Egan for autodidacts?

here's a novel idea

Last week I did a podcast with Oz & Charlie @ CS Primer —

The conversation was fun, bouncy, oddly kept gravitating back to dinosaurs,¹ and opened up something that I had never given any thought to before:

If Egan’s right, what does that mean for us self-learners?

Which is odd, as I’m [gestures expansively to row upon row of history, science, and philosophy books] kinda one of those.²

In the podcast, you can see me cook up what I think are some quite interesting ideas, related particularly to how to Eganize LLMs (“large language models” — AIs like ChatGPT) to understand hard things better, faster. Which gave me an idea for a mini-project:

honing some of these methods by coaching (very short-term, maybe two or three meetings) someone who’d like to learn a new topic/skill in depth, quickly.

Basically, helping someone else get a bespoke version of the techniques I’ve developed for teaching myself to craft all the Science is WEIRD lessons.³

Interested? (I’m not looking for money for this so much as a gerbil to experiment on a way to make learning fun!) I’m looking for some feedback as to what works well for others…

Lemme know in the comments — and if you do, include the thing (a topic or a skill) you’d like to understand (or master).

I.I.: Brandon, what of this last weekend’s planned post about mushrooms? I STAYED UP ALL WEEKEND THINKING ABOUT MUSHROOMS IN PREPARATION.

I stayed up all Saturday with the flu (and then slept through Sunday). It’s getting its finishing touches. Look forward to it! (But also, get some rest. I assure you: it helps.)

1. Oh, I am NOT complaining.

2. Also, I chose the profession of “teacher” mostly because I didn’t want a career to get in the way of wandering through bookstores.

3. Though to be fair I also have an Amy, my science advisor. No, you can’t have her.