None of these are incorporated in molecular biology books and publications that I can find. But the answer was still there: visualize what I read. But not just visualize like the little diagrams of cellular interactions books usually give you – like stupid, over-the-top, Hollywood-status visualization. I had to make it dramatic. I had to mentally reconstruct the biology of a cell in massive, fast, and explosive terms.

I'm having the same problem with molecular biology right now, and I agree with the track you're taking. The issue seems to be the large amount of structure totally devoid of any semantic cues. For example, a typical textbook paragraph might read:

JS-154 is one of five metabolic products of netamine; however, the enzyme that produces it is unknown. It is manufactured in cells in the far rostral region of of the cerebrum, but after binding with a leukocynoid it takes a role in maintaining the blood-brain barrier - in particular guiding the movements of lipid molecules.

I find I can read paragraphs like this five or six times, write them on flashcards, enter them into Anki, and my brain still refuses to understand or remember them after weeks of trying.

On the other hand, my brain easily remembers vastly more complicated structures when they're loaded with human-accessible meaning. For example, just by casually reading the Game of Thrones series, I know an extremely intricate web of genealogies, alliances, locations, journeys, battlesites, et cetera. Byte for byte, an average Game of Thrones reader/viewer probably has as much Game of Thrones information as a neuroscience Ph.D has molecular biology information, but getting the neuroscience info is still a thousand times harder.

Which is interesting, because it seems like it should be possible exploit isomorphisms between the two areas. For example, the hideous unmemorizable paragraph above is structurally identical to (very minor spoilers) :

Jon Snow is one of five children of Ned Stark; however, his mother is unknown. He was born in a castle in the far northern regions of Westeros, but after binding with a white wolf companion he took a role in maintaining the Wall - in particular serving as mentor to his obese friend Samwell.

This makes me wonder if it would be possible to produce a story as enjoyable as Game of Thrones which was actually isomorphic to the most important pathways in molecular biology. So that you could pick up a moderately engaging fantasy book - it wouldn't have to be perfect - read through it in a day or two, and then it ends with "By the way, guess what, you now know everything ever discovered about carbohydrate metabolism". And then there's a little glossary in the back with translations about as complicated as "Jon Snow = JS-154" or "the Wall = the blood-brain barrier". I don't think this could replace a traditional textbook, but it could sure as heck supplement it.

This would be very hard to do correctly, but I'd love to see someone try, so much so that it's on my list of things to attempt myself if I ever get an unexpectedly large amount of free time.

With the recent update on HPMOR, I've been reading a few HP fanfictions : HPMOR, HP and the Natural 20, the recursive fanfiction HG and the Burden of Responsibility and a few others. And it seems my brain has trouble coping with that. I didn't have the problem with just canon and HPMOR (even when (re-)reading both in //), but now that I've added more fanfictions to the mix, I'm starting to confuse what happened in which universe, and my brain can't stop trying to find ways to ensure all the fanfictions are just facet of a single coherent universe, which of course doesn't work well...

I am the only one with that kind of problems, reading several fanfictions occurring in the same base universe ? It's the first time I try to do that, and I didn't except being so confused. Do you have some advices to avoid the confusion, like "wait at least one week (or month ?) before jumping to a different fanfiction" ?

A variant of this question was discussed on Mathematics Stack Exchange. The top answer has a good explanation of the nature of this question – “vg'f n zhygvcyr-pubvpr inevnag […] bs gur pynffvpny yvne cnenqbk” (un-ROT13).

The presence of so many Kyon: Big Damn Hero files in the repo is kind of confusing. Especially kbdh_trope_list.txt, which looked interesting, but then confused me in that it didn’t talk about Trust in God. If possible, you should remove the KBDH files from the repo.

If you want to keep those files around to use as references, you could move them into a separate folder out of the repo. Or keep them in your working copy but not commit them, with the help of a .gitignore file. Or at least move the files to their own folder so we don’t have to figure out which story each file belongs to.

You could also call this “sieze the Schelling point”. You’re setting a Schelling fence for making the change between “the maximal probability moment” and “right after that” – if you slide past the Schelling fence, you can expect you will fail to make the change, and that encourages you to make the change now.

On reflection, I have to disagree. Maximizing your payoff can equate to doing things that make you temporarily feel you're undergoing hell on earth*. If you don't accept this as normal, you are not maximizing/optimizing, but satisficing ('Do the thing that feels least wrong' just orbits your current habits and mindset)

* Because humans aren't actually utilitarians or optimizing agents, of course. And because maximizing payoff usually (always?) requires some level of necessarily disturbing personal change.

In Japan, it is widely believed that you don't have direct knowledge of what other people are really thinking (and it's very presumptuous to assume otherwise), and so it is uncommon to describe other people's thoughts directly, such as "He likes ice cream" or "She's angry". Instead, it's far more common to see things like "I heard that he likes ice cream" or "It seems like/It appears to be the case that she is angry" or "She is showing signs of wanting to go to the park."

-- TVTropes

Edit (1/7): I have no particular reason to believe that this is literally true, but either way I think it holds an interesting rationality lesson. Feel free to substitute 'Zorblaxia' for 'Japan' above.

A lot of these links are about how to get started coding. I am already a good programmer, maybe a damn good programmer. But I know there's a level above mine, and probably several. How do I get to the next level? What does the next level look like? Are there any resources that talk about how to become a great programmer?

Of course, Bayes' theorem has the obvious problem that carrying out all of the necessary calculations is practically impossible. I mentioned a bunch of properties that a good system (to take a hint from roryokane, an algorithm) ought to have; surely we can come up with something that has those properties, without being impossible for a human to execute.

I would call the “systems” you describe “algorithms”.

Looking at your examples, I see that your two “lists of tips” are slightly different. The first list is a combination of tips (aim for 22-30 workers) and facts about the situation (workers mine minerals; that’s how things work). The facts describe the problem you are designing an algorithm to solve. The tips describe solutions you would like your algorithm to aim for when those tips are applicable, but they are general goals, not specific actions. Your second list has no facts, only tips. And those tips are already expressed in the form of if-then statements (actions) that would be part (but just a part) of a larger algorithm.