I continually train my ten-year-old son’s working memory, and urge parents of other young children to do likewise.  While I have succeeded in at least temporarily improving his working memory, I accept that this change might not be permanent and could end a few months after he stops training.  But I also believe that while his working memory is boosted so too is his learning capacity.    

I have a horrible working memory that greatly hindered my academic achievement.  I was so bad at spelling that they stopped counting it against me in school.  In technical classes I had trouble remembering what variables stood for.  My son, in contrast, has a fantastic memory.  He twice won his school’s spelling bee, and just recently I wrote twenty symbols (letters, numbers, and shapes) in rows of five.  After a few minutes he memorized the symbols and then (without looking) repeated them forward, backwards, forwards, and then by columns.    

My son and I have been learning different programming languages through Codecademy.  While I struggle to remember the required syntax of different languages, he quickly gets this and can focus on higher level understanding.  When we do math learning together his strong working memory also lets him concentrate on higher order issues then remembering the details of the problem and the relevant formulas.     

You can easily train a child’s working memory.  It requires just a few minutes of time a day, can be very low tech or done on a computer, can be optimized for your child to get him in flow, and easily lends itself to a reward system.  Here is some of the training we have done:     

• I write down a sequence and have him repeat it.
• I say a sequence and have him repeat it.
• He repeats the sequence backwards.
• He repeats the sequence with slight changes such as adding one to each number and “subtracting” one from each letter.
• He repeats while doing some task like touching his head every time he says an even number and touching his knee every time he says an odd one.
• Before repeating a memorized sequence he must play repeat after me where I say a random string.
• I draw a picture and have him redraw it.
• He plays N-back games.
• He does mental math requiring keeping track of numbers (i.e. 42 times 37).
• I assign numerical values to letters and ask him math operation questions (i.e. A*B+C).        

The key is to keep changing how you train your kid so you have more hope of improving general working memory rather than the very specific task you are doing.  So, for example, if you say a sequence and have your kid repeat it back to you, vary the speed at which you talk on different days and don’t just use one class of symbols in your exercises.

TYLER COWEN: Peter, tell me something that’s true that everyone agrees with you on.

PETER THIEL: Well there are lots of things that are true that everyone agrees with me on. I think for example even this idea that the university system is somewhat screwed up and somewhat broken at this point....You know, the ideas that are really controversial are the ones I don’t even want to tell you. I want to be more careful than that. I gave you these halfway, in-between ideas that are a little bit edgier.

But I will also go a little bit out on a limb: I think the monopoly idea, that the goal of every successful business is to have a monopoly, that’s on the border of what I want to say. But the really good ideas are way more dangerous than that.

Full interview.  HT Quora.

What are some good answers and your guess as to his answer?  Please exclude issues relating to race and gender.

1.  Start investing early in life.
 

The power of compound interest means you will have much more money at retirement if you start investing early in your career.  For example, imagine that at age eighteen you invest $1,000 and earn an 8% return per year.  At age seventy you will have $54,706.  In contrast, if you make the same investment at age fifty you will have a paltry $4,661 when you turn seventy.
 
Many people who haven't saved for retirement panic upon reaching middle age.  So if you are young don't think that saving today will help you only when you retire, but know that such savings will give you greater peace of mind when you turn forty.
 
When evaluating  potential marriage partners give bonus points to those who have a history of saving.  Do this not because you want to marry into wealth, but because you should want to marry someone who has discipline, intelligence and foresight.
 
 

Google Has An Internal Committee To Discuss Its Fears About The Power Of Artificial

"Worryingly, cofounder Shane Legg thinks the team's advances could be what finishes off the human race. He told the LessWrong blog in an interview 'Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this'. He adds he thinks AI is the 'no.1 risk for this century'. It's ominous stuff. (Read about Elon Musk discussing his concerns about AI here.)"

The head of the IMF was supposed to be Smith College's commencement speaker, but withdrew because of faculty and student protests.  A few professors (although none in the economics department) wrote to the IMF chief asking her to cancel.  The Smith Alumnae Quarterly asked several people, including myself, to write a 400 word article on the surrounding issues of diversity of thought and protest.  Below is a draft of my article.  I hope it's of interest and I would be grateful for any suggestions for improvement:

The following simple game has one solution that seems correct, but isn’t.  Can you figure out why?

The Game

Player One moves first.  He must pick A, B, or C.  If Player One picks A the game ends and Player Two does nothing.  If Player One picks B or C, Player Two will be told that Player One picked B or C, but will not be told which of these two strategies Player One picked, Player Two must then pick X or Y, and then the game ends.  The following shows the Players’ payoffs for each possible outcome.  Player One’s payoff is listed first.

A   3,0    [And Player Two never got to move.]

B,X 2,0

B,Y 2,2

C,X 0,1

C,Y 6,0

To quickly escape the great filter should we flood our galaxy with radio signals?  While communicating with fellow humans we already send out massive amounts of information that an alien civilization could eventually pickup, but should we engage in positive SETI?  Or, if you fear the attention of dangerous aliens, should we set up powerful long-lived solar or nuclear powered automated radio transmitters in the desert and in space that stay silent so long as they receive a yearly signal from us, but then if they fail to get the no-go signal because our civilization has fallen, continuously transmit our dead voice to the stars?  If we do destroy ourselves it would be an act of astronomical altruism to warn other civilizations of our fate especially if we broadcasted news stories from just before our demise, e.g. physicists excited about a new high energy experiment.  

A Dan Carlin Podcast about how the United States is foolishly antagonizing the Russians over Ukraine.  Carlin makes an analogy as to how the United States would feel if Russia helped overthrow the government of Mexico to install an anti-American government under conditions that might result in a Mexican civil war.  Because of the Russian nuclear arsenal, even a tiny chance of a war between the United States and Russia has a huge negative expected value.

I will soon be teaching a 50 person game theory class at Smith College and I want to include material on how to be rational. What do you think I should teach/assign?  The course has a one semester calculus requirement. Here is material I'm considering:

Litany of Gendlin, Humans are not automatically strategic, The map is not the territory, Ugh fields, Litany of Tarski, Branches of rationality, Twelve Virtues of Rationality, How to Be Happy, How to Beat Procrastination, Make Beliefs Pay Rent, Navigating disagreement, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization, Efficient Charity, Bayesians vs. Barbarians, ARGUMENTS FROM MY OPPONENT BELIEVES, Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, How habits work and how you may control them, The Halo Effect, NEWTONIAN ETHICS, Planning Fallacy, The Good News of Situationist Psychology, Use the Try Harder, Luke, Lotteries: A Waste of Hope.  

Dilbert creator and bestselling author Scott Adams recently wrote a LessWrong compatible advice book that even contains a long list of cognitive biases.   Adams told me in a phone interview that he is a lifelong consumer of academic studies, which perhaps accounts for why his book jibes so well with LessWrong teachings.  Along with HPMOR, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big should be among your first choices when recommending books to novice rationalists.  Below are some of the main lessons from the book, followed by a summary of my conversation with Adams about issues of particular concern to LessWrong readers.