If you feel the need to put the quote in rot13 to avoid spoilers, it's probably not worth posting at all (I don't think that this quote spoils anything significant about the plot in any case.)

Programming is great for writing little scripts for yourself, employment, and improving the quality of your thinking.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

From Terry Pratchett´s Unseen Academicals (very minor/not significant spoilers):

‘You had to find the truth for yourself. That is how we all find the truth.’
‘And if the truth is terrible?’
‘I think you know the answer to that one, Nutt’ said the voice of Ladyship.
‘The answer is that, terrible or not, it is still the truth,’ said Nutt.
‘And then?’ said her voice, like a teacher encouraging a promising pupil.
‘And then the truth can be changed’ said Nutt.

I think there is an area where the information typically given is vague or confusing, and the ability to be specific can come in handy: for presenting personal information and preferences. The provider of the information is of course considerably familiar with the subject, so it often happens that ve doesn’t realizes that what ve actually says is unclear or easily misunderstood ( For example, saying that you are a mathematician evokes, in a surprisingly high number of people, images of large numbers and complex but mechanical calculations ) or overly general ( “I enjoy reading speculative fiction” ).

So I think it may be instructive and enjoyable to do the following simple activity:

1)

• Participants are grouped in pairs.

• One person in each pair is designated as the initial questioner, and is given a list of personal questions to ask (for example, a list could include: studies, current projects/occupation, favourite musical genre, hobbies, etc.). Or perhaps the list is only a suggestion and the participants can choose the questions they want as they go.

2)

• The questioner asks the first question to vis partner.

• The interviewee tries to answer the question in a precise way. The aim here is not excruciating detail; the aim is that the mental representation that the answer evokes doesn´t differ too much from reality.

• The questioner asks for clarifications until ve deems the answer satisfactory, either sincerely or pretending not to be knowledgeable in a certain area/certain terminology that would have made the answering easy (also, see "comments", below).

• The sub-steps in 2 are repeated, selecting a new question until the list is exhausted.

3) Step 2 is repeated, exchanging the roles of the two persons in each pair.

Examples:

X and Y are paired together. X is the questioner.

…

X- What kind of music do you like?

Y- I think I prefer classical music.

X- Could you be more specific? I think that term encompasses music from over ten centuries.

Y- Well, the composers whose works I enjoy are…

…

X- Could you explain me what your current occupation is?

Y- I am an university instructor for basic linear algebra. In front of a class of between 30 and 90 students, I write in the blackboard most of the new concepts, definitions theorems, examples, and so forth, while also expounding orally and answering questions that may come up to the students. At the beginning of each semester, I receive a schedule which explains which topics should be presented on which days; I have certain liberty in determining the exact structure of each class, but the general shape is already given.

X- What do you mean with “basic linear algebra”?

Y- The class is directed to starting students of Economics, so the contents we see are not of too high abstraction. I mainly teach about the intersection of lines and planes in 3 dimensions, generalizations of this to higher dimensions, systems of linear inequalities, and some operation on matrices.

…

Comments: I think the main benefit of this exercise is that the questions don´t assume any specific knowledge, so whatever difficulty appears in the precise answering (save for poor introspection capabilities) probably relates to the skill being trained.

If the level of difficulty of these exercises were too easy, it could be increased by pretending something particular about the knowledge base of the questioner: for example, let’s say that ve is a typical (but yes, somehow English-speaking) citizen of the Roman Empire.

When it comes to rare probabilities, our mind is not designed to get things quite right. For the residents of a planet that may be exposed to events no one has yet experienced, that is not good news.

 --Daniel Kahneman, *Thinking, fast and slow*

"But you can't expect people to act rationally. We are emotional creatures."

This may be difficult to answer appropriately without knowing what the hypothetical speaker means with “emotions” (or "expect", for that matter). But the phrase seems to me like a potential cached one, so ve may not know it either.

A possible elevator response below:

Rationality is not Vulcan-like behavior; you don't have to renounce to your emotions in order to act rationally. Indeed, for most people, many emotions (like affection, wonder, or love) are very valuable, and applied rationality is knowing how to obtain and protect what is truly precious for you.
What is important is to rationally understand how your emotions affect your judgment, so you can try to consciously avoid or damper unwanted emotional reactions that would otherwise have undesirable consequences for you.