Connecting concepts: Dishonesty and feeling guilty

I noticed a connection between the following two concepts:

1. Dishonesty: Honesty is work. Not doing the (honesty) work is dishonest. So when I say "you lied", I mean that you did not do the (honesty) work necessary to reach the conclusion that you reached.[1] 
• It's like a scientist who claims that his theory is the best theory to date (among its competing theories) while never having judged his theory against its competing theories -- he didn't do the (honesty) work necessary to claim that his theory is the best theory among its competitors. Such a scientist is treating his theory as though it is infallible.
• Another example is a person who insists that he didn't lie because he did not have the intention of lying. The intention to lie or not doesn't matter to the question of whether or not one lied. The relevant question is whether or not one did the work, regardless of whether or not he even knows that he should have done that work.
2. Feeling guilty: People often say that they "feel guilty". Often times they say that they must do X or they will "feel guilty", and then they do X.  They are treating their feelings as true without question (as if their feelings are infallible). They are acting without considering the possibility that their feelings are wrong and without considering the possibility of changing their feelings. Instead they focus all their attention on actions that they think will be compatible with their feelings. In doing so, they ignore criticisms of their proposed plans. They use their feelings to trump their reasoned criticisms. So these people are concluding that they're guilty without having done the (honesty) work necessary to reach that conclusion.

[1] My understanding of honesty/lying was dramatically improved by Elliot Temple's ideas. See his essay Lying and the rest of his public work, much of which can be found at elliottemple.com.

Connecting concepts: mentioning a doubt, scientific mindset

# Summary

I documented a thought I had during my last speedrunning session about not mentioning doubts and how that is dishonest and antithetical to the scientific mindset.

# Initial exploration

During my last speedrunning session, in between gameplay trials, I thought of something:

• When speedrunning, you're being dishonest and sabotaging your work if you don't mention a doubt you have about your work. In the same way, a scientist is being dishonest and sabotaging his work if he doesn't mention in his research a doubt he has about his work.

Connecting concepts: evolution of an idea, testable condition

# Summary:

I did some initial exploration about a connection I made between the evolution of an idea and the concept of testable condition. Basically, as an idea goes through its phases, it must pass thresholds, one threshold for each phase change.

-----------------------------------------------------

This is an initial exploration about an idea that I thought of recently. 

It's about the phases that an idea should go through as it evolves.

It's related to the testable condition idea that I've been talking about in recent blog posts. The basic idea is that as an idea goes through its phases, it must pass thresholds (one for each phase change).

[Update 7/7/2020: 1]

Imagine some phases that an idea goes through as it evolves.

Phase 1: connection made between my ideas. No writing yet.

Phase 2: explore the connection, in writing. But don’t follow explicit method — sorta like stream-of-consciousness writing. Write in personal notes.

Phase 3: explore the connection more, this time following my explicit methods (i.e. load my guides and do more-organized work). Post publicly.

Phase 4: if unsolved, get external help and discuss to resolution.

Phase 5: conclude that the idea is non-refuted.

For an idea to enter a phase, a threshold must be reached. 

Threshold 1 = phase 1 -> phase 2: 

• made a connection

Threshold 2 = phase 2 -> phase 3: 

• I wrote out a bunch of ideas and now it’s time to check my work.

Threshold 3 = phase 3 -> phase 4:

• I followed my guides and reached conclusions. 
• One type of conclusion is whether or not to get external help.

Threshold 4 = phase 4 -> phase 5: 

• I have no doubts, unanswered questions, criticisms of the idea.
• And if I got external criticism, I addressed those publicly and have no doubts, unanswered questions, criticisms of my judgement of those external criticisms.

# Footnotes:

[1] I learned about these things from the philosophy known as Fallible Ideas. (After publishing this post I realized that I didn't check for plagiarism. So I checked and decided to add this update.)

Idea tree: Philosophy - session #1

I made an idea tree about philosophy. It's just a start. Notes below.

Here's the MindNode link.

I think I got carried away with the arrows. 

I think I should add links to other writing within the nodes.

