I've been engaging more with spaced repetition lately, or more broadly engaging with recorded knowledge from the past. This practice has revealed an interesting conflict with my "progress agents" - those parts of me always pushing to move forward, to consume more information. These progress agents have a relentless need to keep going. When reading, they want to finish the book. When listening to podcasts, they ask for 2x speed. So naturally, the idea of revisiting past knowledge is horrifying to them. It's like they're saying, "Imagine how much knowledge we've gone through in our life! How much work would it be to review all of that? We're supposed to move ahead, and you're presenting us with this humongous backtracking task!"
There's an unease and disappointment in this realization. But I actually see it as a positive calibration.
We're constantly forgetting - trivial details go quicker, but, perhaps a bit slower, important stuff, disappears too: intentions, epiphanies, directions, values. So the progress agents, in their rush to only look forward, may actually be something big.
The progress agents intend, "We're gonna know it all!" But really, I'll only ever know a tiny fragment of all knowledge. In realizing this, there's some relief and reallocation
When I accept that my knowledge is such a tiny fragment of knowledge at large it brings a counterintuitive sense of fulfillment and it may help me with a strategy how communicate better. If I'll know so little, it may make sense to linger longer in some areas, to specialize here and realize how to make my knowledge more wholesome and useful to others.
If I need to slow down while reading, it's okay, it’s maybe even better? By doing so, I might engage with ideas on a deeper level, forming stronger connections in my knowledge net.
Plus the key to figuring things out may not be about stacking as much new information as possible. It may be, in some part, about arriving at the right state of mind, a right “wavelength”. That is, following the flow, experiencing calmnesss, feeling out the constraint, doing it at a pleasant rate, being prepared for the patches of boredom, feeling humble about the huge scope of knowledge I will not ever have. Sometimes I hit this pleasant state and I think to myself that it’s good for my mind to stay there for extended time.
This approach - of slowing down, humbly coming back, realizing limits of knowing - might actually lead to more meaningful progress, even if my restless progress agents don't always see it that way.
August 7, 2024
The key to learning might not be about stacking as much new information as possible but about arriving at the right state of mind, a right “wavelength”?. That is, following the flow and feeling the constraint: learning at a pleasant rate, knowing there will be patches of boredom, not rushing, being calm and composed, feeling humble about the huge scope of knowledge I will not ever have.
See more context above [Draft] Spaced repetition – a disappointment and then calibration of my progress agents
August 7, 2024
Richard Ngo said something like this
I've also updated over the last few years that having a truth-seeking community is more important than I previously thought - basically because the power dynamics around AI will become very complicated and messy, in a way that requires more skill to navigate successfully than the EA community has. Link