Follow-up to: Boring Advice Repository
Many practical problems in instrumental rationality appear to be wide open. Two I've been annoyed by recently are "what should I eat?" and "how should I exercise?" However, some appear to be more or less solved. For example, various mnemonic techniques like memory palaces, along with spaced repetition, seem to more or less solve the problem of memorization.
I would like people to use this thread to post other examples of solved problems in instrumental rationality. I'm pretty sure you all collectively know good examples; there's a comment I can't find from a user who said something like "taking a flattering photograph of yourself is a solved problem," and it's likely that there are other useful examples like this that aren't common knowledge. Err on the side of posting solutions which may not be universal but are still likely to be helpful to many people.
(This thread is allowed to not be boring! Go wild!)
"How do I get stronger?" has been solved and the solution is Starting Strength.
Evidence: The set of my friends who are strong is exactly the set of my friends who do / have done Starting Strength or a close variant. Also, I used to lift with several competitive power lifters (including someone ranked top 100 nationally in the deadlift) and they unanimously advocated it.
These are relatively large N and effect size btw, i.e. I know at least 15 people who've done SS and they're out-benching the non-SS'ers by 20 pounds on the low end, and 100 pounds on the high end (I pick bench because it is the exercise most people are familiar with; the gap for other things like squat is more like 50 pounds on low end, 200 pounds on high end).
The part I don't understand is why people want to be stronger as opposed to be more visually muscular. This is not the same thing, for the later goal traditional body-building i.e. one composite and one isolation exercise for every major muscle group works better. Also it is more like 5 x 8 or 5 x 10. A lot of strong people end up still being fairly thin.
What is the utility of strength without beach looks today? I just pay movers to carry furniture from the old apartment to the new. Even in a brawl, punching strength depends more on knowing how to use gravity.