This is the question asked by John Cook on Twitter. He lists responses from different people:

• R
• Version control
• Linear algebra
• Advanced math
• Bayesian statistics
• Category theory
• Foreign languages
• How to not waste time
• Women

Mine are: quantum mechanics, Python, cooking, the language of philosophy.

What learning curve do you wish you'd climbed sooner? Give reasons and stories if you feel like it. Do you think other people should climb the same curves?

Here is an experience that I often have: I'm walking down the street, perfectly content and all of a sudden some memory pops into my stream of consciousness. The memory triggers some past circumstance where I did not act completely admirably. Immediately following this, there is often regret. Regret of the form like: "I should've studied harder for that class", "I should've researched my options better before choosing my college", "I should've asked that girl out", "I shouldn't have been such an asshole to her" and so on. So this is regret which is of the kind: "Well, of course, I should've done X. But I did Y. And now here I am."

This is classic hindsight bias. Looking back into the past, it seems clear what my course of action should've been. But it wasn't at all that clear in the past.

So, I've come up with a technique to attenuate this kind of hindsight-bias driven regret.

First of all, tune in to your current experience. What is it like to be here, right here and right now, doing the things you're doing. Start zooming out: think about the future and what you're going to be doing tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, 5 years later. Is it at all clear what choices you should make? Sure, you have some hints: take care of your health, save money, maybe work harder at your job. But nothing very specific. Tune in to the difficulties of carrying out even definitely good things. You told yourself that you'd definitely go running today, but you didn't. In first-person mode, it is really hard to know what do, to know how to do it and to actually do it. 

Now, think back to the person you were in the past, when you made the choices that you're regretting. Try to imagine the particular place and time when you made that choice. Try to feel into what it was like. Try to color in the details: the ambient lighting of the room, the clothes you and others were wearing, the sounds and the smells. Try to feel into what was going on in your mind. Usually it turns out that you were confused and pulled in many different directions and, all said and done, you had to make a choice and you made one.

Now realize that back then you were facing exactly the kinds of uncertainties and confusions you are feeling now. In the first-person view there are no certainties; there are only half-baked ideas, hunches, gut feelings, mish-mash theories floating in your head, fragments of things you read and heard in different places.

Now think back to the regrettable decision you made. Is it fair to hold that decision against yourself which such moral force? 

Warning: Rather obvious things will be said below. (EDIT: May not be so obvious after all. Sorry.)

The capabilities approach is an important theoretical framework in political and moral philosophy, often used in the context of development and welfare economics, pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The principal insight I want to import from the capabilities approach is that the main goal of any development exercise should be to increase the capabilities of individuals. In other words, I may not be able to tell what goals you would like to achieve, but I can make a reasonable guess that capabilities like health, access to jobs, access to food-supply etc. would help you achieve what you want to achieve. The capabilities approach doesn't necessarily privilege a life-script.

There are three main categories of capabilities: personal, social and environmental. Let me illustrate with an example from the Stanford Encyclopedia article. Suppose you own a bike. This in itself isn't very useful. You value the bike because you can use it to move around. But in order to be able to use it fruitfully, you need a degree of all three categories of capabilities: (1) Personal capabilities: You must know how to ride a bike. The quality of your health determines how far you go. Your bike must be in good condition. (2) Social capabilities: It should be socially acceptable to ride a bike; for example you may live in a country where women aren't allowed to ride bikes. (3) Environmental capabilities: You need to have decent roads to ride the bike. You must have access to bike repair shops. It must be safe to ride a bike. 

Another major insight of the capabilities approach is that capabilities can combine and are inter-dependent. Thus, there can be a combinatorial explosion in actual opportunities for each extra capability acquired. Sticking with the bike example, suppose you also know how to drive a car and own a car; suppose your car can carry your bike; suppose you have good fitness; and suppose you have access to wilderness. Now, you can take your bike to the wilderness and bike around and enjoy the nature. This capability in turn allows a great new mode of socialization. Further, you have a capability to further improve your fitness. 

