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Growth

Improve one's cognitive capability.

Sometimes it's about the attitude. It's a mindset to cultivate. Articles often describe the capabilities or common practices for one to grow, but more importantly is the mindset behind that enables those practices to emerge naturally. Think of growth as a habit of tinkering and questioning. The ability to focus, to think and let the mind wonder about anything.

Resources​

  • How to Become a Hacker | Eric Steven Raymond
    • Hacker: technical adeptness and delight in solving problems and overcoming limits
    • Mindset/attitude: solve problems, do not reinvent the wheel, avoid repetitive work, anti-authoritarian, worship competence
    • Skills: programming, open source OS, Web, English
    • Culture: write, test and debug open-source software, publish useful information, support and propagate the culture
  • How to Do Great Work? | Paul Graham (HN)
    • "If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like?"
    • Almost an hour of reading. Hard to summarize. Worth rereading from time to time.
  • Highlights from the Sequences | LessWrong
    • The Sequences is a series of blogs written by Eliezer Yudkowsky on his view of rationality between 2006-2009
    • This page contains the top 50 posts from the Sequences, from thinking about our thinking, then recognizing pitfalls of our reasoning, then understanding laws that guide our beliefs, and many more
  • Excellence is a habit, but so is failure (HN)
    • A short article on bad habits incrementally accumulate over time
    • Avoiding the bad ones is as important as cultivating the good one

Sites​

  • Untools — Tools and frameworks to assist thinking, decision-making and problem-solving (Guide)
  • LessWrong — Forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning (User's Guide)
  • Second Order Thinking
    • The "and then what" thinking. What's next over time? Seeing what people can't see.
    • One extreme example of not having 2nd order thinking I can think of is perverse incentives (the Cobra effect).
  • Mental Liquidity (HN)
    • The ability to abandon previous beliefs when the world changes or when there is new information
    • Einstein from rejecting quantum physics to nominating the Nobel prize for a group of quantum physicist
    • End of history illusion: aware of how much has changed but assume things will be stable in the future
    • "What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?"
    • "A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute."
    • In HN comments: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" — Aristotle
  • A Complete Guide to Getting What You Want
    • Identify something you want, then identify conflicting wants and sort them out
    • Learn how other people have already gotten the thing you want
    • Do what others did. Imagine how one could do it if one has maximum courage and tolerance.
    • Adjust course as needed, but only as needed
  • Ask HN: What are the big/important problems to work on?
    • Free software: work against authoritarianism, censorship, and surveillance
    • Or "What is the highest-impact problem that you are capable of solving?"
    • Finding the balance between optimism and pessimism
  • The carrot problem (HN)
    • British lying to the Germans about their radar
    • Anytime someone makes up excuses for their success, it misleads people to put effort and time into the wrong things
    • It is impossible to know the scale but being an insider helps
  • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
    • The capacity to be alone. To question and work on problems solitarily.
    • Linger in confusion, patience with confusion to wait for a powerful question to arise from loose attention
    • To be good at surfacing new questions rather than answering questions
    • The zone: A state with no judgement, wholly unconstrained, free of self-censorship for orienting creative thoughts
  • My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story
    • A single faulty connection almost turned $500M Mars rover to a piece of scrap
    • Accept your failure, let your scars shows your learning, capability and resilience
    • "Remember this feeling the next time you have to sign-off that something is OK"
  • How to Get Focused | Taylor Pearson
    • 25 years plan: not too short, it feels spacious to think about what really matters
    • 90 days north star: getting over the Amara's Law, not to under/over-estimate one's capability
    • Every 90 days is approximately 1% of 25 years
  • Three Focus Failures | Taylor Pearson
    • Do set falsifiable goals: At some point the goal should be "did it" or "didn't make it"
    • Goals are better with short timelines with sense of urgency. Visions should be set years into the future keep dreams big, exciting and motivating
    • Do set process driven metrics, metrics that are in control of (100 sales call rather than 20 sales)
  • Stubborn Visionaries & Pigheaded Fools
    • Success through perseverance: winners never quit, keep trying...
    • Failure through obstinance: repeating history is doomed to fail...
    • They are the same before knowing the outcome, the job is to find out which scenario as soon as possible
    • Timebox it. What is the rate of progress? Still enjoying? Learning? Opportunity cost?
  • 101 things I would tell myself from 10 years ago
    • Just saying, these kinds of statements/quotes are powerful, usually they don't give much context, but it plants a seed in your brain, and you will fill in details to justify the statement
  • The Right Kind of Stubborn | Paul Graham
    • Persistent v.s. obstinate: successful, persistent people listen to disagreement
    • Persistent is to achieve the goal, the engine doesn't stop. Obstinate is to the methodology, the wheel doesn't turn.
    • Persistence requires energy, imagination, resilience, good judgement and focus
  • You don't know how bad most things are nor precisely how they're bad | LessWrong
    • A story with a piano tuner, out of tune with itself and with others, etc.
    • Some art, only few possess the level of skill to know, it's unfortunate if it dies out yet no one knows
  • A bridge to meta-rationality v.s. civilizational collapse
  • Willingness to look stupid
    • On to developing a very deep understanding of topics
    • A ton of examples from the author listed in the blog, quite inspiring
    • It looks stupid to try, practice, think, ask about the same thing repeatedly, but eventually that makes one skilled at that particular skill. It can be rock-climbing, driving, playing video games, studying, etc.
    • Allowing the conscious process of evaluating the stupid thoughts is already better than reflexively rejecting
  • How to succeed at MrBeast Production
    • Whether you like MrBeast videos or not, I think worth reading
    • If you want quick summary, check Simon Willison post (HN)
    • Bits about making viral videos, bits about working effectively, ownership, communication, creativity, etc.
  • The quiet art of attention
    • One's mind is the only true freedom, to gently observe, to gently respond, to act from intent instead of reflex
  • YouTube: Are Smart People Ruining Democracy | Dan Kahan | Ted
    • How motivated cognition affects people with higher numeracy/ordinary science intelligence/open-minded thinking score
    • Motivated cognition: selectively credit/discredit evidences based on political views
    • Understand this affects everyone and be scientifically curious
    • Explained by Veritasium: On these questions, smarter people do worse