tungstenfurnace

The thinking in this article is heading in the right direction; it's not what you wear but how you look early on that determines your popularity.

This is already known to some extent. For example, PUAs deliberately wear uncool clothing as a kind of peacock's tail. ("I'm so popular I can dress weird and still be loved by everyone.")

However, it's not quite all the way there. It's who you are that determines how popular you are. Your character. Note that this will also affect your appearance -- not just your choice of clothes, but your physical appearance. People who are angry or upset all the time will show that on their faces. It is a drain on their health. Over time this has an uglifying effect, especially over the growth years.

Appearance, intellect, riches, gifts, favours you perform, even glamour -- who you are trumps all these when it comes to how likeable you are.

People bully other people by trying to get a 'rise' out of them. They try to provoke a negative emotional response. This is only possible if the target feels ashamed of himself in some way. Nerds do feel ashamed of themselves.

This is why Sheldon Cooper might just be a role model for nerds. He is not ashamed of himself. He values intellectual accomplishment over popularity and sex.

Sheldon aside, however: character is not fixed, so popularity can never be fixed.

Too right! In reality, our ability to read co-evolves with finding cool stuff to read.

We learn to read not by memorising the letters, constructing syllables, then words, etc -- but by discovering, for example, Harry Potter.

Tablets will be great for small children, who will interact with educational software using their right forefingers on the touchscreen.

Tablets will eventually be cheap, rugged and capable of being turned on quickly. (Perhaps a convergence with electronic paper will occur.) They can be left lying around in the play area. No chair/desk/keyboard arrangement will be required.

One upshot of this is that educational software will get much, much better than it is now.

If it seems that you can't get some task done and you aren't making any progress this means that either (a) it lies beyond your present abilities, and/or (b) your heart isn't in it.

>I can work for 10 straight hours if I'm at school

This is part of the problem IMO. Schools are inherently coercive and this messes up one's approach to instrinsically motivated learning.

It is the task itself that provides the reward. If the work is noble and interesting and if it lies within your abilities then you will find sufficient vitality is available to perform it.

OTOH, forcing yourself to do stuff (as if you were still at school) causes the mind to slowly shut down (starting with loss of creativity).

>I find it very hard to work at least 1h

If you weren't doing the 'work', what would you be doing instead during that hour? Start with that, and do it better.

>Nothing was put on risk.

Do you know Stephen Fry well? Is he 'nothing'? Can you predict how he will feel about this?

>if the twitter account in question didn't belong to Stephen Fry or anyone famous?

I didn't say famous, I said good.

Btw, check out the author's disclaimer:

>Neither the editors nor the author shall not be liable for any possible damage caused by the materials of this article.

True, but I think some people might need reminding.

Also, he tries to use his twitter account to promote good causes. Depending on his reaction to this episode, this might have been put at risk.

Stephen Fry is a good person.

:-(

My neighbours in opinion space are more interesting than my neighbours in physical space.

How's this: if you're starting a traditional business like house-painting or power generation then write a brief plan. Otherwise don't.

What's the scientific explanation of why exercise makes one healthy?

(Otherwise it might just be a correlation. A study can only support one explanation over another; it can't generate an explanation.)

Do people move about lots because they are healthy, or vice versa?

One could hook up an electric motor to that crank handle. But I suspect the overseeing bureaucrat would disapprove.

Thanks for the criticism! I take your point about fructose and appetite.

My reason for believing that carbs stimulate the sympathetic nervous system is that I think that, paradoxically, excitement and stress are essentially the same thing. (Excitement initially feels better because thoughts are stimulated and negative emotions are numbed, along with the rest of the body.) Whatever, when it comes to blood sugar, hyper is followed by hypo, so you can get cortisol that way.

I doubt that looking at neurotransmitters is the right way to think about addiction. It is a mental phenomenon which operates on a different level of abstraction. To use an analogy from computing, explaining a software bug does not in general require looking at hardware.

Until we have good explanation of addiction, we can't meaningfully test related theories. So it's hard to take seriously what medical science currently regards as evidence in this matter. However, the fact that AA uses a 'spiritual' programme to break addiction, and that some addicts claim to have been helped by mystical experiences brought on by hallucinogens -- these do seem like significant pointers.

More basically, people commonly report being in two minds about food, which is the hallmark of addiction.

What you say is perfectly reasonable regarding popular content like movies and novels. Even computer games. However, of personal data like photos and writings, much will be lost. People (or their children or their grandchildren, etc) won't bother to convert everything to new formats and they won't bother to copy all files when they upgrade hardware. Alternatively, they could upload their data to a third party who, for an annual fee, would store and continually upgrade the files to newer formats. However, companies go bust. Conversion software is buggy. Passwords get lost or not handed on. Descendants go through financial bad patches. A single break in the chain is enough to destroy information.

Thus to preserve data you really do have mingle it with hardware and mass reproduce the whole thing. In the biological analogy, genes are the data, DNA is the medium and the rest of the seed is the 'reader'. Making hundreds or thousands of copies ensures against total loss.

I speculate that the dementia is caused by poor circulation of oxygen to the brain. This would be due to arterial plaque and inflammation caused by the sympathetic stress response and LDL build-up which follow excess consumption of carbohydrates. The carbs account also for metabolic syndrome and the accumulation of body fat. (Fructose is principally responsible for the fatty liver.) Excess consumption of carbs is an addiction. All addictions are caused by identification with the thinking (verbal) mind, which is centred in the dominant hemisphere; they represent a misguided attempt to escape from that personality. Carbs are the most common addiction partly because avoiding them is difficult both socially and financially, and, obviously, avoiding food completely is difficult biologically.

It may well sound arrogant and/or downright wacky to state all this speculation but, hey, it represents an attempt to explain the world which is really what those scientists ought to be doing before they design an experiment!

