A little less than two weeks ago, Vat and I arrived in Kunming, China with the goal of not speaking any English. Now that we’re in I wanted to write about life in China and first impressions on learning Chinese. I wanted to be as thorough as possible documenting the progress in learning Chinese, so […]
My Plan for Learning Chinese Over Three Months
Normally I share my learning experiences after the fact. I’ve written before about tackling MIT’s calculus, Spanish, linear algebra, finance and other non-academic learning tasks. This time, however, I wanted to do things a little differently. I want to share my thinking process before going to learn Chinese. Then, once we land and the three […]
Don’t Think For Yourself
If you care about being correct more often, here’s a handy rule of thumb: Figure out which groups of people have spent their lives studying the issue you want an answer to. If there is a significant majority who believe conclusion X, then make conclusion X your default answer unless you have very strong evidence […]
Are Blogs Better Than Books for Mastering Complex Ideas?
Let’s say you want to be smart about a given topic. What’s better: read several books on the topic, or subscribe to a couple blogs and passively read the latest articles? If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated: reading books will make you more well-informed. Books explore […]