Heuristics That Almost Always Work An Article by Scott Alexander astralcodexten.substack.com Sometimes there’s a Heuristic That Almost Always Works, like “this technology won’t change everything” or “there won’t be a hurricane tomorrow”. And sometimes the rare exceptions are so important to spot that we charge experts with the task. But the heuristics are so hard to beat that the experts themselves might be tempted to secretly rely on them, while publicly pretending to use more subtle forms of expertise. …Maybe this is because the experts are stupid and lazy. Or maybe it’s social pressure: failure because you didn’t follow a well-known heuristic that even a rock can get right is more humiliating than failure because you didn’t predict a subtle phenomenon that nobody else predicted either. Or maybe it’s because false positives are more common (albeit less important) than false negatives, and so over any “reasonable” timescale the people who never give false positives look more accurate and get selected for. expertiseheuristicsprediction
Beauty and compression An Article by Scott Alexander astralcodexten.substack.com The Buddha discusses states of extreme bliss attainable through meditation: Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion. ...If you could really concentrate on a metronome, it would be more blissful than a symphony. The jhāna is also a strong contender as a theory of beauty: beauty is that which is compressible but has not already been compressed. The Abode of the Unsymmetrical beautysilencesensesattention
Negative Creativity An Article by Scott Alexander slatestarcodex.com Coming up with entirely novel ideas is really, really hard. Misinterpretation as inspirationSit Down And Think About It For Five Minutes ideascreativitymetaphor
Why Sketch? An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Jenny Keller What you have observed closelyA single imageParallel refinementColor reproductionThe negative spaces+4 More Conversational drawingThe Beauty of the Overlooked
What you have observed closely Drawing requires that you pay attention to every detail—even the seemingly unimportant ones. In creating an image (no matter how skillfully), the lines and tones on the paper provide ongoing feedback as to what you have observed closely and what you have not. drawingdetailsseeing
A single image Scientific illustrations can achieve certain things that photographs cannot. A good illustration can portray difficult-to-photograph or rarely witnessed events. It can incorporate everything that’s important into one single image or show a special view of a subject. It would be next to impossible to observe, in nature, a dozen different aquatic species in their natural habitat, posing perfectly together and all in focus at one time—but such a scene can easily come to life in an illustration. notetaking
Parallel refinement My studies of live animals usually begin with a series of quick drawings, all on a single page. When the subject changes position—which it pretty much always does—I abandon the first sketch and start a new one. Continuing on in this way, the page fills with mostly unfinished squiggles until the animal eventually resumes one of its earlier poses. If that happens, I add as much detail or refinement to one of the easier sketches as I can. While this is all going on, I also jot down written notes that help explain what I observed and what seemed significant.
Color reproduction In-person, live observation of color is a practice for which I feel there is no adequate substitute. Photographs are often imprecise in reproducing color. perception
The negative spaces Focus on the negative spaces surrounding the object to give yourself a fresh perspective on the form. space
Hues subdued Colors in nature are, in general, more subdued than what comes directly from the pencil or the tube of paint. Greens, especially, tend to be a lot browner than we expect. The palette of natureColors in nature color
Unfinished Leave the drawing unfinished. Record as much information as you need, but don’t draw any forms, details, or colors that are merely repetitive. The back and front of a representative flower on a plant, for example, or half of a bilaterally symmetrical animal may be all that’s necessary. research