I have dramatically increased the speed at which I'm learning Mandarin by the simple expedient of removing the books from my bag and the music from my mp3 player. This has left me with two alternatives for my commute; be bored or leisten to a learn Mandarin audiobook. I am very slowly becoming less shit.
PS. I tried reading the article on smallish groups (my best social structure for learning), but it was unfortunately a paid article and I'm not currently enjoying free access to the publication. If you have a way of enlightening me that does not require 35$ for me upfront, I'll be more than willing to check it out.
More ideas below. Incidentally, I am not really aiming to win the thread here. I just learned the cool technique of writing lists of 100 ideas, the idea being that quantity leads to quality. Apparently it's most effective to have some people generate ideas, and others critique them. By now I'm firmly in the first camp on this task.
The latest ideas:
Edit: Fixed links.
Important and timely (the next Melbourne LW meetup will focus on setting good goals, an exercise which has always confounded me).
I find particularly interesting the "wedding gift todo" example, where imagined achievement of the goal stands-in for actually achieving the stated goal (giving a wedding gift). We want to have and act on "goals" rather than "urges". But setting goals is the kind of activity where "urges" can dominate. To me this looks like the analogue of belief-in-belief. We want our reasoning processes t...
More generally, it may be that your unusual choices benefit you, but impose costs on your friends and family. Unusual choices are less "safe" - they can move you farther from ordinary outcomes, and the results are harder to predict. Compare the stereotyped conflicts between parents and their teenaged kids:
Teenager (as seen by parents): "Later, olds! I'm going out with my poorly socialised friends to get wasted and hook up (maybe someone will get pregnant). Woo!"
Parents (as seen by teenager): "Stop there! Ve have ways of preventing your fun! You are never allowed to do anything that you enjoy, ever!"
Quite.
How well do we think judges do in this respect?
How well do we think the French system does in this respect?
At least where they are allocating tasks among interested parties, Anglo-American trials seem relatively savvy about human nature.
Trial by Jury; Trial by Judge
Juries were originally taken to know something about the relevant events. The modern form of jury trials is a weird hybrid of inherited practices and contemporary political ideals. Like most legal phenomena :-)
That modern juries are inexperienced in criminal matters could be a positive feature. Judges may be jaded by constant exposure to narratives of crime. In wealthy countries, serious crimes are exceptional events. Jurors have reason to pay attention to narratives of such events.
Further, legal experts worry about naive ju...
I'm currently researching the rationality of criminal trials, though my focus is on evidence law. The current adversarial system does have some advantages:
An adversary system creates incentives to bring information before the court. Parties want to win. In particular, the defendant has a direct interest in avoiding punishment. Defendants can help themselves by pointing out flaws in the prosecution case. In general, an adversary system rewards parties who put arguments and evidence before the court.
However, this can include bad arguments and emotive but
- What is your main domain of expertise? (Your profession, your area of study, or even a hobby!)
I have just finished degrees in law and philosophy, which I guess counts for some amount of expertise. I'm now studying both at graduate level. For the past three years or so, I've also been tutoring "traditional rationality" courses in philosophy. Before that, I was a high-school math tutor for about 8 years. Overall, I'd rate my teaching skills as somewhat higher-level than the areas I've studied formally.
I'm a bit of a generalist - I've also stud...
What am I doing? Trying to write a few thousand words on legal reasoning about people's dispositions.
Why? To finish my dissertation, and graduate with an Honours degree in law.
Why am I doing that? To increase my status and career opportunities, but also due to inertia. I've almost finished this degree, and a few more weeks of work for this result seem worthwhile. Also, doing otherwise would make me look weird and potentially cut off valuable opportunities.
Why does that matter? Much intellectually interesting and well paid work seems to require signalling a...
Came upon Eliezer's simple truth years ago, then happened upon a link to OB during a phase of reading econblogs. As a teenager I was appalled that many people believed the unsupported claims of homeopathy and othe...
Typo at 11.4: