LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“My Research Process: Key Mindsets - Truth-Seeking, Prioritisation, Moving Fast” by Neel Nanda


Listen Later

This is post 2 of a sequence on my framework for doing and thinking about research. Start here.

Before I get into what exactly to do at each stage of the research process, it's worth reflecting on the key mindsets that are crucial throughout the process, and how they should manifest at each stage.

I think the most important mindsets are:

  • Truth-seeking: By default, many research insights will be false - finding truth is hard. It's not enough to just know this, you must put in active effort to be skeptical and resist bias, lest you risk your research being worthless.
  • Prioritisation: You have finite time, and a lot of possible actions. Your project will live or die according to whether you pick good ones.
  • Moving fast: You have finite time and a lot to do. This doesn’t just mean “push yourself to go faster” - there's a [...]

---

Outline:

(01:44) Truth Seeking

(06:59) Prioritisation

(12:24) Moving Fast

(18:25) Taking action under uncertainty

---

First published:

April 27th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cbBwwm4jW6AZctymL/my-research-process-key-mindsets-truth-seeking

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,234 Listeners

Astral Codex Ten Podcast by Jeremiah

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

131 Listeners

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat by New York Times Opinion

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

7,230 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

562 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,230 Listeners

AI Article Readings by Readings of great articles in AI voices

AI Article Readings

4 Listeners

Doom Debates! by Liron Shapira

Doom Debates!

14 Listeners

LessWrong posts by zvi by zvi

LessWrong posts by zvi

2 Listeners