Many textbooks, tutorials or ... tapes leave out the ways people actually think about a subject, and leave you to fumble your way to your own picture. They don't even attempt to help you build intuitions. (Looking at you, Bourbaki.) This sucks. I love it when explanations try to tap into what I can touch, feel and see. Yes, you still have to put in work to understand why an idea's intuitive, but it leaves you much richer than when you started.

I've occasionally found Luke's The Best Textbooks on Every Subject thread useful[1], and this tweet reminded me that I don't have an analogue for intuitive explanations. Time to fix that.

Rules

Share links to materials below! Share them frivolously! I will add the shared materials to the post. Here are the loose rules:

Recall a material you've seen that conveys an intuition (or even [...]

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Outline:

(00:49) Rules

(02:31) List of Materials

(02:39) Bayes Rule: Guide

(03:07) Diarcs belt trick

(03:40) Thinking and Explaining

(04:35) Proofs and Refutations

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 24th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Z4LXJBuWKkkvj7NXH/the-best-materials-to-build-any-intuition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Best Materials To Build Any Intuition” by Algon