Get enough sleep. It will give you better intelligence, happiness and health.
There is existing lots of research on how very bad sleep deprivation is for cognitive performance. Many smart people are keen to get smarter by taking nootropic drugs, which have not so good evidence of effectiveness, and not much evidence for long term safety.
Not to be sleep deprived is a massive, free cognitive enhancement. Not only is it good for your cognition. The long term health effects have been studied, and it is not only not bad for you, it is indeed very good for your ...
I do not like "steep learning curve" the way people use it. It raises my probability estimate that person using it has done no study of learning. This reduces my probability estimate that they have sound insight about learning.
Sometimes I work with learning curves for machine learning or human learning. These curves are plots of a measure of learning (say, correct score, or number of mistakes) versus time or number of trials or number of training examples or number of iterations. When topic is hard, curve is shallow! It takes more learning to imp...
I have spoken to an optician as in reply to other message in this thread.
I have also asked at a computer science department in a European university. It was funny! Everybody in the department except some grad students had myopia. Many of the older faculty also had myopia. But nobody had LASIK. Sorry I did not count properly. My visit was for other reason. However, I can say the modal mode of vision correction was glasses for distance vision and taken off for reading or computers. There were also some people with varifocal glasses. There were also some people with contact lenses for distance vision and reading glasses for reading or computers.
Sorry, I was not clear. I do not think that presbyopia corrects myopia. It even makes it worse at distance. But at close myopia can offset the effect of presbyopia.
As presbyopia narrows your zone of focus, you can not focus as close as previously. If you have myopia, you can focus at much closer distances than people with normal vision. Before presbyopia, this is not much use. When presbyopia develops, you have more close vision to spare, and can still read a book or a computer screen when people with normal vision would need reading glasses.
I will give a ...
Laser eye surgery (LASIK) is being suggested by several people on LessWrong, who suggest it is a costly procedure that has high likelihood to improve your life. I do not think this is a good trade-off across a life time, because presbyopia.
Almost all humans experience presbyopia. This is age-related deterioration in the ability of the eye to adjust focus. In history, the biggest effect for most people is reduced ability to read, but now it also is affecting the ability to use computers.
If you have myopia (short sight), you can not see distant objects witho...
I am happy my idea made you happy!
Maybe try a short pencil or something, so you can keep your mouth closed.
I do not think this will work. The theory is that holding the pencil in your teeth contracts the same muscles you use to smile (zygomaticus major, risorius). If you can keep your mouth closed, these muscles will not be affected in the same way. I think any other object that is long enough should work. I use a mechanical pencil.
I have had a ridiculous munchkin idea. My idea is to hold a pencil in your teeth to increase productivity.
There are some reasons to believe that being happy makes you more productive, rather (just?) than the other way round. This research is quite new. This does not mean it is wrong, but it is not replicated well. If it is true, you can make yourself more productive by making yourself happier.
Forced smiling may make you feel happier. It is hard to force smile when you are not happy. It is even harder to do work and force smile at the same time. When I try ...
My guess is that a mild refusal would be acceptable to Google. They are unlikely to be put off by a change of subject.
A hard refusal might annoy them, if they persist in asking.
I suggest naming a very high figure first, to gain benefit from the anchoring effect. Then mentioning your salary will make it the anchor for the negotiation. Google has a reputation for paying high salaries.
If you are looking for advice on negotiation, I suggest searching for 'anchoring' as well as 'negotiation, to get more evidence-based advice.
Good luck.
I am interested in getting better at negotiation. I have read lots on the subject, but I have realised that I was not very careful about what I read, and what evidence the authors had for their advice. I have stumbled on a useful heuristic to find better writing.
The conventional wisdom in negotiating says you should try very hard to not be the first person to mention a price.
I can see that, if you're the seller, it may make sense to try to convince the buyer that they want the product before you start the price negotiation.
When it comes to the price negoti...
Thank you, this has prompted some very useful thoughts.
you can see a sort of noblesse oblige in others which leads to huge charitable donations and voluntarily forgoing chances to improve their position
This feels close to my situation. I come from a high-privilege family with a long tradition of self-sacrifice and doing good works.
I thought of a theory to explain my situation. Part of my problem is not really wanting to win in negotiations. I do want to win, just not as much as I want to avoid feeling socially awkward and grasping. When the negotiatio...
There are plenty of real world situations where you can negotiate prices.
Thank you, I hadn't thought properly about that. I was avoiding all those situations. Doing actual negotiations for small stakes is an excellent plan. It's not quite perfect. It doesn't give very good feedback, since I don't get any information about what they would have been willing to settle for if I were a better negotiator.
When you want some form of interacting with your friends, you could bet with them frequently. Betting means that you can negotiate the odds.
I'm intereste...
That sounds worth trying. Thanks. Intuitively it feels as though it would make me care about the game outcome like I care about real-money negotiations. It also feels as though it would make me suck at the game. But that's progress, because I have a known route to practicing at games.
At first I wanted to say "That's going to cost me money!". But I was fine with the idea of paying for training courses to get better. Financially it comes to the same thing, but loss aversion is at work here.
Thinking that through made me realise I'm muddled about my ...
Interesting question.
I definitely feel high-status. I'm in a high income percentile, and have substantially higher net worth than that most people with my income history, because I've made good decisions about how to use my income. Obviously, I know people who are higher status and wealth than me, but I mostly compare myself to people who are not. (Partly a deliberate choice to try to boost happiness and life satisfaction.)
There might be a status connection. To exaggerate, it feels more like "someone of my status shouldn't stoop to grubbing around wit...
Thank you, that's very useful to know.
As it happens I'm in Europe right now, but there are plenty of universities with psych departments nearby so I will check out their calls for participants.
I've been worried that I'm not very good at negotiating about money. Recently, I had evidence to update in that direction. As part of a course, we paired up and did a negotiation roleplay exercise. I was one of two massive outliers out of thirty who agreed an outcome much, much worse than the rest of the group.
The exercise was structured so that there was quite a lot of space between the two negotiator's bottom lines. I was clear of my bottom line. I got everything I had to get. But almost all of the money that was available for negotiation went to the oth...
This is a useful tip. However, I find that many sites do not accept email addresses with + in them.
In the past I also found that I sometimes could not remember what I had added after the +, or even that I had put a +, so I could not sign in. Now I use a password manager so this part is no longer a problem for me.