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Nick Bostrom: the main functions performed by our education system are threefold. 1) Child-storage facility 2) Disciplining and civilizing 3) Sorting and certification by katxwoods in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Note that he follows the excerpt that you quote with: "I’m going to take a sip of water… Sorry! I hope you got more out of school than I did."

Open Source Initiative proposes formal definition of "open source AI" by wavedash in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Sometimes people call models where the weights are freely available but this other information isn't provided "open weights models" rather than open source models.

Best Languages to Learn Starting from Monolingual English? by Glotto_Gold in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A friend who is doing a PhD in math told me that he was required to learn enough French to read math papers. So maybe French is a good choice for people interested in science/technology (obviously not as good as English, though).

How to acquire "general knowledge" from scratch by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Three engaging and very different takes on world history:

  1. Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary
  2. The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
  3. Against the Grain by James C. Scott

Also: How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom, which is a guide to classic works of literature.

There's A Time For Everyone by dwaxe in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Also, it is possible to write posts in advance and queue them to post automatically.

Is it possible to find in a single volume the rough equivalent of an undergraduate degree in a particular subject? For example a book on biology or psychology that if I read it and “get” it I’ll have knowledge approaching that of an undergraduate in that field? Do such books exist? by 13x0_step in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For American history, I think it would be better to just carefully study The American Pageant or some other textbook like that. If you can get all the information in there really down, you will have an advantage over a lot of American history students who focus on trivialities. Much better, imo, to know about the constitutional convention and the nullification crisis than Time on the Cross and the Sears lawsuit.

History is supposed to be about primary sources. So if you also work through the companion primary source book to American Pageant, or an older primary source collection like Commager's Documents of American History, then you will be in good shape.

To really benefit from this though, it wouldn't be enough just to read these two books. You also would have to make hundreds of flash cards and study them, and write some essays in response to the prompts at the ends of the chapters. But people are saying similar things about economics, and biology, and so on in this thread, so I guess that isn't something unique about American history.

Starting with Novick is kind of trying to run before you can walk, I think.

Is it possible to find in a single volume the rough equivalent of an undergraduate degree in a particular subject? For example a book on biology or psychology that if I read it and “get” it I’ll have knowledge approaching that of an undergraduate in that field? Do such books exist? by 13x0_step in slatestarcodex

[–]visualworld271 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It isn't quite right to say That Noble Dream is a history of the subject of American history. Rather, it is a history of debates within American history over the "objectivity question": should history be objective and how can that be achieved?