I think this adds depth to the Chesterton's Fence concept.

Oh and do at least three past exams for each class. Best to practice in the conditions you will be performing in.

Long term performance is a result of many skills / memes working together. I suspect you may have noticed that the children of white collar workers are more prepared for white collar work. It would make sense that they have inherited a set of memes that help with white collar work.

Academic performance isn't the only thing, consider your fail conditions. There's lots of things out there to be good at.

If you'd still like to keep going, I would say just keep practicing, I reckon it's taken me about four years to get good at my job. Look at what works and what doesn't for you.

I found that tracking my time helped with focusing on one thing at a time, having a prioritized to do list helped me focus on the right thing, having a study group helped make learning fun, easy and consistent. Trying to fit all the knowledge I needed for a class on a single a4 sheet helped me memorize what I needed (something about the refining process).

Otherwise get good sleep, lay off the substances, get some exercise in the sun and time with friends and family and you will be right as rain.

I couldn't read this straight. Alice is being an absolute asshole to Bob. This is incredibly off-putting. 

I think you could have communicated better if you had tried to make Alice remotely human.

I think I get what you are trying to do with this, but I only got it after reading comments. 

Okay, I think I see your point. Could I summarise your heuristic as "Don't tear down Chesterton's fence until you are absolutely sure you know why it was there"?

A defence of "tradition" rather than of "nature"?

You are quite right. I was thinking of the behaviour of humans while food is scarce and the human permanently hungry, not in the modern context. 

"natural is better"

I disagree with your proposed heuristic for two reasons, 

1. I think it is to poorly defined to be a good decision-making guide (Heuristic)
2. By my definition I think it would guide you to worse decisions not better

To poorly defined:

Natural - existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind

Better - more desirable, satisfactory, or effective

There are two issues in definition, the first, more minor, issue is in “Natural”. 

It’s far too broad, for example where does the line stop for an herbal remedy? At the wild herb, the cultivated variety, a dried leaf, an extract or tea from the leaves or a pill manufactured from the identified active ingredient?

The second more serious issue is in “Better”. Better requires a direction, the question must be asked better for who or what? In your wooden stick verses plastic object example, its true a wooden stick is better at decomposing in a woodland. However, if we didn’t want it to decompose, for example if it were a fencepost we were talking about a plastic version would be preferable (all other factors being equal).

Actually, a bad heuristic:

My understanding of what you meant by your heuristic would be

“The closer your choice matches what would be found or happen with the minimum of human intervention the better for your health / wealth”.

There are no criteria given for when to apply this heuristic, making it a poor heuristic, however using your own examples and applying the above heuristic to all of them:

Media consumption – avoid anything not mouth to mouth – Result: Happy and ignorant 😊

Fuel choice – Use wood or animal power not nuclear – Result: significantly more poverty, health issues and animal cruelty

No GMOs – Only eat the non-bred ancestral variety of plants / animals (Aegilops tauschii, Bos primigenius) – Result: Very very expensive food.

No pesticides – Result: Very expensive food

No artificial fertilizers – Result: Very expensive food

Weapon choice – Clubs and slings only – Result: killed immediately by non-complying competitors, great tv.

Technology use – No computers / cars / internet or anything dependant on that etc – Result: Ostracism and eventual starvation.

Food consumption – eat as much as you can as often as you can – Result: Obesity

Type of foods to eat – Pottage only (ideally with self-caught wild game, many wild herbs gathered and grain you grew organically) – Boredom, Poverty, good health 😊

Thinking about it more, I suppose I don't know, perhaps they were perfectly happy.

However, in my experience, when you set out to find a thing and fail to find it that often leads to dissatisfaction. My expectation / rule of thumb for this is "People don't often hunt for things they don't want for some reason".

It certainly was infohazardous to the people who funded the expeditions and got poor return for their investment. 

I would consider the hazard to be to the agent not to society, though I can certainly imagine information that hurts an individual, but benefits somebody else.