chimpinee

What about wintertime, Mr Franklin?

Btw, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise" now has a citation:

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/02/circadian-clock-obesity/

Asking somebody not to be mean seems reasonable but he only gets mean after he has already "lost it". He then unfailingly perceives the other guy as the mean one and himself as the victim. If he had the self-awareness necessary to monitor his emotional state then he would not become mean in the first place.

Combine this with the fact that most people come to news sites for validation rather than enlightenment and one can expect mean comments to grow in proportion to the popularity of the site

And surely Frodo's failure implies also that the eagle plan could not have worked: it did not include Gollum

Yes! I have enjoyed many novels. But people (including me) are learning English from communicating on the web. And children are learning English from playing videogames i.e. as a byproduct of something they actually enjoy (I witness it happening!)

John Holt: “I suspect that many children would learn arithmetic, and learn it better, if it were illegal.”

>She isn't saying that people should stay off adderall

Indeed.

>And saying that "all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems" is obviously quite ignorant

Nah. The truth in this whole drugs business is far from obvious. Check out Gabor Maté on youtube, he has some interesting things to say. Apart from that, perhaps when we have a theory of consciousness we will be able to re-frame mental disorders as disorders of consciousness.

Meanwhile 'addiction' and 'abuse' are problems -- are you saying they're not to do with personality? Some people do talk about genes in this context, but they have no explanatory theory connecting genes to specific mental traits, so I think they're mistaken. And, if they did, those genes would then be part of the personality

>You seem to think that being addicted is a simple choice

No, I think addictions are a form of unconscious behaviour, so not a matter of choice, although the cure might entail making a choice

>She had a substance abuse problem

This is true. However, a lot of people will take away the message 'stay off adderall' whereas

(1) some people apparently benefit from it, (2) some people whom doctors wouldn't prescribe to may benefit (e.g. the mathematician Paul Erdös took ritalin, a similar drug), (3) all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems -- thus if she hadn't taken adderall then she may well have gotten into some other drug or obsession leading to some other addiction or disorder

An enormous and sophisticated 'tool chain'. Surely it could never be implemented in a one-day-to-be-invented universal fabricator? One is reminded of those 19th C ppl who thought recorded music was impossible since any player would have to contain miniature versions of all the orchestral instruments (or things that resembled them: "humanity's choir") together with a horrendously large paper roll punched full of holes

That sounds to me like a great idea and an effective way of managing risk. I notice that online speed dating services are available also, which might work as a way of reducing risk further

This suggests to me that a sensible business model would be for the man to pay to have his profile pitched to a given woman. This would reflect the IRL risk of asking for a date.

Women do share risk but in a different way -- a woman risks emotional attachment and pregnancy with the guy moving on to another partner

I don't think people appreciate how intractable a problem bullying is. For instance, bullying is qualitatively indistinguishable from teasing, which is regarded by most as part of normal, healthy socialisation. Hence low-level bullying goes unperceived. OTOH intense bullying is an embarrassment to the school statistics and hence frequently denied or covered up.

We live in a society where people still put a tremendous amount of effort into being normal and liked, and as a corollary we tend to persecute those who don't do this. Bullies are our unappointed henchmen.

I agree that people usually misinterpret their experiences where psychedelics and religion are concerned. However it's worth noting that in striving to create and discover interesting things one becomes vulnerable to all manner of possible obsessions and addictions -- most call it going 'crazy' (e.g. Beethoven, van Gogh, Tesla, Michelangelo, Schumann, John Nash and presumably many who ceased to function altogether in their pursuits)

It seems that psychedelic drugs have helped some people historically in locating an internal pointer or state which, if remembered, prevents this from happening. One wonders, for example, if the Beatles or Steve Jobs, notwithstanding their hard work, could ever have become what they did if they hadn't also taken LSD at some point.

Problem is not owning stuff per se but getting attached to it

I'm no economist but I wonder if the Nordic model is sustainable without external innovation and cheap labour (going on in countries like the USA and China respectively -- who perhaps pay a price in terms of 'social ills').

Indeed. Everyone who owned a particular model of computer had the same BASIC and could swap programs/listings.

Also, it was immediately available from when the computer was switched on (which took seconds).

Nowadays I think all sorts of packages have to be installed and it's too complicated for beginners. People who write instructions are usually hampered by the curse of knowledge.

Part of the problem is that we mostly don't know how good managers do what they do (and they don't either).

Their knowledge is tacit. And we have to make a tacit judgement when hiring -- which means that memes about gender necessarily exert an unquantifiable influence.

Combine driverless cars with electric motors. Add a few driver-free high speed tunnels which connect to the existing road network (I assume tunnelling will eventually be cheaper than building new roads). Then we'll have a growing, backwards-compatible high speed freight distribution system which delivers to the doorstep. And as cars get quieter and pollution free (locally) our cities will suddenly become civilised places to walk around in, breathing freely. Maybe we'll hang out like philosophers in the market squares of Athens or Florence :-)

There's a kind of emotional economy that nerds don't tune into. To those who aren't strong enough to resist participating in this collective exchange, it seems like the nerd is cheating. And he's perpetually anxious, so he must be in the wrong, right?