Things I thought to add but didn't yet:

• error-correction
• guesses and criticism
• learning experiments
• psycho-epistemology (not necessarily using the word)
• Karl Popper said "All Life is Problem Solving." (book by that name, didn't read it)
• I learned this stuff from FI.

Speedrunning is like football

Speedrunning is like football.

The football players represent (G) my gameplay ideas. The players' brains represent (Ge) my explicit gameplay ideas while the players' bodies represent (Gi) my inexplicit gameplay ideas, i.e my gameplay habits and intuitions.

The coaches represent (L1) my ideas regarding how to learn and improve my gameplay ideas. Their brains represent (L1e) my explicit L1 ideas while their bodies represent (L1i) my inexplicit L1 ideas, i.e. my habits and intuitions regarding how to learn and improve my G ideas.

The head coach represents (L2) my ideas regarding how to learn L1 ideas. His brain represents (L2e) my explicit L1 ideas while his body represents (L2i) my inexplicit L2 ideas, i.e. my habits and intuitions regarding how to learn L1 ideas.

But my speedrunning is more advanced than that because I've been using guidance from FI.[4]

There's a team physician and some other professionals like physical therapists. They represent (P) my psycho-epistemology ideas. [5] Their brains represent (Pe) my explicit psycho-epistemology ideas while their bodies represent (Pi) my inexplicit psycho-epistemology ideas, i.e. my habits and intuitions regarding my sense of life.

The coaches and healthcare professionals can enlist the team's primary philosophy coach who helps them in between games and practice sessions. The primary philosophy coach represents (L3) my ideas about my P, L2, L1, and G ideas. [1]

The primary philosophy coach (and none of the other coaches) has access to the secondary philosophy coaches. The secondary philosophy coaches represent external ideas from other speedrunners and philosophers. [3]

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# Footnotes:

[1] The guys try not to skip levels. So if L3 is talking to G, that's fine as long as the appropriate L2 and L1 is in the discussion, helping guide it, and making adjustments to themselves anytime L3 and/or G make an adjustment. (I'm unsure about this last sentence. needs more analysis.)

[2] not sure, needs more analysis. maybe only Ge and not Gi. And if so, this logic might apply to L/P.

[3] Every time any of these players or coaches talk to each other, there is potential communication error. Not sure about this. needs more analysis. 

[4] I learned about (philosophical) speedrunning from Fallible Ideas / Elliot Temple.

[5] Ayn Rand coined the term psycho-epistemology. Here's a link to her writings about it.

Connecting concepts: paths-forward and FI learning plan

# Context:

I thought of a connection between paths forward and FI learning plan.

I thought of this because minutes earlier I had made a series of connections between my ideas leading to one that said "Another big source of material [to make new connections] is other people’s material, FI email list, FI discord, curi blog, and other material posted to FI like books by Goldratt." I think that's when I thought of paths forward. I don't have a link yet because I haven't made a blog post yet -- it's only in my personal notes at this point.

# Goals:

• explore the connection between paths forward and FI learning plan.
• don't misrepresent the state of my knowledge regarding the ideas (i.e. don't lie or be ambiguous such as to easily result in misleading people about the standards to which I know what I know).
• don't misrepresent the originator of the ideas (i.e. don't plagiarize).

# Action Plan:

• record what I already explored in my personal notes
• load guides
• which ones?
• process of creating blog posts. [2] 
• discussion methods idea tree. 
• explore the ideas more

# Work:

I'm referencing the following guides:

• The two links above
• Creating my process of creating blog posts
• My idea tree on discussion methods version 1.6

Following is the initial exploration that I had written in my personal notes: It's a list of notes I took quickly without spending any conscious effort to make it understandable to anyone but me: [1]

connect paths-forward to FI learning plan

strength of path forward comes in degrees:

- weakest path forward example

- strongest path forward example (known to me)

new idea: new sheet that logs other people's criticisms/suggestions/questions/etc.

• and a form that allows people to add stuff to my list.
• maybe this is too much. I could instead tell people to talk to me [[[where?]]]
• and I could automate the task of importing a post from [place defined above] so that it enters my sheet and notifies me about it with an email.
• the system would alert me that there's a new post and prompt me to run the importToLog function. 
• where would the sheet be? in my learning plan log, or a new spreadsheet? 
• I guess a new spreadsheet. 
• bonus: then I could learn how to automate tasks that involve more than 1 spreadsheet.

