17-02-01 Ways to Discover Contrarian Truths
Category: Idea Lists (Upon Request)
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1. Read Contrarian thinkers, internalize the worldview
2. Go first principles on machine learning and generate as much of the field as I can myself from scratch
3. Enter high variance emotional states and think about important ideas
4. Read only the dark side of academia, of the internet, of feeds like HN - the unread, the uncommented
5. Read books nobody else has heard of
6. Take orthodox positions and assume they’re wrong - come up with the strongest possible arguments for them being wrong
7. Map out my worldview and criticize each portion of it strongly, steelmanning the opposition
8. Take a few baseline assumptions and build up from them, taking their conclusions seriously and generalizing fully from them
9. Isolate myself intellectually form the zeitgiest
10. Take Ideas I already hold to the extreme
Source: Original Google Doc