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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3309 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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INTUITION ESSAY CONTEST FINAL CALL

My Intuition Essay contest, in which a poll will be set up on Sunday to choose among the entrants who will get to pick the charity for the $200 donation, is drawing to a close. Any other submissions made today, 2/10, will be accepted and included in voting Sunday. Right now I count four (4) submissions, all of which were kind enough to note directly that they were entering:

@TheDag entered Intuition in a Scientific Age

@f3zinker entered A Case For/Against Education, Intuition

@felipec entered My Intuition About Intuition

and, last but not least,

@Pitt19082 entered This Untitled Piece Comparing Statistical and Intuitive Approaches in Baseball and Politics

If I missed any appropriate posts, please link them below and I will add them to the list and the ultimate voting. ANY EFFORTPOST ABOUT INTUITION, EVEN IF IT WAS NOT WRITTEN TO BE INCLUDED IN THE COMPETITION IS ELIGIBLE. As long as it was written between my original post and the end of the day today, it can be included in the ultimate voting. I looked through the CW threads for the appropriate period, and found nothing else which made sense to include, but feel free to point out anything I might have missed.

I want to prompt all the contestants: @TheDag, @f3zinker, @felipec, and @Pitt19802.

Did you find the topic difficult to write about?

I think people judging our essays might be very quick to criticize and say: why didn't the writer mention X? how didn't the writer connect Y with Z? (it's obvious)

I think the readers might not be aware of the vast idea space that can be explored. It takes time to explore a branch, and as you do you realize there's many more branches that can be explored that probably would take even longer time. And if you do take the time to explore other branches, you realize that the first branch you explored was not as important as you initially thought, and might not even be worth mentioning (there's plenty of examples I ended up not mentioning).

This is particularly worse if you've never written about the topic (as I), and then of course the time limit doesn't help (although without it I probably would have delayed the work even more than I did).

It's very easy to criticize, but I think only the people that actually sat down and tried to write about the topic would understand why a particular try might not have turned out to be as fruitful as many readers would hope, but it's still worthy of praise. Also, the end result might not necessarily be a reflection of your thoughts on the subject, which are probably evolving as we speak (the very next day I had yet another insight that I feel should be worthy of writing about).

I found it difficult, but mainly because I’m at a very busy point in my career and didn’t have as much time to research as I’d like. It’s definitely a topic I plan to come back to.

I want to come back to it as well. I didn't research anything at all, I just thought about it a lot. But doing a bit of research afterwards I've found some resources of interest for people who want to explore the topic more.

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