Now I'll try to expand on this stuff. 

What is an example of the weakest path forward? I did a search in the paths forward essay (linked above) and didn't find the word "weak". So I started skimming and I found "bad path forward" and "good path forward". I skimmed some more looking for something I vaguely remember about the degree of strength of a good path forward (my paraphrase). I haven't found it yet. Maybe it's in another essay or blog post about paths forward. 

I think it's useful to think of a path forward as having a degree of strength. And I think it makes sense to talk about one or more thresholds. I think that's what Elliot was doing when he defined "bad path forward" vs "good path forward". I think the degree of strength of a path forward beyond a threshold makes the path forward "good", or else "bad".

I think another useful threshold can factor in one's knowledge. For example, I've been implementing a learning plan that I created guided by (among other things) the FI learning plan blog post linked above and Elliot's suggestions/criticisms in his FI emails engaging with my semiweekly summary posts about my work on my learning plan. I used Elliot's suggestions/criticisms to improve my process of making my semiweekly summary posts, which effectively strengthened the paths forward for my ideas. 

This means that I now make paths forward for my ideas that meet the standard of my current state of knowledge (summarized in the blog post linked in last paragraph).

Disclaimer: I have not checked these ideas with FI. This blog post is partly intended to do that.

# Analysis:

• I think I did some good work exploring the connection between paths forward and FI learning plan.
• I think I correctly stated the state of my knowledge of the ideas I explained.
• I think I correctly credited the originator regarding the ideas I used.

# Next steps:

Prioritize this post on my next semiweekly summary post.

# Footnotes:

[1] note to audience: I wrote part of the summary for this blog post -- the one that goes in my semiweekly summary posts -- right after having written the initial exploration. I wrote the rest of it after finishing the blog post.

[2] note to self: new connection: this step is analogous to getting my ideas to testable condition. define testable -- can successfully get external criticism and I can successfully determine success/fail on the ensuing discussion about the external criticism. not sure. explore more. make a blog post dedicated just to this. (I saved this to a personal note as a reminder.)

Connecting concepts: state audience and testable condition

I noticed a connection between two ideas that I want to explore. I noticed this a few days ago, and used it a few times, but I didn't think of the idea of talking about it yet. 

The first idea is about stating the audience for a piece of writing. 

The second idea is about getting a programming function to testable condition so that I can test it.

How are these ideas connected?

When writing a blog post, comment, discussion message, or whatever, it's important to have a clear enough understanding of the intended audience such that the model (of the audience) is in testable condition. What does that mean? It means that the audience model should be clear enough such that I can use it to check if my audience would fail to understand my statements. If the audience model is not clear enough, then I can't use it to check if my audience would fail to understand my statements.

For example, consider this blog post. Who is my intended audience? Me and some FI veterans that might read this blog post. I have a clear picture of my own skills and enough of a clear picture of the FI veterans such that I can tell if my statements (in this blog post) would fail to be understood by the audience.

Connecting concepts: breaking up stuff into parts and indirection

I noticed a connection between two ideas: (1) breaking up a project into parts and (2) indirection.

One way to deal with complex projects is to break it up into subprojects. Each subproject is simpler and easier to deal with than the parent project.

This process can be done with the subprojects too. So each subproject can be a parent project to many child projects. Each child project is easier to deal with than its parent project.

Indirection means redirecting your efforts to child projects because their parent project is too hard (for you given your current skill) to deal with as one non-broken-up project.

Avoiding indirection means avoiding breaking up complex projects into simpler subprojects.

Connecting concepts: references as guides and installing code libraries

While blogging about some programming work, I noticed a connection between two things.

The first thing is the concept of installing code libraries. Sometimes a programmer wants to use some existing functions and one way to do that is to install the relevant code library, giving him access to use its functions in his programming project.

The second thing is the concept of using references as a guide to doing some intellectual activity. I use many guides while doing my intellectual activities. Here's a guide I use for making blog posts.

