In the middle of the desert you can say anything you want
“Teachers should prepare the student for
the student’s future, not for the teacher’s
past.” — Richard Hamming
I ran across the above quote from Hamming this morning. It made me
wonder whether I tried to prepare students for my past when I used to
teach college students.
*How do you prepare a student for the future? Mostly by *focusing
on skills that will always be useful,
even as times change: logic, clear
communication, diligence, etc.
Negative forecasting is more reliable here than positive forecasting.
It’s hard to predict what’s going to
be in demand in the future (besides
timeless skills), but it’s easier to predict
what’s probably not going to be in
demand. The latter aligns with Hamming’s exhortation not to
prepare students for your past.
critical slowing when recovering as sign of impending loss of balance
Also part 2: http://lewisandquark.tumblr.com/
And, this is fascinating: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women:
Dusty Teal
Blush Pink
Dusty Lavender
Butter Yellow
Dusky Rose
Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list.
Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men:
Penis
Gay
WTF
Dunno
Baige
I … that’s not my typo in #5—the only actual color in the list really is a misspelling of “beige”. And keep in mind, this is based on the number of unique people who answered the color, not the number of times they typed it. This isn’t just the effect of a couple spammers. In fact, this is after the spamfilter.
I weep for my gender. But, on to:Very dubious validity but still interesting
Mental contrasting helps your subconscious understand. It ties together the promise of future reward with obstacles which must be overcome in the present (e.g. do x,y, and z,, and you will receive your reward). You, the conscious, already understands. Your subconscious speaks in images, which is why your thoughts of grandeur and accomplishment fail to help it understand. But visualization in the form of mental contrasting? That works.gi
Instructions
1a) Write down or think about several positive aspects associated with completing your goal. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, those positive aspects could be: looking good, living longer, spending less on healthcare, feeling more lively, being able to stay active, getting your spouse to stop nagging you, etc…
1b) Hone in the most positive aspects. This could be one especially large benefit, or a few smaller ones. Then take a few moments to visualize those benefits. The longer and the more detail, the better.
2a) Write down or think about several obstacles in the way of you completing your goal. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, those obstacles could be: being tempted by snacks, purchasing unhealthy food while shopping, eating too much at dinner, emotional binging, lack of motivation to exercise, etc…
2b) Hone in the largest obstacles. This could be one especially large obstacle, or a few smaller ones. Then take a few moments to visualize those obstacles. The longer and the more detail, the better.
That’s itVirtual rabbits across Second Life will fall asleep on Saturday then
never wake up, now that the their digital food supply has been shut down
by a legal battle. The player-made and player-sold Ozimals brand of
digirabbits are virtual pets that players breed and care for in the
sandbox MMO, and even need to feed by buying DRM-protected virtual food.
But they rely on servers. Waypoint reported earlier today that the
seller of Ozimals and the Pufflings virtuabirds has received a legal
threat he says he cannot afford to fight, so they’ve shut down. By
Saturday, rabbits will run out of food and enter hibernation.
The rabbits aren’t dead, they’re sleeping. They simply can never wake
up.
[…] At least the Ozimals' birdy cousins, the Pufflings, had a swift
death. They shut down instantly on Wednesday when the servers went down,
while rabbits hold on with the food in their cyberbellies.
Ozimals did give rabbit owners a brief chance to save their rabbits.
Before shutting down, they gave away items which make rabbits not need
food – and leaves them sterile. Some rabbits will live on forever, the
last of their kind. If you wish that fate upon your rabbit, apparently
some kindly players have a stash you’re welcome to.
