Note from the future that Kariko received the Nobel Prize in 2023 for the mRNA stuff
Additionally, it's been memed, and I think it's in part due to how with modern English writing it reads like someone shouting a mispelling. So many who say "RETVRN" are doing so ironically to make fun of the position, while others use it seriously due to its distinctiveness.
Meh? If 15° accuracy is good enough for you, that map of level curves shows you that most places on land will be fine, along with the parts of the ocean usually used for moving between land.
Ebbinghaus's work on memory, maybe? For some reason it looks like nobody had plotted memory decay curves despite the experimental apparatus consisting only of yourself, flashcards, a metronome, and either a strong work ethic or a masochistic desire to memorize nonsense as if trapped in a satire of education. He discovered some of the early famous results but more importantly was relatively early in doing empiricism in psychology (and like the first to do so for memory?). Wikipedia states:
With very few works published on memory in the previous two millennia, Ebbinghaus's works spurred memory research in the United States in the 1890s, with 32 papers published in 1894 alone.
But also, the fact that this was the 1890s makes me think it may not have been that long before someone found it anyways. But also also, the world wars could've delayed it in this alternate timeline. So, maybe?
The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast hosted by Eneasz Brodski (the HPMOR radiodrama guy) and Steven Zuber (from We Want MoR) has a Discord. By virtue of being smaller, it is easier to keep up with and imo easier to have conversations in.
There's the SlateStarCodex subreddit and a politics spinoff or something called The Motte
There's lots of low hanging fruit on Wikipedia. Now when I think "ugh, come on" or "that looks wrong" or "why doesn't this post have X??" etc. I either edit it immediately or write it down to edit (or procrastinate on editing) later. The most rewarding part is when I'm trying to recall something in a conversation, pull up a relevant Wikipedia page, scroll through to find the info... and then realize I'm the one that put it there.
This post and others like it was what got me to start editing. I imagine that somewhere out there is someone like my teenage self, reading Wikipedia and having a slightly easier time learning a bit more than I did.
That is a clever way to succinctly say it. However, I worry that I only understood that because I already was aware of the concept. Perhaps I should show this to some smart friends with basic math chops who don't already know about the whole naive bayes thing,
Here's a visual description: Imagine all worlds, before you see evidence cut into two: YEP and NOPE. The ratio of how many are in each (aka probability mass or size) represents the prior odds. Now, you see some evidence E (e.g. a metal detector beeping), so we want to know the ratio after seeing it.
Each part of the prior cut produces worlds with E (e.g. produces beeps). A YEP produces (Chance of E if YEP) amount of E worlds while a NOPE produces (Chance of E with NOPE).
And thus the new ratio is the product.
In case you don't know what odds are, they express a ratio using a pair of numbers where the overall scale is irrelevant, e.g. 1:2 and 2:4 represent the same ratio. Probabilities are the values when you scale so that the sum over all outcomes is 1, so in this case 1:2 = 1/3 : 2/3 so the probabilities are 1/3, 2/3.
In my opinion, the odds form is the superior form, because it's very easy to use and remember and "philosophically speaking" relative probabilityness is possibly more fundamental. Even at higher levels it's often more practical. I see it as a pedagogical mistake that Bayes theorem is usually first explained in probability form - even on this site! Basic things should be deeply understood by ~everyone.
I would not normally vote on this post, as the technique of "How could I have thought that faster?" seems extremely obvious to me but also very important if you are not in fact trying to improve your thinking after being surprised (or any other shortcoming). Since this post has 241 upvotes and multiple comments from people (example: Said Achmiz, who is not an idiot!) and others disagreeing with the framing, I have review-upvoted this post.
I think the framing of "think it faster" is specifically something you should track, beyond just "What did I learn here really?" (which I see as important subskills that help you figure out how to think it faster) or "How could I have thought that with less information?" (which I see as fully subordinate to thinking it faster, because you get later info later). By focusing on thinking it faster, you focus on cognitive strategies - on how you could've approached the issue differently with what you knew at the time, or maybe you should've put more/less stock in a certain kind of evidence.
The main problem with this post is that it gives no guide for how to go about learning how to think faster. Maybe you can't come up with a good guide, but for this sort of thing a list of examples is itself useful.
Here's a list of examples (that are too abstracted - next time I encounter something that I see how I could've thought it faster, I'll write it down, and when I've gotten a bunch I'll either post about it or add to this comment):
Say I am trying to prove a theorem. I will pursue a couple approaches, and then finally get something that works. When I look back on what I did, I will often find that I should've known better. Common problems:
Likewise, for more mundane life stuff:
Or when I'm surprised by e.g. the news or a factoid, I might've:
The best updates are more general, but unfortunately those are harder to discover.
I think the sense of feeling bad for not knowing basic stuff is valuable. The key to making it useful is that I try not to flinch away from learning the thing because of feeling bad. The only response to feeling bad for not knowing something is to either learn it or consciously decide it's not worth it right now.
I worry that without this sense I would have more fundamental gaps in my knowledge. It's an alarm bell much like noticing confusion. It probably helps to have prerequisite skills of having similar feelitgs spur yourself to action instead of just beating yourself up about it.
Some of my early inspirations for getting into physics were like that. Once while preparing for the science bowl in middle school I learned I didn't even know what the fundamental particles were. Later I learned I didn't even know how one converts electrical power into mechanical motion. Perhaps this has trained me to be excited instead of sad - following up on "Why the fuck do I not know this?" is often fruitful.