>everyone - including the teacher - had laughed

Yes. 'Socialization' --a purportedly legitimate function of schooling-- exists on the same continuum as teasing and bullying.

Coffee withdrawal headaches and tiredness can be reduced by taking caffeine pills (approx 50mg per day for five days).

Goals don't work because the process of achieving or creating anything valuable is unpredictable. It's a discovery. And its importance may not be immediately apparent. That's why you don't get a Nobel Prize until 10 or 20 years later.

No no no. This is unkind.

'Finish everything.' Everything? No way. Abandon stuff which is unfruitful or superseded or published. Just don't abandon stuff lightly: have a good explanation why (which is not a personal excuse).

Make progress with things that have meaning to you. Go slowly and keep returning to them. This is the fastest way. Don't force yourself to work when you're sick or bored or have other commitments. Your mind would not be engaged anyway.

Two more points. Valuable works are never truly finished. They are abandoned. Things can always be improved!

Also, don't worry about being competitive. Life is not a competition. There's infinite room for everyone to form a niche. Read up on comparative advantage.

Competition engenders a false sense of lack and zero-sumness which causes much harm to the world. It fosters greed.

Oh I agree. In vino veritas. But 'permanently high' is different: it isn't really a high at all.

This article appeals to our deepest and most widely-held educational values, which makes it all the more dangerous, being wrong in several ways.

The author rightly belittles the concept of talent but it seems to have found its way in through the back door: “Two of our four turned out to be musically gifted and before long were shuttled out of Suzuki to hard-core classical violin teachers.”

(Talent is just the way we describe people who have some competence in a field which is inexplicit; nobody knows why they are good, otherwise one could learn it.)

Another thing to point out is that apparently none of the children have developed careers in music or composition (yet), so it remains to be seen if they have any creativity intact.

Why might they have lost creativity in adulthood? Because of childhood coercion. Those long hours of practice -- children don’t do that without being forced. It can be subtle, such as the worry of a slight loss of parental affection, sibling rivalry encouraged, etc.

Children will play for hours on end and this is where true learning occurs. Some children are bright enough to make their ‘practice’ a form of play, so they manage to improve despite appearances.

Creative adults continue to play, it’s just that the subject matter appears more serious. But progress remains open-ended, with stops and starts, switching between activities, and unpredictable (not ‘guaranteed’) results. The unpredictable nature of achievement follows from a law of epistemology: we can’t predict future knowledge (including our own).

I agree that being permanently high (and thus being out of touch with the body and with emotions) is unhealthy -- however, perhaps some drugs are less unhealthy than others.

[from the article]

>That there were no major differences in risk reduction between regular and decaf coffee suggests there's something in it, aside from its caffeine content, that could be contributing to these observed benefits

It could merely be that people who drink coffee eat less food, and that food is a less healthy drug

>such brain simulations might one day be used to better understand and model neurological disorders and diseases

Let's hope they obtain consent. And use a model of an animal brain first!

Well, it's more important where education is going than what any one of us happens to think. Most people who went to school find it very hard to conceive of it as a purely bad thing because they themselves had to pay a large psychological price to adapt to it. They don't understand about memes and how harmful ideas and institutions can persist. They would rather see it in a positive light. No doubt ancient Aztecs felt similarly after their relatives had been sacrificed!

The self-censoring issue is directly linked to creativity. Our first thoughts are the most creative; however, people learn to censor them so that these don't reach the level of awareness. Thus they don't have the option either to criticise or to enact them. HNers have retained a portion of their creativity. It's the majority and esp. the minimum wagers who have paid the highest price.

Learning to get on with people is a vital part of life but being herded together to perform make-work with people the same age as you is not the best way to learn this. Neither is prison nor the army. Voluntary relationships with friends and colleagues are more instructive, where people are unafraid and free to leave and there are real creative tasks at stake.

Some of the negative aspects of schooling:

Destruction of creativity, obedience, deferring to authority, loss of time, loss of identity, bullying, inability to pursue subjects in depth, learning to self-censor, second-rate materials, not being allowed to read, not being allowed to talk, have to ask permission to go to the bathroom, learning to tease those who fail to self-censor, everybody trying sooo hard to be normal, belief that exams measure knowledge, being put off math for life, inability to learn during adulthood, etc.

e.g. subtitles on movies, following instructions on computer games, googling stuff, reading books with parent (and looking again later without parent).

The general case is: pursuing something cool for its own sake is enhanced by learning language and other gateway knowledge i.e. knowledge which aids wider learning. No teaching or curriculum or testing or extrinsic motivation is required. Help is available. I'm not advocating neglect.

And there are the additional benefits of saving vast amounts of time and not damaging creativity.

>Basic education, teaching everyone to read and count

It's simply a fact that children, left to their own devices, teach themselves to read and to count.

Why? Because whatever one is interested in, such knowledge is a gateway to learning more (and sharing). And learning is fun...

I suspect some people can't type quietly because they don't know how. (The secret is to relax the fingers and hands by paying attention to the sensations coming from the fingertips.)

I totally support the quiet coaches. However, they do come loaded with the risk of confrontation between the quiet and the noisy, which is far more disturbing than mere hubbub.