Rationality: From AI to Zombies This book is a distillation of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” on human thought and rationality. It’s intended to serve both as an introduction to thinking about thinking and as a resource for people interested in digging deeper into epistemology, metacognition, and how to be less wrong. Thinking, Fast and Slow In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman co-founded the study of cognitive biases. Now a Nobel laureate, he summarizes his life’s work and the subfields of psychology and economics he helped create. This is an engaging book about the causes of human error, written by the field’s most prestigious researcher. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction New York Times bestselling author and professor Phillip Tetlock explains the habits of the best people in the world at predicting the outcomes to uncertain events. Focusing Psychologist Eugene Gendlin teaches an advanced intropection technique he calls Focusing. It’s used to access the very edges of what you’re thinking and feeling, to discover beliefs and connections that are difficult to access analytically. Predictably Irrational In this New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely humorously and accurately weaves together stories from his career as a researcher and reflections on the nature of human reasoning. Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion Dr. Robert Cialdini explains the psychology of why people say “yes,” and the details of six specific principles you can use to become a skilled persuader (or to spot attempts by others to persuade you). What Intelligence Tests Miss Psychologist Keith Stanovich has spent decades conducting experiments which show that intelligence and rationality are not the same thing, and that highly intelligent people are still susceptible to many biases and thinking distortions. In this book, he offers a unifying explanation of how bias works — and how it might be meliorated. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t Nate Silver has reliably predicted electoral results better than any other pundit. How does he do it? As his book reveals, he does it by bothering to obey the laws of probability theory; that is, by using Bayes’ Theorem to update his beliefs. Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work Chip and Dan Heath explain where human decision-making often stalls out and offer habits and reframes to help you avoid cognitive derailment. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long Useful ways to stay productive and focused in work environment with a focus on neuroscience so you’ll understand the why as well as the how. Academic Rationality and the Reflective Mind Keith Stanovich’s model of human bias and how it might be meliorated is perhaps the most advanced in the field, and nowhere is this model better explained and defended than in this book. Thinking and Deciding, 4th Edition With its first edition published in 1988, Thinking and Deciding is perhaps the “standard” introductory textbook on the normative, descriptive, and prescriptive aspects of judgment and decision-making; how an ideal agent would reason, how humans do normally reason, and what humans can do to think and act more like ideal agents. Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, 2nd edition This textbook on judgment and decision is more advanced than Thinking and Deciding and covers more material. The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning This excellent volume contains up-to-date chapters on nearly every major subject in the psychology of thinking and reasoning, written by some of the leading authors on each subject. Judgment in Managerial Decision Making This textbook is engagingly written, offers numerous illustrative examples, and does an excellent job of organizing decision science in memorable and useful ways. It is particularly useful for those who want to apply decision science to business management, but its coverage is general enough to be useful to all readers. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman deep dive into shortcuts and systematic errors in judgement made by people in uncertain situations. Staff Picks Nonviolent Communication In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Gödel, Escher, Bach By looking at the brilliant minds of mathematician Kurt Godel, graphic artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, computer-science and cognitive-science professor Douglas Hofstadter ties together the aesthetic gift of pattern recognition and manipulation with theories on artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and the essence of self-awareness. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a work of alternate-universe Harry Potter fan-fiction wherein Petunia Evans has married an Oxford biochemistry professor and young genius Harry grows up fascinated by science and science fiction. When he finds out that he is a wizard, he tries to apply scientific principles to his study of magic, with sometimes surprising results. Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre Switch off the no-saying intellect and welcome the unconscious as a friend: it will lead you places you never dreamed of, and produce results more ‘original’ than anything you could achieve by aiming at originality. Mister Fred Written for elementary and middle school kids, this novel about a possibly-alien substitute teacher contains a surprising amount of insight into pedagogy, managing group dynamics, antagonistic learning, and rationality. Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students and busy executives mismanage their time, and why the same sugarcane farmers are smarter after harvest than before. Bonds that Make Us Free An interesting take on how reinforcing patterns of self-deception disrupt relationships, and what to do about it. Grounded in religious philosophy rather than cognitive science, but several of us found it life-changing.
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.[1][2] In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: “the map is not the territory”.
