Running is a good idea, although I'm not sure how much difference practice really makes for someone who already is somewhat athletic. Parkour might be more useful.
Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I was once going home in the evening and passing through a semi-underground metro station, when out of the blue some guy from a clique was grabbing me by the wrist and aggressively blabbering something. I was rather thankful for having done Aikido when I was still in school because it's a lot easier to run when you're not being held back.
Funniest part is that getting out of wrist holds is one of the basics of Aikido for which there's a wide variety of techniques, but I'd never have expected anyone to actually try wrist-grabbing. I had never encountered wrist-grabbing in the few fights I had in school and I used to assume that if someone wanted to beat you up, they'd just try to beat you up.
Perhaps the whole situation could have been avoided by more caution or alertness, it's difficult to say. The whole thing was a unique experience for me; it was still rather early and while the sun had set (winter) there were lots of bright lights and some normal people around, so although I saw the clique and the guy, I didn't expect him to actually try anything. And of course nothing like that ever happened again.
Still not sure what to make of the whole incident in regards to useful skills. I did move away eventually, though.
I have reason to believe that the chances that trying to run would increase my risk of harm are above average. In all likelyhood, if I were in a place where there was a significant risk of being attacked or otherwise threatened by another creature, I'd probably be carrying a big stick. If I were still put in a fight-or-flight situation in spite of this, I'm not entirely confident that my extremely limited aikido/judo/Tai Chi training would be sufficient. (Semester courses in college with the latter two, sporadic classes with the former that are no longer a...
Related: 23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker
Followed by: Situational Awareness And You
If epistemic rationality is the art of updating one's beliefs based on new evidence to better correspond with reality, the zeroth skillset of epistemic rationality-- the one that enables all other skills to function-- is that of situational awareness. Situational awareness-- sometimes referred to as "situation awareness" or simply "SA"-- is the skillset and related state of mind that allows one to effectively perceive the world around them.
One might ask how this relates to rationality at all. The answer is simple. Just as the skill of lucid dreaming is near-useless without dream recall,[1] the skills of updating based on evidence and actually changing your mind are near-useless without good awareness skills-- after all, you can't update based on evidence that you haven't collected! A high degree of situational awareness is thus an important part of one's rationalist toolkit, as it allows you to notice evidence about the world around you that you would otherwise miss. At times, this evidence can be of critical importance. I can attest that I have personally saved the lives of friends on two occasions thanks to good situational awareness, and have saved myself from serious injury or death many times more.
Situational awareness is further lauded by elite military units, police trainers, criminals, intelligence analysts, and human factors researchers. In other words, people who have to make very important-- often life-or-death-- decisions based on limited information consider situational awareness a critical skill. This should tell us something-- if those individuals for whom correct decisions are most immediately relevant all stress the importance of situational awareness, it may be a more critical skill than we realize.
Unfortunately, the only discussion of situational awareness that I've seen on LessWrong or related sites has been a somewhat oblique reference in Louie Helm's "roadmap of errors" from 23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker.[2] I believe that situational awareness is important enough that it merits an explicit sequence of posts on its advantages and how to cultivate it, and this post will serve as the introduction to that sequence.
The first post in the sequence, unimaginatively titled "Situational Awareness and You," will be posted within the week. Other planned posts include "Cultivating Awareness," "How to Win a Duel," "Social Awareness," "Be Aware of Your Reference Class," "Signaling and Predation," and "Constant Vigilance!"
If you have any requests for things to add, general questions about the sequence, meta-thoughts about SA, and so on, this post is an appropriate place for that discussion; as this is primarily a meta post, it has been posted to Discussion. Core posts in the sequence will be posted to Main.
[1] What good are lucid dreams if you can't remember them?
[2] This is a very useful summary and you should read it even if you don't play poker.