Exercise 2.2: Make plans for different worlds... Maybe you live in a world where you'd improve your cognitive function by taking nootropics, or maybe you live in a world where the nootropics would harm you.

On the bright side, this is pretty much the thought process I go through whenever I don't know the right answer to something. On the other hand ("on the dark side"?) I think my automatic instinct is "there's no scientific consensus on this that I've read about in my textbooks...therefore this is a Permanent Blank in my map and I just have to live with it." Even if I'm not up to going out and doing the original research to answer Question X, I suspect that I would often be wrong about there being no already-investigated answers. Looking a given topic up and reading about all the conflicting theories, rather than a scientific conseusus, still provides more information than not reading up on it at all.

And again, thank you for the excellent article! I really like this one.