When I was younger I thought this was the normal mode. As time goes on I've realized not a lot of people I know enjoy learning this way.
Where can I go to find people with a deep love of learning, not for money or a credential but just for the pure joy of it.
Universities? Libraries?
Suggestions appreciated!
Being in an environment of exploration is best. Non-profits, foundations geared towards research, etc.
I've not had much luck, finding these places, but, TBH, I haven't really looked. I've generally spent my entire adult life, focused on delivering product, and that has plenty of room for learning. I come from an ... eclectic ... educational background, and often find myself being shunned by those from more traditional backgrounds, so I've learned to find my own way.
Teachers are generally good for the kind of thing you are talking about. They need to keep learning stuff. Trainers for things like bootcamps need to stay up to date. They are also likely to have patience for those still on the journey.
Some of the high-score people on StackOverflow are actually fairly impressive, and are all about learning, but I do get a bit tired of looking up their noses.
Local chapters of academic societies (like INFORMS for operations research). Lots of people love to talk shop and learn what other people are doing.
Taking adult education courses at a good university will help you meet such people as well.
Meetups — hit or miss. Some are self filtering like functional programming or philosophy but if you go to a cloud computing meet up you’re likely to meet people who are there for professional reasons. They’re curious too but more for the sake of their jobs.
Bear in mind that these are people curious about specific things. If you want to find well rounded individuals that are curious about lots of things, well they’re rare and there’s unlikely to be a watering hole where they congregate because the intersecting set of interests between them is likely small. University clubs might be an avenue but if you’re no longer in school they’re not really accessible to you.
I don’t wanna say she takes the university life for granted, but I can’t say she understands what it’s like to work in a place where you’re the one and only curious, well-read person.
EDIT: janitors, bellhops, and waitstaff are much more interesting than office plankton. But there is no culture of reading and learning in either context.
A simple heuristic: search for submissions about Zettelkasten, Evergreen notes, spaced repetition, and similar knowledge organization or learning methodologies and tools (Roam Research, Notion, Obsidian, Anki, etc). If someone is sufficiently motivated to write down and study new things they encounter, it's likely that they seriously love to learn.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=Zettelkasten&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=Anki&sort=byPopu...
https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/#sort=top;t=month
Certain topics have very vibrant communities and forums, eg: language learning on Reddit, the Busuu community, or HiNative.
Also, consider taking a philosophy (theory of knowledge) class either at a local university or community college if available, or on a MOOC like Coursera or EdX. You might find many intellectually curious people there.
"A number of years ago I became aware of the large number of physics enthusiasts out there who have no venue to learn modern physics and cosmology. Fat advanced textbooks are not suitable to people who have no teacher to ask questions of, and the popular literature does not go deeply enough to satisfy these curious people. So I started a series of courses on modern physics at Stanford University where I am a professor of physics. The courses are specifically aimed at people who know, or once knew, a bit of algebra and calculus, but are more or less beginners."
From an expert point of view, where is motivation of tolerating adult "curiosities"? I can easily tolerate a 5-year old who genuinely curious and assumes no base of understanding, which I can enjoy building my explanations from ground up. You get the satisfaction of filling an empty cup and and occasionally, the naive 5-year-old may seriously challenge your fundamental understanding and you yourself learn something. Not all 5-year-olds are like that, and extremely rare to find such adults.
I think the people you are looking for, with "a deep love of learning", is every where. For example, who love reading popular books on subjects that they are not familiar. That is why there are so many popular non-fiction books. But, are you sure that you are actually seeking each other out?
IMO, if you are truly with "a deep love of learning", study text books and take MIT open courses, and then read scientific papers. Then you will find those experts -- they are always listed in the references with contact associations.
Suggestions welcome
Also, if anyone has a good way to categorize knowledge please let me know. I am uncertain which categories and channels to create on this server.
The fact that someone chooses to spend their free time watching a presentation or participating in a technical discussion is a pretty strong signal that they love to learn. There are usually a few people who attend for recruiting or networking purposes, but that's pretty obvious when you meet them.
Relatedly, a lot of the people who present at meetings like this are among the most avid learners, assuming they're not delivering a sales pitch.
Honestly, these are wildly different forms of "learning" and you're unlikely to find a community engaged in all three.
Tons of book clubs exist if you just want to talk about the latest Malcom Gladwell book. Or discuss whatever pop-sci flavor of the month shows up on TED recently. Over time I've become a bit disillusioned with this form as learning because authors tend to both simplify reality, and overstate the reliability of research findings. Sometimes its not exactly their fault when science is retracted but it suggests that focusing on "new" is less useful. When I realize I've forgotten most of what I've read, it makes me feel slightly less anxious about how wrong much of it was.
For skill acquisition, affinity communities on the skill: juggling, knitting, cycling, language, art, chess, sports all have clubs and similar. These tend to focus on continual honing of expertise in the area, instead of acquiring a skill and moving on to another.
For learning from experts, well, conferences and symposiums abound. And again, they cluster around topic instead of mode of learning. Conferences are usually about publishing new findings and pushing the frontier of the unknown forward but its a much harder, slower and difficult task than learning settled science from a textbook. You can learn about astrophysics without knowing what a z-score is but its definitely something to be aware of when attempting to convince the expert community of a new fact.
MasterClasses are often kind of an interview format you may enjoy, and if you seek in person formats, sometimes colleges and museums hold public seminars, and some day soon may resume.
I hang out in corners of physics, ML, EA, and Progress Studies Twitter and have made some great connections that have turned into real friendships IRL.
Often the next step after meeting on Twitter is setting up a video chat to have a deeper conversation together, but eventually I like to set up nice walk and talks on hikes or around cities.
I now have great friends that I make an effort to see in person in cities around the US and Europe!
Reach out to me if you want. i_ts_h(ertz) atgmail com
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You mentioned, that you practice intensely for months to develop a skill, talking to experts etc. I have recently started on a similar path to strengthen my fundamental skills in my subject area and, that means, learning solo and working on various domain topics for many years. Do you have any general advice on learning topics intensely for months, just curious about your personal approach to learning solo.
Shameless plug: https://dsebastien.net/blog/2021-11-12-personal-knowledge-ma...
The thing about people is that at first we are all good and nice to each other until the surface-niceness wears off and true characters emerge, the real face, and much as one can be optimistic and say a person in his true character is both good and bad--hopefully more good than bad--it is the small amount of bad that can lead to a variety of problems.
In the modern world, it is becoming increasingly hard to find psychologically healthy people, and hence, I never seek other people to befriend and am content with my books and pets.
Just pick one that interests you and involves being social - it is a little hard to find the ones who are happy mastering living in the woods by themselves, nor will they be thrilled to see you if you do find them :)
At some point I'm sure you will get critical mass. There are a lot of people exactly like you.
Me!
Edit: right now? Here at https://nerdear.la
Their motto is "never graduate."
interested in math, CS, languages, biology, philosophy, history, pretty much everything it's a problem
so I guess HN is a good place.