Here's a test to determine whether it's useful: Does it ever get people to change their minds/concede the argument? If yes, it's good. If no, it's useless except for the fun it provides you.

I was introduced to LW with a link and an endorsement that probably appeals more to the little boy in me than the little girl in others: "it's like martial arts for your mind."

Any thoughts on a 5 second sales pitch for women?

Silly example from my life. When I was three, I liked a girl named Katy in my Sunday school class. My greatest fear was that someone else would know. So I decided that I would be mean to Katy. I also realized that if I treated her differently, someone might read into that that I liked her. So I started treating all the girls in my Sunday school class horribly. And kept it going (consistency bias) until I was twelve. There were so many times that I wasn't even sure myself if I liked or hated girls, since I always said I hated them, even though I had crushes on most of the ones I knew.

My neck is asymmetrical because some years back I used to often lie in bed while using a laptop, and would prop my head up on my left elbow, but not my right because there was a wall in the way. In general, using a laptop while lying in bed is an ergonomics nightmare. The ideal would be to lie on your back with the laptop suspended in the air above you, except that that would make typing inconvenient.

So a friend recently blew my mind by informing me that prism glasses are a thing. These rotate your field of vision 90 degrees downwards, so that you can lie on your back and look straight up while still seeing your laptop. I have tried these and highly recommend them.

That said: You should probably not do non-sleep/sex things in bed because that can contribute to insomnia. I recommend trying a standing desk, by putting a box or a chair on top of your desk and putting your laptop on top of that, then just standing permanently; it will be painful at first. Also currently experimenting with only allowing myself to sit down with my laptop if I'm at the same time doing the highest-value thing I could be doing (which is usually ugh-fielded and unpleasant because otherwise I'd have already done it).

Another thing: I have a crankish theory that looking downwards lowers your unconscious estimation of your own social status (which seems to be partly what is meant by "confidence"/"self-esteem"). If that's true, prism glasses and standing desks could increase confidence.

I have always tried to "Build Small Skills in the Right Order", but I think it has been detrimental or even crippling to my learning process in some cases.

I'm pretty good at math, but I haven't studied advanced math and would like to begin a program of self-study. I have started a few times, usually reading the first couple of chapters of a high-level calculus book (Apostol or Spivak), or something at a similar level.

I already know calculus well, having used it as a physics major in college and taught it as a private tutor for high school students, but I am not completely familiar with all the subtleties, such as why Taylor series converge and under what conditions. Reviewing calculus before diving into an advanced book on real analysis seems like a good idea because I know I can understand the calculus book, and reading it will prepare me to study more challenging material.

Nonetheless, what usually happens is that I get impatient at the slow progress, bored with the material, and want to jump straight to the more difficult book. If I do, I feel like I am "doing it wrong" by ignoring the small skills, but if I don't, I wind up abandoning the program of study. I think I would have learned much more than I have by now if instead of a schedule of small skills, I'd simply opened advanced books to whatever section interested me and started plugging away, going back to review as necessary.

Similarly, early when I was a competitive distance runner, I read scores of books and internet forums for advice on training, then designed detailed training programs with careful "periodization" which would gradually build up my total amount and speed of running to the right quantities at the right time of the year. I also had many different gym exercises to do to build all requisite fitness before I could undergo the hardest training.

The result was that I was overly worried about whether my training was "correct", frequently got worn down or injured, and didn't perform well. Later, when I stopped worrying about all the small skills involved and simply ran every day for an amount that felt right to me, I improved a lot.

These examples aren't intended to contradict the advice to build small skills, but to point out that even if a skill is both small and helpful to your larger goals, it is not necessarily the right skill to work on. In one case, the skills I chose were actually too small; in the other they were distracting.

A good article, but one thing that sticks out of me is the overall ineffectiveness of these scientists at preventing the actual use of their technology. Only the recombinant DNA experiment was stopped before actually being carried out.

First off, I want to state that I agree heavily with this.

I teach driver's education and want to add that what has helped my driving the most has been the mere repetition of truisms ("don't drink and drive", "look where you're going while backing up", "think about what you're doing", "check you're blind spot before moving over", etc.) and the knowledge that a crash resulting from these types of failures would be especially low status for me. When I'm tempted to keep driving late at night vs. pulling over at the next exit for a rest, the thought of my friends, coworkers, and students judging me harshly were I to crash gets me to pull over when all else fails.

One note:

Solution: Watch this 30 second video for a vivid comparison of head-on crashes at 60 km/hr (37 mph) and 100 km/hr (60 mph). Imagine yourself in the car. Imagine your tearful friends and family. (emphasis added)

That video is great, and helps get the difference on a gut level. But vividly imagining one's friends and family morning their loss can increase suicide rates in those that are already predisposed.

1 - Smart people value exactitude. So, naturally, they like to follow rules... easier to be exact that way, if you have directions to follow. The problem with rules, though, is that establishing rules for certain domains vastly reduces the information content in play. Of course, sometimes rules are well-tested and not much benefit can come from throwing them out (engineering, for example). Relationships on the other hand... I'm not so sure. A lot of talk happens on LW about vast unoccupied tracts of mindspace. I think a very similar wilderness exists in relationshipspace. Maybe the best way to explore all that real estate isn't so much to find rules and teach others to follow them, but to figure out how to not get stuck. How to improvise. I know that sounds a bit like "do magic here," and I'm sorry.

Luke referred to me quoting Nassim Taleb. I think he's (Taleb, not Luke) frequently full of shit, but he occasionally really nails something. The Socrates quote is one such example. Another is "antifragility." Scroll down the page a bit. It's the fourth entry.

Just as a package sent by mail can bear a stamp "fragile", "breakable" or "handle with care", consider the exact opposite: a package that has stamped on it "please mishandle" or "please handle carelessly". The contents of such package are not just unbreakable, impervious to shocks, but have something more than that , as they tend to benefit from shocks. This is beyond robustness.

So let us coin the appellation "antifragile" for anything that, on average, (i.e., in expectation) benefits from variability.

This sums up the result of my romantic journeys. "Keeper" relationships must be antifragile.

2 - All of my relationships have been affected positively by my being more knowledgeable about my own inner states and articulating those inner states clearly. "Affected positively" includes the removal or avoidance or arms-length-ing of people who are unable or unwilling to do the same. I don't mean to imply that I always end up with the best information, because I don't. Sometimes I'm just an asshole, but by freeing myself to be a little bit of an asshole, I also free myself to be nicer. It's a work in progress.