How do they connect?

Keeping a guide in mind while doing an intellectual activity is analogous to installing a code library for a programming project.

Compare and contrast my intellectual activities

While thinking about this FI email by Elliot Temple, I decided to dedicate a blog post towards it. He said: "Summarize how the time period went." So I want to explore that. And I want to expand it to the entire period (including my past speedrunning and grammar sessions going back maybe a year).

My main goal has been to learn rationality. Part of that means to improve my self-evaluation methods, in general and specifically for individual activities.

Two of my activities have been speedrunning and grammar. My speedrunning sessions have been very helpful towards my main goal while my grammar sessions have not been of much help. (My latest grammar sessions have helped a little bit with my self-evaluation of grammar, but I don't think I've been able to generalize those ideas much for any activity.)

Then I recently started programming. I started programming only because I wanted to automate some repetitive tasks and because I find that kind of stuff very very very fun. But then very quickly I realized that this is helping me learn self-evaluation methods, not just for programming but for all activities. And I think my programming work has been more productive overall than compared to my speedrunning work, with respect to making progress towards my main goal (and the subgoal of developing my self-evaluation methods).

Why is my programming helping so much? I have some theories. 

First, programming is similar to speedrunning in the sense that it's very easy to know when you're wrong (assuming you already know how to do empirical tests in programming, which I do some). As for grammar, it's much more difficult to know when you're wrong.

Second, programming is similar to speedrunning in the sense that there's tons of helpful content already written on the internet. It is true that there's lots of content re grammar, but because it's much harder to know when you're wrong, much of that content is either wrong or confused or doesn't explain things well, making it non-ideal for my main goal (with my current skill level).

Third (and this hasn't taken effect yet), programming is similar to speedrunning in the sense that the philosophy community I'm involved with can make informed comments about my work (because many of them are programmers). My philosophy community can also help with critical discussions re grammar, but that type of discussion is much harder for me to understand given the complexity of the content (compared to speedrunning or programming).

So that sets programming and speedrunning on an equal playing field (for me, not claiming anything about other people, for example people who don't already know some programming).

Fourth, I'm able to do programming for many hours a day (on one particular day I spent ~7 hours) while I get bored speedrunning after just a few trials (which might take 20 minutes). So I'm putting a lot more time and thought into programming than I am into speedrunning.

I have another insight, differentiating between programming and speedrunning. Programming does not require fast reactions while speedrunning does. I think this is a pro and a con. One of my subgoals is to integrate my habits with my explicit policies, and another is to improve my skills at integrating my habits with my explicit policies. I think programming helps with this some but I'm guessing that speedrunning is better for this because it requires more focus on my habitual thinking and body movements. 

Connecting concepts: indirection and programming

# Goal:

1. Connect the concept of indirection with my programming process. Why? So that I can make the indirection concept habitual for me such that I apply it universally to all my activities, not just programming.
2. Content: avoid misrepresenting the ideas.
3. Credit: avoid plagiarizing.

# Action Plan:

Brainstorm some ideas about how my programming process incorporates the indirection concept and connect that to any kind of problem (not just programming problems).

# Work:

• What is indirection? 
• Indirection is a concept related to problem-solving. If you're stuck on a problem, indirection helps you get unstuck. It helps you solve that problem.
• How does this apply to programming? When I'm programming new functionality (a problem) and get stuck, indirection helps me get unstuck. 
• What's the process which incorporates indirection?
• Say you're working on a problem and you get stuck -- e.g. making new programming functionality. Try to look for other problems you could solve that would help you learn something that would make the original problem easier to solve -- for example, learn about how to switch sheets in google sheets, or learn how to use the alert function for the purpose of testing. Then pick one of those problems and work to solve it. On success, then pick another subproblem and work to solve it. Repeat this process until you've solved all the subproblems, then go back to working on the original problem. If you're still stuck on the original problem, repeat this process of looking for subproblems and solving and then go back to working on the original problem. Repeat this process until the original problem is solved.

