A useful article, thanks. I particularly appreciate the context of spending money on ergonomics as we'll use it for 80000 hours, or so! Very interesting way to rationalize spending money on ergonomics.

I find using a Fitball as a chair facilitates the fidgeting mentioned and it's quite real that using an appropriately sized fitball will provide many of the ergonomic standards, like horizontal thighs and forearms. A fitball doesn't facilitate a straight back, instead it encourages one to strengthen one's core muscles and hence decreases lower back pain induced by overworked back muscles and under-strength core muscles. I tend to cycle my use of a fitball for a week or two, then put it away for a few months.

+1 for latex mattress, my wife and I bought one recently and we can confidently say that our sleeping is better, and have distinctly noticed that when I get into bed late at night and she's already in bed, that my movement doesn't wake her - that's a huge +1 for us late nighters! Another bonus for latex mattress is apparently they are resistant to dust mites and other forms of bed bugs.

With regards to pillows - has anyone considered the optimum height for a pillow per person? Seems to me that if one sleeps on one's back a pillow is unnecessary and may be detrimental in that it could contribute to forward head. Whilst if one sleeps on one's side then the appropriate pillow height is the thickness of one's shoulder, to facilitate the spinal column being in the same horizontal plane. If you're a sore neck (or headache) person spend some time thinking about the pillow!

Also barefoot walking is known to strengthen the small muscles in ones feet and ankles, this has useful benefits for posture and injury prevention. For those of us who work at home, going barefoot is quite easy, others who must be more physically social will also get peeved off answering the 20 questions a day "why are you barefoot?"

Happy festive season friends.

Technically speaking, the two questions about Cromwell birth are not equivalent : if you have a 90% lower bound and a 90% upper bound it does give you a 80% confidence interval, but not all 80% confidence intervals will have a 90% lower bound and a 90% upper bound. For example you give "now" for upper bound to your interval, and 80% lower bound, that'll still give a 80% interval. That may be part of the reason behind higher error rate for 80% interval : there are many ways to build such an interval, so it's easier to get mixed up.

Else, interesting article, but for some parts it underestimates social complexity of the task : for the planning fallacy, using the "outside view" is usually a good thing, but it's very hard in a professional context to make use of it (neither my boss nor my customers are usually receptive to it, they ask "how long for that feature and that one and that one" and don't care much about "last time we did a project of that complexity, we took twice as long as initially planned"). De-biasing yourself is very important, but sometimes it's not enough, you've to debias others too, and that's even harder...

The "discussion" of existential risk does occur in the mainstream media, sort of, it's mainly block buster movie's like Independence Day, War of the Worlds, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and so on. I am confident that people understand the concept, probably however not the phrase. I respectfully suggest that the author amend the original post to include revelation that discussion of existential risk does occur, perhaps mentioning that the discussion is often trivial or often for entertainment purposes.

Whilst there have been a wide abundance of existential risk discussions over millennia within the huge variety of Armageddon stories that abound in various religions. I also recall the M.A.D principle was taught in high school, revealing that existential risk was a component of educational policy in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Seems to me that the educational psychology term "overextension" has some relevance to the white swan scenario mentioned above. "overextension - inappropriate use of a word for a class of things rather than for one particular thing." Definition provided by Krause, K., Bochner, S., Duchesne, S., & McMaugh, A. (2010). Educational psychology for learning & teaching (3rd ed.). South Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia. Strictly going from seeing one white swan to labelling therefore, all swans are white is inappropriate, hence why I think overextension is relevant, it mainly occurs within very young children. I imagine that if AI are overextending then they may be displaying characteristics of 2/3 year old children, this may or may not be useful. Some parts of the below discussion mention prior's in the same way that a psychologist would use the term heuristic. "heuristic - a thinking strategy that enables quick, efficient judgements." Social Psychology 10th Edition by David Myers. It may well be useful to go from seeing one white swan to all swans are white, in that it may be a thinking strategy that enables quick efficient recognition of a swan. Perhaps this may be a first look scenario, a person (or ai) glimpses the whiteness and rough shape of a swan and provides a quick working label of "swan", then if necessary firms up that label with a refresh to gather more specific information, or simply holds the swan label if it's not necessarily needed.

