2) To be a better listener, you need to be able to ask specific questions. I, for one, would be highly interested in a list of conversation items to drill this on, since generating these on the spot has been my failure point more times than I can count. (I don't mean trying to prepare follow-ups to everything someone might say, but rather practicing to get better at generating.)

I think you are right on target.

My Dad taught me to ask about peoples' kids, work or hobbies, because people like to tell others about them. I've found it to be a pretty useful tip.

If it's about the liver breaking down alcohol into toxic Acetaldehyde, drinking lots of water to flush it out.

How? I'm pretty sure that contrary to popular belief, water can't simply be used to flush stuff out, the metabolite also has to be in a form that can be excreted by the kidneys, and even then extra water might have no effect whatsoever. This is basic physiology found in any textbook on the subject.

I tried to google if kidneys might excrete some of the acetaldehyde, but found no answer.

What's scientifically known about hangovers

Debunks the common notion that hangovers are about dehydration. The reason it caught my eye is that I believed the dehydration theory, even though I should have known that extreme sensitivity to sound isn't a normal symptom of dehydration. (I've never had a hangover, but at popular accounts include sensitivity to sound and light.)

I'm wondering how I can become skeptical enough.

During my 2013 review, I've noticed one habit I've strengthened over the year: a certain curious skepticism.

When people share interesting facts with me, I've moved from responding "wow" or "I didn't know that" etc and filing the fact away to share myself, to something like "how fascinating, I wonder if that's true?" or "huh, I want to know more about that!" followed by taking out my phone and googling (or making a note to research it later.)

This includes wonder the same when I'm the one sharing the fascinating fact - "hang on, I've never checked if that's actually true."

I'm quite proud that to the best of my knowledge I can do this without offending people, or dropping out of the conversation.

On a related note, I've sometimes spent my morning compute write carefully phrased rebuttals to junk my family / friends share on facebook. Asked mum recently if I have been successful in arguing respectfully, learnt that I had, and in fact had caused something to be taken down. "Yeah, I hadn't looked deeply into that."

Fiction Books Thread

Trying to find a link I saw about CFAR doing some publishing some preliminary research on rationality techniques, including a finding that a technique they expected to work didn't actually work. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? My Google fu is failing me, to the point that I'm wondering if I'm imagining it.

Thanks for the recommendation, but isn't this sort of thing better suited for the Media thread?

Here is a problem that I regularly face:

I have a hard time terminating certain subroutines in my brain. This most regularly happens when I am thinking about a strategy game or math that I am really interested in. I will continue thinking about whatever it is that is distracting me even when I try not to.

The most visible consequence of this is that it sometimes interferes with my sleep. I usually get to bed at a regular time, but if I get distracted it could take hours for me to get to sleep, even if I cut myself off from outside stimulus. It can also be a problem when I am in a class that I find less interesting that whatever math I was working on before the class.

I know there are drugs to help with sleep, but I am especially interested in a meta-thinking solution to this problem. Is there a way that I can force myself to clear my brain and get it to stop thinking about something for a while?

One idea I had is to give my brain another distracting activity that causes it to think, but has no way to actively stay in my head after the activity is finished. For example, perhaps I could solve a Sudoku or similar logic puzzle? I have not tried this yet, but I will next time I am in this situation.

Any other ideas? Is this a problem many people face?

Data point, possibly completely irrelevant: When I am looking for a Java programmer job in Slovakia, pretty much the only thing employers care about is how many years did I program in Java and which frameworks did I use. -- Which in my opinion is completely stupid, because I consider the ability to write and understand algorithms much more important; and a new framework is just something you can learn in a month or two, if your algorithmic skills are solid. I guess the problem is with the fact that the employers who make the decision are not coders themselves, so speaking about algorithms is simply too abstract for them, but asking questions like "how many years?" and "are you familiar with XYZ, yes or no?" gives them a false sense of understanding.

More generally, you are a perfect employee if you did something extremely similar to what your new employers wants to do, for the last ten years. So another good question is: what kind of projects are the employers in your target group typically doing? (For Java programmer in Slovakia it is: a database application with a web interface, most likely in finance.) Then do a simple demo, using the "right" framework; which is the one most frequently mentioned in online job searches.

Note: In my case, programming games would be almost completely irrelevant to a real job experience. Although there would be some transferrable skills, such as commenting the code, maintaining a large program, understanding threads, etc. But I would completely miss communicating with the database and creating HTML pages, and knowing hundred specific details (and dozen bugs) of the relevant frameworks, which make most of my daily work.

But the problem is that there will be dozen frameworks doing pretty much the same thing, and new ones are still invented, and the old ones are redesigned. You just won't have time to keep up with all of them. So the framework-based knowledge is prone to obsolescence, which drives some programmers into despair. You need to be more meta, and instead of "knowledge of framework X" focus on "ability to understand new frameworks". (But you also need a deeper experience with one or two of them, just to learn what the painful parts are.)

Related failure: I do not feel productive, because the work I ended up doing was not the work I planned to do*. So I need to either get better at sticking to my list, or update on what merits feeling productive.

I wonder if I'd feel productive if I hadn't had a list at all?

* Edited to add: Maybe the reason I don't feel productive is because I have done a bunch of work but not reduced the observable pile of work that needs done.