I've been thinking about this mental shift recently using toy example  - a puzzle game I enjoy. The puzzle game is similar to soduku, but involves a bit of simple mental math. The goal is to find all the numbers in the shortest time. Sometimes (rarely) I'm able to use just my quickest 2-3 methods for finding numbers and not have to use my slower, more mentally intensive methods. There's usually a moment in every game when I've probably found the low hanging fruit but I'm tempted to re-check to see if any of my quick methods can score me any more numbers, and I have to tell myself "Ok, I have to try something harder and slower now". It's been interesting to notice when the optimal time to do this is. Certainly there have been games where I've spent far too long procrastinating the harder methods by checking and re-checking if any of the easier methods will work in a particular situation, and I end up with a poor time because it took me too long to switch.

I've also noticed this is a pattern when I'm looking for a lost item - it's easy to get stuck in a loop of checking and re-checking the same few locations where you initially guessed it might be. At some point, you need to start tidying up and thoroughly checking each location, and then the surrounding locations, even places where you think it's very unlikely to be. I see a lot of people (maybe even most people) follow this pattern,  contining to check the same 3 locations far beyond the point where it would be sensible to begin checking other locations, getting frustrated that it's not in one of the places it "should" be.

One thing I'd like to say is that it's not just that for some tasks "buckling down" is the correct approach, it's more about noticing when the correct time is switch from the low-effort quick approach to a high-effort slow approach. Most of the time it IS in one of the 3 locations you initially thought of. If you briefly checked them, it may genuinely be worth checking them again. But it's also important to calibrate the point at which you switch to a slower approach. For finding lost items, this point is probably the point where you find yourself considering checking the same location for the third time. 

It sounds like April first acted as a sense-check for Claudius to consider "Am I behaving rationally? Has someone fooled me? Are some of my assumptions wrong?".

This kind of mistake seems to happen in the AI village too. I would not be surprised if future scaffolding attempts for agents include a periodic prompt to check current information and consider the hypothesis that a large and incorrect assumption has been made.

I think partly what you're running into is that we live in a postmodern age of storytelling. The classic fairytales where the wicked wolf dies (three little pigs)(red riding hood) or the knight gets the princess after bravely facing down the dragon (George and the dragon) are being subverted because people got bored of those stories, and they wanted to see a twist, so we get something like Shrek - The ogre is hired by the king to rescue the princess from the dragon, but ends up rescuing the princess from the king. 

The original archetypes DID exist in stories, but they are rarely used today without some kind of twist. This has happened to the extent that our culture is saturated with this, the twist is now expected and it's possible to forget that the archetypes ever existed as a common theme.

Essentially I think you're finding instances where the archetype doesn't match the majority of modern examples. This is because the archetype hasn't changed, but media referencing that archetype rarely uses it directly without subverting it somewhat.

(Edit) 

Thinking about it further, the fairytales I talked about also subvert expectations- hungry wolves normally eat pigs, for example. Those archetypes come from the base level of real life though. It would be common knowledge that wolves will opportunistically prey on livestock. This makes a story about pigs building little houses and then luring the wolf into a cooking pot fun because it reverses the normal roles. When it becomes common to have the wicked wolf lose, though, the story becomes expected and stale. Then someone twists it a little more and you get Shrek, or Zootopia (where (spoilers) the villain turns out to be a sheep)

I wouldn't class most of the examples given in this post as stereotypical male action heroes.

Rambo was the first example I thought of, and then most roles played by Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Arnold Shwarzeneggar or Will Smith. I also don't think the stereotype is completely emotionless, just violent, tough and motivated, capable of anything. They tend to have fewer vulnerable moments and only cry when someone they love dies or something. They don't cry when they have setbacks to their plans or are upset by an insult someone shouts at them, like normal people might. They certainly don't cry when they lose their keys or forget somebody's birthday, or feel pressure to do well in an exam.

This is the first technical approach to alignment I've seen that seems genuinely hopeful to me, rather than just another band-aid which won't hold up to the stresses of a more intelligent model. 

As you've described it, the fallacy is fairly harmless (it doesn't materially speed up cooking pasta, but it also doesn't slow it down). The only thing lost is a bit of time that could be more productively spent doing something else. I think there's often a side effect which goes along with this fallacy that's worth mentioning, and can turn it into something actively harmful.

With the example of trying to save energy by turning off the wifi router, a proportion of people will turn the wifi off but not turn the heating down because they think "I followed one of the recommendations, I'm making an effort and doing my part". Adding in the recommendation to turn off the wifi can be actively harmful because people don't even necessarily understand that some of the recommendations are more impactful than others, and they're working off a model of social status signalling to determine what actions they should take, rather than actually understanding the problem and how the proposed solutions are intended to help.

Recycling is a similar situation. Most waste which goes into recycling is not actually recycled, but the act of recycling makes people believe that they are fulfilling their civic duty to reduce single use plastics and wasteful use of resources. As a result they may shirk other much more effective and important green initiatives. 

(as a sidenote, energy which is used by the wifi router is going to be disappated as heat, so turning off the wifi will just mean that your heating system will just work a little harder to reach the temperature set by the thermostat, offsetting any savings made by turning the wifi off.)

I work as a designer (but not a cover designer) and I agree. This should be redesigned. 

Straight black and white text isn't a great choice here, and makes me think of science-fiction and amateur publications rather than a a serious book about technology, philosophy and consequences. For books with covers which have done well in this space, take a look at the waterstones best sellers for science and tech.

Thanks for posting. I've had some of the same thoughts especially about honesty and the therapist's ability to support you in doing something that they either don't understand the significance of or may actively morally oppose. It's a very difficult thing to require a person to try to do.

I'll clear this up first:

particularly bad time vs. being particularly willing to go to a therapist

I'm having a particularly bad time. I chose to try therapy because it was the standard advice for depression and anxiety. I find it difficult talking to people I don't know about my emotions and internal life, so I was expecting that to be difficult, but others had reported good experiences with therapy so I thought I shouldn't dismiss it. Booking therapy is a big outlay of energy for me, so if I'm making an obvious mistake or there's some basic thing that worked for someone else I thought I'd check before trying again. 

less competent therapists have more open slots

This seems very plausibly what happened. I filtered out a lot of therapists who I would have chosen over this one because they had no availability. The person I saw was very unresponsive and I had a real hard time getting anything approaching a conversation going, much more difficult even than with a complete stranger at a party. Perhaps it was just their style of therapy? It's hard to tell. As I say, it was only a (painful and energy-expensive) first attempt and want to give it another shot, but any input about types of therapy that others have found useful, or approaches they took to the process of getting therapy could be helpful to me.

I hadn't considered that I might need to read some self help books and research how best to communicate with therapists ahead of time. Was I naive to think that a therapist would be above-average at putting a new client at ease or steering a conversation? 

Emotions are not as much caused by our beliefs as we tend to assume

I agree to an extent. I think the emotions may not be directly caused by my beliefs, but more driven by the things I spend a lot of time thinking about. There have been times where I intentionally avoid AI risk as a topic of thought, and experience more positive emotions. In that time my beliefs haven't changed, but what I'm actively thinking about has changed. This essay may also be a factor. I also read this essay recently which is perhaps talking along similar lines to what you're saying, and was an interesting framing.

I'm not sure how easy it would be for me to get prescribed SSRIs, but it's something I'd consider.