I think I've got a pretty good feeling on those 6 predictions and have seen them in action numerous times. Most especially in discussions on religion. Does the following seem about right LWers?

The prior attitude effect, both atheists and theists have prior strong feelings of their respective positions and many of them tend to evaluate their supportive arguments more favourably, whilst also aggressively attacking counters to their arguments as predicted by the disconfirmation bias.

The internet being what it is, provides a ready source of material to confirm ones bias.

Polarization of attitude will occur, as a direct result of the disconfirmation bias. One classic example of this is the tendency in internet forum for one person to state their position and expect another to refute it, thereby polarizing the argument - that the people then "naturally" fall into a disconfirmation bias situation is quite ironic in my opinion. Is the classic debating style of "your for and I'm against" or vice versa an example of structured disconfirmation bias?

Whilst the sophistication effect as described precludes, or perhaps ignores that one measure of sophistication is to know the topic being discussed from multiple angles. I would hold that a person who uses their knowledge to only counter someone else's argument is utilizing sophism, whilst a person who is intellectually honest will argue for both cases.

World War II.

"A World at Arms" by Gerhard L. Weinberg is my preferred single book textbook (as a reference) on World War II.

It is a suitably weighty volume on WW2, and does well in looking at the war from a global perspective, it's extensive bibliography and notes are outstanding. In comparison with Churchill's "The Second World War" - in it's single volume edition, Weinburg's writing isn't as readable but does tend to be less personal. Churchill on the other hand is quite personal, when reading his tome, it's almost as if he is sitting there having a chat with you. Churchill is quite frank in revealing his thought processes for making decisions, in fact LWer's might particularly enjoy reading Churchills' account for that reason. Weinberg's A World at Arms is better at looking at multiple view points of the war, whereas Churchill tends to present everything from his point of view. "The Politics of War" by David Day is an Australian centric view point of WW2, it stands as an excellent reference from that perspective, but isn't able to provide an overall picture equal to either Weinburg or Churchill.

Boi YAR, that's peacewise for uber cool!

Thanks for the information on SRS, that lead to the android app anki. I was looking for another way to go through the sequences rather than just at the pc screen. Cheers.

Seems to me that the continuous improvement cycle is essentially what is being discussed in this section. Plan, prepare, implement, review, refine. One can see that in the RTS metaphor the planning and preparing to win the game is the building of the workers to get heaps of resources and scouting to decide which type of army to build, then implementing the spending of all those resources, then the initial assault, then the battle damage assessment to decide whether to continue with the same army or refine to a slightly different army, and back to the beginning again for the next round, as required.

A RTS gamer knows however one doesn't in fact spend all one's time on building resources without also building some kind of army along the way, to avoid the enemy doing a rush. Scouting is important for the timing of when to build the army. If one ascertains that the enemy isn't going to rush, sure thing go for an economic boom to build a later and hence more powerful army.

So too scouting is important in self improvement - one needs to put the "awesomeness" one has learned into practice to take that awesomeness outside of one's head and see if the awesomeness is really or pragmatically awesome or merely the perception of awesomeness (i.e. not awesome). Interaction with others will work towards compounding awesomeness - hence it's scouting within the RTS metaphor.

If I may be permitted to interact with you, I suggest you have a look at DeBono's 6 thinking hats as one model that is useful for some people and groups.

You might also consider adding Isaac Asimov to your list of great science writers. Asimov's New Guide To Science, though a touch dated now is still an excellent read across many fields.

If you're willing to step outside academia then check out Edward DeBono also, he will fit in beautifully with the SUCCESS formula you present.

"Favor surprise, as long as it doesn't engender too much disbelief. Avoid anything that lets the reader think, "I could have written that sentence." That'll depend on your audience, there are people who enjoy having their own thoughts affirmed. Sometimes its a surprise that someone else thinks like we do.

The problem with harping on everything is connected is that it is, but good systems are created bottom up instead of top down. You didn't sit down and say "All statistical problems are governed by overarching concept X, which leads to the inference of methods a, b, and c, which in turn lead to these problems." You said, "I have these problems, and certain similarities imply a larger system." It's like biology, Linnaeus did not come up with his classification system out of thin air, he first studied many individual animals and their properties and only subsequently noticed similarities and differences which he could classify. Narrowness is where we need to start, because it gives us the building blocks for broader ideas.