(Deprecated on 2025-07-17):
As of 2025-06-12, I am a member of the Open Research Institute!
- https://openresearchinstitute.org/ & Github https://github.com/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
Here is Defender of Basic’s similar notebook

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
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?” (Parent Page)
- “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!

📝 Alex's scrapbook