billswift

Not necessarily. With widespread vices like religious faith, it's the other way around.

Even comparing yourself to other achievers isn't as big a problem as what some people do:

>It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, http://lesswrong.com/lw/y7/the_super_happy_people_38/

If you really want to achieve something, you need to benchmark what you have accomplished against your goals; not benchmark yourself against other people, or even against your earlier self, its the accomplishment that matters, not you.

On the other hand without separation of concerns, you get the risk of the lab "finding" what the investigators wanted, like the incidents in the FBI labs in the 1990s.

In fact, calorie restriction doesn't even work well in rodents. One of the articles points out that whether calorie restriction "works" in mice depends on the lineage, some breeds it works and some it doesn't.

Yes. Derek Lowe discussed the articles, and I made almost your exact point in the comments there.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/08/29/caloric_rest...

Check out accountants' Journals, they have lined paper rather than quadrille, but they work well.

Page numbers and table of contents are very important for finding the info again. Also, they don't have to, and shouldn't, interfere with note-making. I number the pages before I start using a new notebook, and add things to the ToC at the end of the day when I do a quick review, when I also make out tomorrow's to-do list.

I have fine motor control issues; I can write just about as fast as I can type. Using a lot of symbols, for example when writing math, I can write much faster than I can type.

And I get an automatic, permanent record that I can review anywhere or when without having to print it out.

There are many problems with patents in drug development as well, as Derek Lowe discusses in these essays, http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/patents_and_ip/ . It may be time to try to develop something new, maybe based on patent law, maybe not, even for pharma.

ADDED: One problem pharma shares with software is "patent thickets" where there are many applicable patents, applying to different layers of technology, that the current development relies on.

Linux is too hard to configure; if the distro gets it right out of the box it's fine, but not otherwise. I started with Windows 3.1 in 1995, mostly used Slackware, and some Windows 95, from 1996 to 2000. Slackware and Windows 98 from 2000 to 2004. But from the time I got on the Internet in 2004 to the present I have mostly used Windows (98, XP, and Vista) because I have not managed to get any version of Linux that I have tried to connect through a dial-up modem. I have to admit I have only tried sporadically, since Windows just works, and my efforts to get some Linux distro to work have been so frustrating. (Note that though a frequent user, I am not a programmer or professional sys-admin.)

ADDED: jrockaway's comment, added while I was writing this, hits it just right: "I think the issue is that getting everything working requires a deep understanding of each component and the system as a whole." Which is what makes it so frustrating, even to very intelligent people who have other interests than computers in and of themselves.

Even if there is, that doesn't mean he'll know who the lead is. I have been in interview where I have gone from person to person with no one in two consecutive sections. As far as I could tell there was no one person to discuss sensitive issues with.

>They can help to push repetitive things off to the automatic portions of your brain.

I agree, further, anything that can be automated should be. GTD and most similar systems stress getting everything possible out of your head and into the system, so you can concentrate on what is most important. Many "best practices" try to do the same, the trick, as you point out is to use the ones that are appropriate to your problem.

Almost 20 years ago, I had a ten-speed junker I bought for $20 just for riding around town, only three gears actually worked, but it got me around. Somebody stole it off of my front porch.

>Same concept can also exist for hiding information

In which case it is known as a "cold drop".

A comment I left on a LessWrong post in July might help people understand why it is such a problem:

The genome is the ultimate spaghetti code. I would not be at all surprised if some genes code for the direct opposite characteristics in the presence of other genes. It is going to take more than just running relatively simple correlation studies to untangle the functions of most genes. We are going to have to understand what proteins the genes code for and how the proteins work.

Edited for clarity, eliminated a couple of ambiguous pronouns.

I participated in their forums for a few months several years ago, but I quit bothering because they are not particularly incremental. As one of their references, Jon Fisher's The Last Frontiers on Earth, points out, one of the things pioneers have always had to deal with is leaving behind some of the comforts of home. They seem to think they are going to start out with all the comforts of a city, or at least an "edge city" suburb; it's not going to happen, they'll just keep on daydreaming.

