraid of starting off with an incredibly simplistic narrative of the world. You just need to add complexity to it later.
the one part i most cleanly disagree with was:
> Commit to strong beliefs when you’re first learning about a new subject and then adjust them over time, instead of staying uncertain the whole time
seems like this requires a pre-req of being really really good at updating on new evidence, which isn’t hard to develop. i think a practice of steelman sessions — where you “pretend” to hold one strong view, then seek out the arguments that pop out as most damaging to your pretend-beliefs; then switching — retains most of the benefits, is a bit more inneffecient, but also ~totally avoids the failure modes you described.
*failure mode *i* described, lol
lol again, i forgot to describe the failure mode explicitly: i would worry, with the method you described, that i would accidentally hole myself arbitrarily into one set of beliefs, without being able to adequately update away from them
> I use Obsidian for notes and just use its spaced repetition plugin. I should be using it more!
how often do you currently use it? why aren’t you using it more — is this a fake “should”?
I only end up taking notes on some of the media I consume and only check my decks about once per week right now
Seems you are more interested in appearing knowledgeable than being curious. If you were genuinely interested in Marxism you would not consider it a waste of time.
By my count I've read about 4,500 pages of material by Marxists at this point, it was a big focus for me in undergrad. If I need to read more to be considered curious I guess I'm not curious. I was curious because it claimed to be a uniquely powerful explanatory system for understanding the world, and it became much less interesting to me when it clearly failed to provide that.
I feel your post tries to optimize the amount and quality of learning, and because of this optimization has lost sight of the joy of learning for its own sake
ok