My goal here is to apply this approach to personal development. First let me make a tentative list of what capabilities seem worth acquiring (far from comprehensive or complete):

1. Fitness capabilities: Access to gyms; running spaces; knowledge of good exercise routines and form; techniques for converting this knowledge and access into actual regular practice.
2. Nutrition capabilities: Access to an affordable variety of nutritious food; knowledge of what to eat; techniques for eating healthy consistently. 
3. Health capabilities: Access to affordable medical care; knowledge of good health practices; good sanitation systems; vaccination; clean air and water.
4. Mental well-being capabilities: Access to mental health services; strong social support systems; knowledge of emotional techniques such as meditation, self-compassion; ability to bounce back from stress.
5. Social skills: Having a good family/friend circle; ability to speak publicly; ability to engage in conversation in both regular and novel situations; access to interesting people; freedom to choose your social circle; ability to influence peers and people in the workplace.
6. Romantic/Sexual capabilities: Sexual freedom; freedom of expression of sexual orientation; knowledge of good sexual practices; access to a dating pool; freedom to marry and divorce; abilities of seek, find and connect with partners.
7. Work capabilities: Abilities that allow you seek jobs and move to a different place; non-racist/non-sexist/disabled-friendly workplaces; having various skills so as to be able to seek different jobs.
8. Intellectual capabilities: Access to good education; access to the internet; IQ; reading, writing & math skills; access to libraries/books.
9. Movement capabilities: Citizenship/Residency in a developed country; good transportation systems; access to public and personal transport.

Here is an interesting exercise. Whenever, you have a 'should' statement, see if you can change it to a 'can' statement, and notice being more empowered. Examples:

Not, I should be grateful. Instead, I can be grateful! [To clarify, I mean that being grateful is something that will make you feel good. As an analogy, if you have tasty cookies lying around the house, you will say to yourself: "well, I can certainly get cookie."]

Not, I should leave a generous tip. Instead, I can leave a generous tip! [As in, you can leave a generous tip and feel good about it.]

Not, I should donate to charity. Instead, I can donate to charity!

Not, I should loosen-up sometimes. Instead, I can loosen-up sometimes!

Not, I should keep in touch with old friends. Instead, I can keep in touch with old friends!

Not, I should learn to program. Instead, I can learn to program!

Not, I should eat healthy. Instead, I can eat healthy!

The general pattern here is that, instead of making the activity a moral duty, you can make it something fulfilling which you choose to do because of its benefits. 

For 'should not' statements you can substitute: 'I choose not to.' One example (you can make up more):

Not, I should not eat refined sugar. Instead, I choose not to eat refined sugar.

I'm sure that this procedure doesn't always work and you can generate counterexamples. I have not done them here. Please share your examples (counterexamples).

Does the surveillance state affect us? It has affected me, and I didn't realize that it was affecting me until recently. I give a few examples of how it has affected me:

1. I was once engaged in a discussion on Facebook about Obama's foreign policy. Around that time, I was going to apply for a US visa. I stopped the discussion early. Semi-consciously, I was worried that what I was writing would be checked by US visa officials and would lead to my visa being denied.
2. I was once really interested in reading up on the Unabomber and his manifesto, because somebody mentioned that he had some interesting ideas, and though fundamentally misguided, he might have been onto something. I didn't explore much because I was worried---again semi-consciously---that my traffic history would be logged on some NSA computer somewhere, and that I'd pattern match to the Unabomber (I'm a physics grad student, the Unabomber was a mathematician).
3. I didn't visit Silk Road as I was worried that my visits would be traced, even though I had no plans of buying anything.
4. Just generally, I try to not search for some really weird stuff that I want to search for (I'm a curious guy!). 
5. I was almost not going to write this post. 

I'm a theoretical physics (quantum computing) grad student. I really like what I do, and would like to continue doing it for a long time. 

But I'm aware that the job market in academia for freshly minted physics PhDs is not spectacular. For personal reasons, I may not be able to go through the post-doc treadmill and I might want to make good money. Thus: programming & finance. I currently lean towards programming.

I thought LW is a good place to ask for advice related to this.

Current skills: Good at math, definitely not "gifted". I know C++, and some Python; neither inside out. I don't know specific techniques to design good algorithms for problems. For example, I tried my hand a few times at programming contests (including those at small scales) and got my ass handed to me. I've only taken basic college courses in programming. 

I'm not very aware of the skills tested in quant interviews. I'm sure googling and talking to a few people will fix this, but please feel free to add your thoughts.