I guess in the case of a blog post the context comes from a linked news article or similar.

Btw, didn't read your 2nd para :-)

I hope printed books will not die because there is a big advantage to having text that is readable decades or centuries later.

Much precious information will be lost to our descendants because the data formats of websites and e-books will become obsolete.

If you want to preserve data then emulate nature's approach to seed dispersal. Produce multiple hardcopies of your photos and writings and mail them to friends and relatives!

Science is primarily about trying to explain the world. That's the theoretical, reasoning part. The explanations aren't derived from data; they begin as guesses.

What makes science special happens when two theories conflict and reason cannot choose between them. That's when experiment is used. (The theory which least explains the results is then rejected.)

Scientists use reason more than they use evidence, and most theories are rejected without bothering to test them.

What isn't widely acknowledged is that evidence itself isn't pure data but rather data + interpretation. Sometimes a better explanation can completely reverse the conclusion initially 'drawn' from a set of data.

If a child needs help in public then it makes sense not to be frightened to approach an adult (a mother for preference).

Correlation -- yes! Though it would be better to say "inverse correlation found between alcohol and CHD".

Many people don't get that this observation is entirely consistent with alcohol's increasing the risk of CHD.

An analogy is that car accidents correlate strongly with use of the brake pedal. Yet we know brake pedals reduce the risk of car accidents. If asked we can explain why this is so.

>The exact mechanisms are as yet unclear

If they were doing proper, hard science they would be conjecturing theories about such mechanisms and then testing those theories.

The ability to forget certain things is important. Knowledge advances by rejecting false theories.

Scientific and engineering knowledge fits together because reality is consistent. So it isn't necessary to memorise everything.

Rather than trying to 'drill in' certain pieces of essential info, it's better to improve the state of your mind, so that your memory works better generally. We waste a great deal of vitality by overeating, watching TV, etc. It seems to dull the mind and the memory significantly IME.

Forcing yourself to memorise stuff that doesn't interest you will tend to shut the mind down. It's like being at school.

Possessions are only a burden if you identify with them. The strain of this is enough to cause some people to throw out important stuff. (It causes others to ceaselessly acquire new things but that problem is well known.)

A more sane approach is to treat possessions as part of the scenery and solve household problems as and when they arise.

Much of the configuration of your house represents the result of solved problems. It embodies knowledge which you, the owner, may have forgotten. This is why after moving house it can take months or years to get your domestic life back together.

So solve clutter problems as and when they arise. Don't go looking for stuff to throw out. That would be like vacuuming under the couch.

e.g. If a pile of books is impeding entry into the bathroom, then by all means chuck some books or put up more shelving.

These 'self-improvement' gimmicks are a kind of tax on people newly intent on improving themselves. They are beneath the dignity of a true hacker.

If you try to mess with your body language you'll just look creepy. I suppose an exception to this is if the person you're trying to impress is sufficiently dumb and insensitive as to not notice. In which case why bother trying to impress him?

Instead of trying to project the image of a confident, kind person, try being a confident, kind person. The body language will follow naturally.

I don't think this is necessary. If something is boring, you'll forget it. If something is interesting, you'll remember it. You'll think about it a few times, and perhaps discuss it with other people. You'll link it mentally to other parts of your worldview. All these things will increase your ability to recall it when necessary, without effort.

To improve memory generally, stay fit and live a sober and useful life.

NB: I'm leaving this comment because I'll have forgotten about the article by tomorrow :-)

Raganwald,

You are being so honest about your ego that there seems little doubt it is starting to dissolve and you will regain the lightness of touch and mood that betokens huge creative power.

Indeed. Professionals want constant reassurance that it's OK for them to be paid to be constantly interfering with children's play.

"How to begin to educate a child. First rule, leave him alone. Second rule, leave him alone. Third rule, leave him alone. That is the whole beginning."

(D.H.Lawrence)

Good for you! I also prefer typing. As far as handwriting goes, I've unconsciously developed a semi-joined up style rather like that mentioned in the article. No lessons required.

Even though I couldn't be bothered with it, I had always assumed that cursive handwriting must have some advantage. But it has none. It is both slower to write and difficult to read.

Generations of children have been hobbled by a prissy, static tradition, inherited from brass engraving.

Hear Hear! Doing nothing --just being-- is a vital part of the creative life.

(and I'm so glad this article wasn't titled "The 10 rules of how to enjoy yourself")

Learning rules and remembering them is difficult.

If I prefer to keep quiet, it might be better simply to socialise less. Then I'll have more to say on the occasions when I do socialise.

I don't know why it's important to succeed socially. Wouldn't that mean turning into a celebrity? Their lives suck from what I can tell.

I've been reading about the American inventor Elmer Gates.

http://www.elmergates.com/egamu/egamu_link_page.htm

I think his three tips would be:

(1) quiescence (2) periodicity (3) dirigation

Which in modern language means (1) remove or zone out all distractions, (2) work at the same time each day, (3) pay deliberate attention to each aspect of the problem in turn in your imagination. (4) Repeat.

Step (3) helps to build the relevant mental structures. Visiting them habitually will strengthen them.

'Each aspect' will include mental images (visual, aural, kinaesthetic), concepts, ideas (including all the relevant constraints and conditions that must be met). Generating mental images is important as the mind works best with things that are translated into sensory terms.

Eventually a conjectured solution will pop into your conscious mind, possibly at a time outside the working hour. You may know it is coming before it arrives.

He might also add that thinking draws from one's personal store of vitality. So it may be necessary to adjust sleep, diet, exercise and any addictions you have in order to conserve this.

Being unstressed is vital. Partly this means only working on important problems and working with the intention to do good. It also means switching to a different problem if you get bored of the first one. (You can go back to it another day).