Great post. Several quibbles:
The wealth -> happiness current data is changed every year. Last study had a monotonic positive relationship between wealth and happiness to $60K/y. Will Wilkinson had this a while back.
Parenthood also has a complex relationship with happiness. In general, it appears to decrease young folks happiness, and increase older folks happiness, as of the last thing I read. Read Will Wilkinson and Bryan Caplan here.
The Kahneman TED video: ( http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html ) on ha...
1 more bit to remember:
Commuting really really sucks. Least happy part of almost everyone's day, who does it. Minimizing commute is a not-inconsequential path towards increased happiness.
As before...Teacher for 20+ years...dozens of different topics taught (~40K hours): Math (K-16), English (to Natives and Foreigners), Sports (Springboard Diving, Soccer, Basketball), Programming(C-->Java mostly).
The most interesting part of explanations is that the same explanation doesn't work for everyone. If you're going to be an effective teacher, you need 2+ backup explanations for when the first one doesn't work. Examples are frequently even better than explanations, and enough examples will get most folks a long ways.
My personal obsession in ed...
I was slow...and I didn't have a computer to program on until 8.
On the other hand, I've been teaching for ~20 years, and I've been teaching programming for half that.
Learning to iterate through a collection of data structures is the killer feature in programming. Some folks get it....and immediately. Most folks who are not naturals take a lot longer to understand the concept...and most classes jump over it like it's easy. Usually 3-10 different explanations, and 5-20 examples will get folks over the hump.
I'm not exactly between 0 and 1...But I have some hours available here, and would like to do this. I've been through bits of Jaynes, but the social aspect will make doing the whole thing more interesting.
FWIW, I've a math degree, and have 20 years of technical (math, software, etc.) teaching expertise, if you'd like some assistance.
I'd suggest to everyone who hasn't as much tech-teaching experience that time spent doing exercises is the only thing that you should be counting as learning-time. Time spent reading has no feedback system, and you don't know (despite believing) whether you've learned anything. Do-->Learn. Read-->???
Perhaps interested, from the Western Suburbs
This is clearly a good way to do skepticism, if you're going to do it. However, I wonder, at my blog (http://aretae.blogspot.com/2010/03/cognitive-antivirus.html), whether skepticism is generally wise at all, and whether religion is a much more useful and effective cognitive antivirus system (especially for the only normally intelligent) than anyone else here seems to give it credit for.
Douglas Hubbard writes on the topic of calibration as well. He focuses on RW application of this stuff, and calibration is clearly a part of that.
His 1st book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-ebook/dp/B001BPE8ZQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258133710&sr=8-3
1 more bit to remember:
Commuting really really sucks. Least happy part of almost everyone's day, who does it. Minimizing commute is a not-inconsequential path towards increased happiness.
I avoid this problem by biking as much as possible. Granted, this wouldn't work if I lived in the suburbs an hour's drive from work, but since I live about a 15-minute drive, that works out to a 35-minute bike ride. Multiply that by two for every day I work, add whatever extra minutes I spend going to friend's houses or grocery shopping, and that's a lot of outdoor aerobic exercise, which improves my mood hugely. And I arrive at work awake and pumped even for 6 am shifts.