According to Bayesian reasoning it is evidence, only weak evidence, as are, for example hearsay and anecdotes.

Interestingly, if you look at it the other way around, "probabilistic" is a good way of describing analog output. Something I read many years ago on computer history claimed that one of the reasons digital technology displaced analog was the inherent lack of "exactness" in analog.

>If it's genetic, as you assert, then what hope is there?

Recognizing what their specific problems actually are, there is significant variation in the strength of the particular difficulties individual autistics face.

Teaching autistics to work around their disabilities; there has been significant progress on this approach for recognizing and dealing with other peoples emotions, for example.

Getting them the support they need for problems they cannot work around.

There is inadequate evidence of a link between the hygiene hypothesis and autism, which is what the article was about. I agree that there seems some fairly good support for the hygiene hypothesis and immunological problems, like allergies and asthma.

EDIT: replaced "no evidence" with "inadequate evidence", as lutusp noted, the article is claiming a correlation, which is at least weak evidence.

"You should have an open mind, but not so open all your brains run out."

In fact, the "hygiene hypothesis" is almost the diametric opposite; vaccines, by challenging our immune systems, would reduce the risk of autism. Not that it does that either, studies have repeatedly found no correlation between vaccination and autism.

Greg Cochrane mentions that here, http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/paternal-age/ , in the context of the influence of paternal age on mutation rates, and excessive numbers of mutations having negative influences on fitness and health.

That is not what "syndrome" means. Syndrome refers to the fact that there are multiple symptoms pointing to the disorder.

Evidence that you can actually do the work is what is essential, those are only examples. Generally, the broader and more interesting the work at the job you're applying for, the broader the examples of your work, and other evidence, like working an example problem(s) in the interview, will be required.

The important thing for the company is that you provide more value than you cost, so they try to weed out people that either can't do enough work quickly enough or will require too much hand-holding to be practical in their work environment.

Slide rules? I have a couple, but never learned more than the basics before the TI-30 came along, and have forgotten most of what I had learned.

NOW I don't, but while setting IRQs was annoying, some of the weird stuff that sometimes happened in the earlier days of plug-and-play was worse.

>I'm not an idiot, stop treating me like one.

Many people are however, and mass media, which includes Google, however they may try to deny it, lives by the numbers, which means adapting to the lowest common denominator. Just think, as the Internet spreads, Google will evolve (devolve) closer and closer to broadcast TV!

I have little doubt that the problems discussed actually exist, but the biggest reason for the difference is simple economics. Anything free, or at extremely low cost, is over-consumed; hence the many sign-us for the course. But completing a course is NOT free, or usually even cheap, it takes a great deal of time and effort for any but the simplest courses; therefore most end up dropping out when it stops being free.

As for the "cheating versus mastery" part, it depends on why and exactly how he is working it. Simply taking the course over and over could be either; signing up for multiple, simultaneous sessions and picking best scoring sessions is pretty obviously cheating.

>maybe you’ll need a small pen

Actually, a fatter pen works better for writing really small, you have better control over the point. You might try this with a lot of other things, too. Many of our everyday instruments are built smaller than they really should be for optimum functionality, apparently for stylistic reasons.

I use three common sizes and shapes of notebooks or pads, all of them top opening. A credit card sized pad intended for a micro-organizer that fits easily in my wallet, just in case I don't have anything else available, also handy for shopping since I am certain not to forget it.

I use a 4x6 top opening sketchpad for a pocket notebook, it fits, barely, in my hip pocket and is big enough and stiff enough for fairly extensive note-taking when I am walking around. And I use stenographer's notebooks that just fit in my shoulder bag (a Tourist Guide bag from REI) for when I expect to be doing even more extensive note-taking.

Having to do more elaborate work to get a pad, like the OP discusses, strikes me as a bad bargain. It costs you more for less convenient note-taking. You really need something that you can and will take notes with, lots of notes, since you don't know until later usually which ones are important, so the more you write, the better. And note-taking is a skill, the more you do it, the better you will get at it.