# Analysis:

1. I think I did well exploring the ideas I wanted to explore. I explained how I used indirection in my programming process. And I explained how that applies to all problems, not just programming problems.
2. I think I did not misrepresent any ideas. I claimed that this session is just for brainstorming, so I'm not making claims that my ideas have survived external criticism nor were my statements ambiguous about that.
3. I think I did fine re giving credit. I linked a blog post about indirection, which gives credit to that author.

# Next steps:

Consider incorporating the problem-solving process I described above into my (not yet created) programming guide. (I saved this to my already created personal note about making my programming guide.) 

Connecting concepts: testable condition and ideas

# Goals: 

1. I want to brainstorm about how the idea of designing a programming function so that it's in testable condition applies to philosophy.
2. Audience: me and FI veterans. 
3. Content: avoid misrepresentation of the ideas.
4. Credit: avoid plagiarism.

# Content:

First some context. Yesterday I was programming and at the end of my session I decided next steps, which was to continue designing my function until it's in testable condition so that I could test it. And after writing that blog post realized that this logic applies to philosophy.

So when I was making my function, I ended the session leaving the function in a state where I hadn't tested it and I couldn't test it yet. I was still designing it using only my philosophical/non-empirical criticisms as tests. And I wanted to get it to the state where I could do empirical tests. 

How does this relate to philosophy? 

• If I have a new idea, I should try to get it into a state where it is worthy of submitting for external criticism before submitting it for external criticism. 
• If I have a new idea, I shouldn't believe it yet until it has crossed some thresholds. The first threshold is: is it ready for external criticism?
• What if it's personal and I don't want external criticism? Then at least recognize that your belief is to the standard of your own criticism and not to the standard of other people's criticism. 
• If I have a new idea, don't declare it good/right or otherwise present yourself that way, even if it's just ambiguous from the point of view of most people in your culture, until it has been exposed to external criticism and survived.
• What if it was exposed but nobody replied? Maybe people found mistakes but weren't interested in discussing it with you. What if it was exposed and people replied? Maybe it didn't survive and you think it did.
• So what to do in this case? Make your judgement about whether or not it survived criticism. Provide analysis. This exposes your judgement about the status of your idea so that others can criticize your judgement.
• What if you don't understand what they said? That means you're overreaching and unable to self-evaluate your idea. I recommend working with easier stuff, and iteratively work with harder stuff with small increments in difficulty, until you've sufficiently improved your self-evaluation skills.

# Analysis:

1. I think I did well connecting the testable condition idea to philosophy. I made a bunch of connections that I hadn't thought of before writing this blog post.
2. I think I did well writing this blog post for my audience, me and FI veterans. I think it's understandable to the audience.
3. I presented my blog post as being in brainstorming phrase, so I think I did well communicating the state of my ideas. I expect there to be substantive mistakes that other people can find.
4. I'm not sure that I'm not plagiarizing. I didn't quote or cite anything. I'm not sure I should have either. I didn't claim that I invented any of the ideas in my blog post. So I'm not taking credit for the ideas. But I also didn't claim that somebody else invented the ideas, so I'm not giving credit either.
1. What could I do to figure out whether or not I should give credit?
2. What could I do to give credit?

# Problems/solutions:

1. Problem: What could I do to figure out whether or not I should give credit?
1. Solution: Write blog post purposed for seeking out external criticism about it. 
2. What could I do to give credit?
1. Solution: (same as above, same blog post)

# Next steps: 

• Make a blog post purposed for seeking out external criticism about the above problems. (I saved this to my personal notes as a reminder to make the blog post.) 

Connecting concepts: integration, knowledge creation, self-evaluation, libraries of criticism, overreaching, fallibility

I previously wrote 3 blog posts connecting some concepts and this blog post is purposed for connecting all of those concepts plus one additional one. The concepts are: integration, knowledge-creation, self-evaluation, libraries of criticism, overreaching, fallibility.

Here are those 3 blog posts: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.