£sd (occasionally written Lsd) is the popular name for the pre-decimal
currencies once common throughout Europe, especially in the British
Isles and hence in several countries of the British Empire and
subsequently the Commonwealth. The abbreviation originates from the
Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii.
Under this system, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings,
or 240 pence, in a pound. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings
until 31 December 1960, when they ceased to be legal tender in the UK,
and until 31 July 1969 there were also halfpennies (“ha’pennies”) in
circulation. The advantage of such a system was its use in mental
arithmetic, as it afforded many factors and hence fractions of a pound
such as tenths, eighths, sixths and even sevenths and ninths if the
guinea (worth 21 shillings) was used. When dealing with items in dozens,
multiplication and division are straightforward; for example, if a dozen
eggs cost four shillings, then each egg was priced at fourpence.
The Science of Fear is the first book that opened my eyes to how poor we are at interpreting risk. The Big Change, a look at how life in America changed from 1900-1950, got me interested in the social and cultural part of economic growth. The Quest of the Simple Life, written in 1907, totally changed how I think about personal finance and life goals. Famous Financial Fiascos is one of the best investing history books that few people have heard of. The Great Depression: A Diary is the best economics book I’ve read, written by a person who didn’t know he was writing one. Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit has had the biggest influence on how I write. The Patriarch, a biography of Joseph Kennedy, shows Kennedy to be one of the most fascinating people in American history even if his son had never became president. Endurance is the best example of how far people can be pushed when the stakes are high. Truman, a biography of the 33rd president, is an incredible story of the world’s biggest problems falling into the lap of someone who never thought he’d face them. The Wright Brothers is one of the best business and innovation stories of all time. The Frugal Housewife, written in 1833, shows how primitive everyday life was not that long ago. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism will make half of readers angry, but the other half will be better able to realize that no system for organizing an economy is perfect. Guns at Last Light is the best World War II book I’ve read, and explains the most important event in modern history through human stories rather than bland statistics. The Better Angels of Our Nature taught me that you can be a long-term optimist even when things around you look pretty bad. 30 Lessons for Living is a collection of life advice from very old people who have seen it all. This Will Make You Smarter is a series of short essays by brilliant people in a book that lives up to its title. Boyd is an excellent story on brute-force learning, focus, and bureaucracy. The Birth of Plenty is the best explanation of how and why economies grow. The Wisdom of Psychopaths shows how big an advantage you have when you’re unemotional about emotional topics. When Breath Becomes Air will make you reexamine what’s important in life and make you appreciate each day you’re here. Investing: The Last Liberal Art is the most underappreciated investment book. Why Don’t We Learn From History? shows why people keep screwing up after others before them did the same thing. How To Lie With Statistics will make you laugh and be skeptical of almost everything in one sitting. TwitterFacebookEmail May 12, 2017 by Morgan Housel · @morganhousel
Obvious: 1 - Always. 2 - If the number is even. 5 - If the number ends in 5 or 0. 10 - If the numbers ends in 0. Less Obvious: 3 - Add all of the digits in the number. If the result is divisible by 3, then so is the original number. (Note that this rule can be repeated with the result if you still don’t know.) 4 - If the last 2 digits of the number are divisible by 4, then so is the entire number. If you don’t know then halve the last 2 digits twice. If you still have a whole number then it is divisible by 4. 6 - If the number passes the ‘2’ rule and the ‘3’ rule, then, yes. 8 - If the last 3 digits of the number are divisible by 8, then so is the entire number. If you don’t know then halve the last 3 digits three times. If you still have a whole number then it is divisible by 8. 9 - Add all of the digits in the number. If the result is divisible by 9, then so is the original number. (Note that this rule can be repeated with the result if you still don’t know.) Obscure: 7 - Remove the last digit from the number. Take the number formed by the remaining digits and subtract by 2x the removed digit. If the result is divisible by 7, then so is the original number. Example (889): 88-(9x2) = 88-18 = 70 => 889 is divisible by 7.