(Deprecated on 2025-07-17): As of 2025-06-12, I am a member of the Open Research Institute! This website is me learning how to think via Top-down learning, vs the Bottom-up learning that I’ve almost entirely used up* until this point This is inspired by this post by Defender of Basic. Kickoff post with a quick sketch of why I’m doing this - here Why deprecated? I initially was excited to improve my world model via making predictions, and then cashing them out (that is, top-down learning) E.g., the Israel-Iran series Israel & Iran (session 1) Israel & Iran (session 2) Israel & Iran (session 3) Israel & Iran (session 4) But then, part of the onboarding for the Open Research Institute (thanks for @DefenderofBasic for being a mentor) involved thinking about what you actually care about This led to refocusing on my most salient “open questions”, e.g.: ❓“How can I improve my ability to think? (Open Question) ❓“How can I change how to orient to my family?” (Open Question) Improving my world model would be great, I’d love to be really well educated and informed. But it doesn’t feel like the most pressing thing!