Brainstorming:

• What do the concepts mean? 
• Knowledge-creation: Knowledge-creation is about how learning works, how problem-solving works, how decision-making works, etc.
• Self-evaluation: Self-evaluation means evaluating ideas yourself.
• Overreaching: Overreaching means your error-correction rate is being overwhelmed by your error-producing rate.
• Integration: Integration means building up relatively complex ideas from relatively simpler ideas.
• Fallibility: Fallibility says people can make mistakes and that it's super common.
• Libraries of criticism: A library of criticism is a set of criticisms that you know that you can use to refute some ideas.
• How are the concepts connected?
• Knowledge-creation and fallibility: Knowledge-creation depends on fallibility. If I have a policy for dealing with ideas that does not account for the possibility that an idea is wrong, then I'm failing to create knowledge.
• Knowledge-creation and integration: Knowledge-creation requires integration. Integration allows you to use principles in your thinking. Thinking without using principles as a guide doesn't work.
• Knowledge-creation, self-evaluation, and fallibility: Knowledge-creation requires self-evaluation. I can't rely on other people to evaluate my ideas.
• Why can't I rely on other people to evaluate my ideas for me? Two reasons:
• Reason: That person could be wrong, due to fallibility, and since I don't know how to self-evaluate, I won't be able to know if that person's idea is wrong or not.
• Reason: Even if that person's idea is right, the expected result is that I won't understand it and won't even know that I failed to understand it. So if I thought I understood it and followed it, and if I didn't actually understanding it, then I will have adopted an idea that wasn't the idea that I was given. So I'd be effectively following an idea by blind faith.
• Knowledge-creation and overreaching: If you're overreaching, you're failing to create knowledge. Why? Because you're making more mistakes than you're correcting, leaving tons of uncorrected mistakes.
• Overreaching and fallibility: When I am overreaching, that means I'm not accounting for fallibility.
• Overreaching and integration:
• If you're overreaching, you won't be able to integrate your ideas well.
• The more you integrate your ideas, the more universal your ideas/skills/policies will be, allowing you to do more complex things without overreaching.
• Self-evaluation and overreaching: 
• If you're unable to adequately self-evaluate some ideas, then dealing with those ideas (using them in your thinking or discussion) is overreaching.
• The more you improve your self-evaluation processes, the more complex ideas you can deal with without overreaching.
• Self-evaluation and integration: If you are unable to self-evaluate some ideas, you won't be able to integrate them well.
• Knowledge-creation and library of criticism: Knowledge-creation requires criticism and it works better when you reuse already known criticisms. The already known criticisms are libraries of criticism.
• Self-evaluation and libraries of criticism: In order to adequately self-evaluate some ideas, you'd have to have an appropriate library of criticism for those ideas.
• Overreaching and libraries of criticism: If you're doing an activity and it's overreaching for you, that means you haven't built up an appropriate library of criticism for that activity. 
• Fallibility and libraries of criticism: If you're not trying to create libraries of criticism, then you're not accounting for fallibility.
• Integration and fallibility: Integrating ideas helps you account for fallibility because it makes it easier to recognize contradictions between ideas (which are a type of mistake).
• Integration and libraries of criticism: 
• Having appropriate libraries of criticism for some ideas allows you to integrate them well. 
• Even the process of integration requires an appropriate library of criticism for that activity.

Process I used as a guide to make the content above

Note: I used my general process of writing blog posts as a guide to create the following process:

1. Document the goals with clear success/failure criteria
1. Goal: State audience. Be specific enough that I could use the model to make predictions about whether the audience will understand my statements.
1. For this blog post, the audience is me and some FI veterans that might read this and provide me criticism.
2. Goal: Avoid misrepresenting other people's ideas (in content and credit)
3. Goal: connect the following concepts -- integration, knowledge creation, self-evaluation, library of criticism, overreaching
1. Reread Elliot's Using Questions in Thinking once before writing the content and once afterwards to check for things I forgot, and edit if necessary.
2. Write the content.
1. After writing the body
1. make a good summary
2. make a good title
3. Analyze whether or not I met the goals.

