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
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,327 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,383 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

8,010 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,127 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

90 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Your Undivided Attention

1,469 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,200 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

91 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

425 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,434 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,371 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

502 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

128 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

72 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

464 Listeners