I have about a couple of years left till I graduate, so I can do this properly: What is the best way to make sure that when I graduate I can easily take a job in software or finance after the PhD? Looking for the most bang-for-the-buck (the buck here being time and money) way to do this.

Also, I may have blinders on. Are there other well-paying jobs out there for physics PhDs? I'm not an American citizen, so many of the government/government-funded lab jobs are out of the question. 

Thanks in advance.

Some resources I've identified:

1. USACO training gateway.

2. SICP. (How much is it worth going through this?)

3. Cracking the Coding Interview.

This is a great article at Aeon magazine. The author argues that the new ideological dichotomy is going to be between people who have great faith in technology and human innovation (Up) and the people who believe that humans are much more tied to their biology and the Earth (Down).

LW of course is a very Up community.

Seth Lloyd has posted a well-written pre-print, proposing a self-administered Turing test for free will but also dealing with some other aspects of the free will debate. Some excerpts:

... the theory of computation implies that even when our decisions arise from a completely deterministic decision-making process, the outcomes of that process can be intrinsically unpredictable, even to – especially to – ourselves. I argue that this intrinsic computational unpredictability of the decision making process is what give rise to our impression that we possess free will.

It is important to note that satisifying the criteria for assigning oneself free will does not imply that one possesses consciousness. Having the capacity for self-reference is a far cry from full self-consciousness...An entity that possesses free will need not be conscious in any human sense of the word.

This paper investigated the role of physical law in problems of free will. I reviewed the argument that the mere introduction of probabilistic behavior through, e.g., quantum mechanics, does not resolve the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists. By contrast, ideas from computer science such as uncomputability and computational complexity do cast light on a central feature of free will – the inability of deciders to predict their decisions before they have gone through the decision making process. I sketched proofs of the following results. The halting problem implies that we can not even predict in general whether we will arrive at a decision, let alone what the decision will be. If she is part of the universe, Laplace’s demon must fail to predict her own actions. The computational complexity analogue of the halting problem shows that to simulate the decision making process is strictly harder than simply making the decision. If one is a compatibilist, one can regard these results as justifying a central feature of free will. If one is an incompatibilist, one can take them to explain free will’s central illusion that our decisions are not determined beforehand. In either case, it is more efficient to be oneself than to simulate oneself.

Q1: Am I a decider?

Q2: Do I make my decisions using recursive reasoning?

Q3: Can I model and simulate – at least partially – my own behavior and that of other deciders?

Q4: Can I predict my own decisions beforehand?

LW has a unique format. It is a forum-blog.

It is not a forum in the traditional sense. In traditional forums you cannot have long, essay-like posts (technically you can, but somehow the culture discourages it). Also, visually the top-level post appears separate and isn't similar to the comments. Like forums, you do have threaded comments and a karma system. Further, anyone who wants can register, post and comment. 

It is not a blog in the traditional sense. In most blogs only a select few can post. On LW anyone can create a blogpost, as long as it is somewhat relevant. There is also a notion of Main, where the moderators select the best posts. And the bloggers can aspire to achieve the Main standard.

I feel that this kind of forum-blogs can be very useful in many domains: math, physics, meditation, music, health and nutrition and so on. Of course, we'd need to assemble a high-quality audience who are not afraid downvote and also have good moderators. The problem of assembling a high-quality audience can also be done in LW fashion. Write a good blog for sometime and then convert the format of the blog to forum-blog. The advantage is that the new people who write posts have a guaranteed high-quality audience and are hence incentivized to post and make good posts.

So here's my appeal to people who already have blogs with a good readership: please consider converting your blog into a forum-blog in the style of LW. It will be a huge service to the community. If you do so, please don't be shy to moderate and select the best and treat them separately.

Or is there some other subtlety that I'm missing which is preventing the creation of forum-blogs? Or are there already forum-blogs out there and I'm just not aware of them?

EDIT: In reply Randaly's comment, I appeal to LW's masters: please consider releasing an open-source toolkit that allows the creation of blogs based on the LW format.

EDIT: David_Gerard points out that LW's source is open.