Analysis

• Did I adequately define the audience? Yes. I'm able to use my audience model to self-evaluate whether or not my audience will understand my statements.
• Did I avoid misrepresenting other people's ideas both in content and credit?
• Content: Yes. I indicated that I'm only brainstorming, which implies that I'm not claiming that my versions of the original ideas are fully compatible with the original ideas.
• Credit: Yes. I provided links to the original ideas that I worked with, which clearly indicates to my audience that my ideas are versions of originals. So I'm giving credit to the author(s) of the originals.
• Did I connect all of the ideas that I intended to connect? Yes. I made a spreadsheet to connect every two-idea combination of the original ideas, and I made sure that my blog post includes every two-idea combination. Using this process helped me find 2 combinations that I missed, and then I corrected that.
• Did I make a good summary? Yes. I wrote the first summary early in my process of writing the main content (not at the beginning), and then I edited it a couple of times during the process of writing the main content.
• Did I make a good title? Yes. I wrote it before my process of writing the main content, and also before documenting the process that I would follow for making and analyzing the main content. Then I edited the title a couple of times during the process of writing the main content.

Connecting concepts: trying to teach and discussion

Goals: brainstorm ideas re relationship between trying to teach and discussion.

Brainstorming:

• People should be focused more on their own learning than other people’s learning. 
• Thinking is a prerequisite for discussion. See curi blog post Thinking Before Discussion.
• So, one should first learn how to self-evaluate his thinking before trying to have a discussion (which uses thinking). 
• How does doing discussion before learning to self-evaluate your thinking connect to teaching? If you try to have a discussion and you haven’t learned how to self-evaluate your thinking, then you will necessarily be teaching/lecturing.
• Why? You can't avoid it because you're overreaching. You can't tell when you're wrong, so you won't be able to switch to the learner role when needed. You will be in teacher mode in cases when you shouldn't be, and you won't realize it.
• Since you're overreaching, what else will that cause? You will make a bunch of mistakes that you won’t notice or notice and won’t fix because you're overreaching. 
• What are some implications of that? You’ll be misrepresenting people's ideas, effectively spreading lies about them, and plagiarizing them.
• How does overreaching connect to whether one is focussed on his own learning vs other people's learning? If you're discussing with others and you're overreaching, it means you’re more focused on others people’s learning than your own learning.
• If I was to do discussion, how should I do it? I should follow the same general policy: document what I’m going to do (following a general policy), do it, analyze, problem solve, decide next steps.
• Am I ready for that? No because I haven't error-corrected my self-evaluation policies for my thinking enough yet, nor have I error-corrected my (not yet existing) self-evaluation policies for discussion. 
• Should I view discussion similar to speedrunning? Yes because a discussion is like a series of speedrunning sessions in the sense that I should have general policies that describe what I plan to do and how I plan to self-evaluate what I did.

[I created this blog post while attempting to follow my general process of creating blog posts (which I haven't actually made the first version of, but I did do some brainstorming on it).]

Connecting concepts: pressuring and other people's policies for their stuff

I made a connection between *pressuring people* and *not following their policies for their stuff*.

Brainstorming:

• suppose personA states a policy to personB regarding their property. and suppose personB acts against it. that's pressuring.
• personB could have misunderstood the policy.
• suppose personA clarified the policy, clarifying that personB acted against the policy. and suppose personB understood the clarification. now personB should be able to correctly follow the policy (to the extent that he understood it).
• It would be good for personB to restate the policy (in a way compatible with the policy) in his own words so that he exposes his understanding to personA, giving personA the opportunity to correct personB's misunderstandings. (it would have been better for personB to do this earlier, right after personA stated his policy, so that he could correct his misunderstandings at the earliest possible stage, minimizing the potential of acting against the policy due to personB's ignorance of the policy.)

Connecting concepts: integration and overreaching

After writing this blog post, I thought about the relationship between integration and overreaching. 

Here are some ideas I brainstormed (including new brainstorming):

• If you're overreaching, you won't be able to integrate your ideas well.
• The more you integrate your ideas, the more universal your ideas/skills/policies will be, allowing you to do more complex things without overreaching.

Connecting self-evaluation, library of criticism, knowledge creation, overreaching

I recently made a connection between self-evaluation methods and libraries of criticism. 

This post is mostly just my brainstorming. So I'm not trying to organize this into something easy for other people to understand. I expect to make a more organized post later.

[Process: make a tentative title. "Connection between self-evaluation and library of criticism"]

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I guess I'll connect these 2 ideas to knowledge creation too.

Knowledge creation is a process of ruling out hypothesized theories with criticism, aiming to arrive at theories that you didn't rule out.

• note that criticisms are also theories, so they too are ruled out by criticism.

Theories, including criticisms, have scope -- so they apply to some situations and not others.

For each scope, a person has a library of criticism. [I thought to link to something Elliot wrote about library of criticism and I didn't find anything except this: https://yesornophilosophy.com]

So when a person does an activity, he should have a library of criticism that he applies to that activity.

What does the library of criticism do? It helps him self-evaluate his activity.

So applying a library of criticism to an activity is the same as applying one's self-evaluation methods for said activity.

[Process: get link regarding concept that I just presented without explaining what it is. found a curi blog post connecting self-evaluation with overreaching.]

[Process: rethink title. New title is: "Connecting self-evaluation, library of criticism, knowledge creation, overreaching"]

New connection between my explicit policies and my actions

After writing this blog post, I made a connection between a couple of my ideas. [brackets are my ideas to myself and I don't want to deal with them now.]

Idea 1: Do an activity by first documenting what I plan to do. I recently wrote about that.

Idea 2: I did an activity without first documenting what I plan to do.

These ideas contradict each other. I want to do idea 1. I disagree with idea 2. [why? because that'll help me continuously improve my self-evaluation methods regarding said activity.]

And here's another connection I just made. I didn't document my documentation process for the activity since I didn't make one.

Next steps: document my process for writing blog posts.

The mind is like a file cabinet

While I was thinking about my learning plan, I thought of the mind as a file cabinet.

I imagined a file cabinet that is very messy and chaotic vs one that is very organized. 

One is practically impossible to find stuff in and the other is very easy to find stuff in. 

I wouldn't want to try to find something in a messy file cabinet.

So I guess if your mind is a messy file cabinet you could create a new file cabinet and start over. You could use the Fallible Ideas Learning Plan as a guide to start your new very-organized file cabinet. I guess you'd be including stuff from your old file cabinet if you happen to remember some of it and get lucky enough to find them when you're making your learning plan. And you could continue this process of moving things that you luckily find from your old file cabinet and put it in your new very-organized file cabinet.

Learning: Overreaching and self-evaluation

I'm trying to understand the relationship between overreaching and self-evaluation.

When people are overreaching, they aren’t able to adequately self-evaluate their ideas.

To avoid overreaching, a person would have to incrementally build up his skill of self-evaluation as he incrementally increases the difficulty level of stuff he’s working on.

Imagine that you have self-evaluation-skill-level 20 (using numbers only as a demonstration to help clarify) while you’re doing an activity that requires self-evaluation-skill-level 30. You’re overreaching, meaning that you’re making errors at a rate that is greater than the rate that you are correcting errors. One effect of this is that you won’t be improving your self-evaluation-skill-level. And if you keep increasing the difficulty level of stuff you work on while in this state, then the gap between your self-evaluation-skill-level and the difficulty level of your activities will keep increasing. So you will be overreaching even more with each increase in activity-difficulty-level.

In order to learn effectively, a person should be increasing his self-evaluation-skill-level along side increasing his activity-difficulty-level. With each incremental increase of self-evaluation-skill-level, he incrementally increases the activity-difficulty-level. This keeps the gap between self-evaluation-skill-level and activity-difficulty-level at zero.

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The above description is simplistic. It doesn't differentiate between general skill in self-evaluation that applies to any activities and specific skill in self-evaluation that apply to specific activities.

If your general self-evaluation skill is great, then that means you'll easily create self-evaluation skills for individual activities. In contrast, if your general self-evaluation skill is novice-level, then you'll much more slowly create self-evaluation skill for individual activities. 

As you increase your self-evaluation skill for individual activities across many activities, you'll inadvertantly increase your general self-evaluation skill. You can also intentionally increase your general self-evaluation skill by consciously integrating your self-evaluation skill for individual activities into general concepts/policies that can then be reused to create new self-evaluation skill for other individual activities.