By Administrative Stress, I refer to the stress caused in dealing with filling forms, applications, talking to bureaucracies, and so on. This has caused me a lot of stress in the past and I've lost several opportunities because of my aversion in dealing with this. Over time I've become better at it. I still have a long way to go, but I've made progress. So here is a short list of strategies I use to overcome this stress/fear and I'm sharing in the hope that some people might find it useful. Feel free add your tips and strategies in the comments:

1. If you can afford to pay someone else to do the work for you and someone else can indeed do it, then do so. 

2. Breathe. It's OK. Focus on your breathing. You can get over this. Keep telling yourself that you're stronger then some  puny application forms. Take it one step at a time.

3. Don't catastophize. Much of the fear comes from imagining situations where you missed one little detail and therefore lost a huge opportunity or lost a lot of money or got into trouble and so on. This is textbook catastrophizing. Tell yourself that millions of people do this kind of work everyday and that you are no worse than them. In fact, millions might even be filling out the exact form that you are filling out (in the case of taxes or visa applications). Anna Salamon mentions in the Checklist of Rationality Habits that she managed convince herself of the safety of the wire-guided fall at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas by imagining twice the population of her college doing the jump and surviving. Similarly, you can imagine maybe your entire city filling out the application and no one getting into significant trouble. Also, you can use simple mindfulness exercises to focus on the present.

4. Use Checklists. I cannot overstate the importance of this. Write down every single thing you need to finish and process it one at a time. Write down the deadline at the head of your checklist and keep that date steady in mind.

5. If you need to make appointments, make them early. I'm currently applying for a German visa. I kept postponing making a Visa appointment because I thought I'd get one easily, based on my experience of applying for a Canadian visa. But as it turns out I was wrong and now the appointment date is uncomfortably close to my date of travel. Making early appointments gives you a clear and comfortable deadline before which you need to finish things and also leaves you room for errors or delays you might encounter. In fact, if there are appointments necessary, they should be at the head of your checklist as well.

6. If you feel certain about something or uncertain about something: check. If you are certain, make the belief pay rent. If you are uncertain, you have to vanquish the confusion. I once couldn't take the GRE exam because I felt certain that a particular form of ID (my drivers' license) was sufficient to take the test, but as it turned out, in my country only a national passport is valid. I lost a lot of money and time. So if you feel sure about something, be extra-sure.

7. Don't take it personally. Bureaucracies aren't deliberately evil. They are impersonal. They exist and you have to deal with them. In the end, if you do not complete the requirements, you will lose. For example, a Chinese friend of mine considers it very demeaning that she has to apply for a Hong Kong visa in order to visit people in Hong Kong, even though Hong Kong is officially part of China. This has kept her from visiting people she loves who live in Hong Kong. I think in the end she is not winning. 

8. Be courteous. This is a no-brainer. When talking or sending emails to officials, secretaries and so forth, you can be persistent but always be courteous. Remember that the person you are talking to is not out to get you. He or she is simply doing their job.

9. Bureaucracies can be flexible. Smaller the organization, more flexible they can be. For example, when I was applying to grad schools, all the schools had on their websites seemingly very tight deadlines by which I had to get all the application material in. One of the professors who was writing me recommendation letters was travelling and wouldn't write me a letter within the deadline for a few schools. This sent me into panic and I was considering not applying to these schools. But I emailed the application secretary and she was more than willing to extend the deadline for that recommendation letter. I sent the letter almost 2-3 weeks late and it was totally fine. So when in doubt, ask. If no dice, ask again. At the worst, you are going to get a polite no. What's wrong in trying.

10. If you need to procure documents from secondary sources, do it early. Because in almost every procurement exercise, there're inevitable delays. 

11. Use friends. If you can get a friend who is doing/has done the same application as you are, then do it with him/her. This is how I always get my taxes done. I have a friend who actually enjoys figuring out the gory details of the American tax code. And he always knows the answer to confusing points.

11a. If not, then if you can get a friend to simply sit with you when you're doing the application, then that helps a lot. You can chat, you can complain about the pain, you can talk about something in the application that is confusing you and so on.

11b. Further, tell friends that you're doing this application and it needs to be done by so and so date. This means that people will bring it up in everyday conversation: "How's that application going?" and this creates social pressure to make sure that you are doing it.

Please share your strategies in the comments!