read+reflect

Good article about the problems with science (well, mostly scientific reporting) at the moment. The reproducibility problems we’ve been seeing lately suggest that we need to see science less as single studies and more as a process that is prone to flaws and failure. There are a lot of problems within – peer review, grants, publication costs, university PR exaggerating studies – and the approach we need to take is one that recognizes science as not just single studies but as a longer, slower process. Setting the right expectations, basically.

- Quantified self and outsourcing willpower, reserving it for the important things - Scales that tell you only when something is wrong - Wolfram's inspiring collection of data: set it and forget it. Finding data-driven evidence. - What is life? Is it the artifacts and narratives we construct?

Changing one’s mind about a new place once they find a friend or someone to have an emotional connection to there [an anchor].

<p>• Life Satisfaction = Positive Affect + Engagement (Flow) + Meaning<br/> • Try the “perfect day” exercise: plan out a perfect day<br/> • Gratitude writing exercise<br/> • Positive psychology as getting people from negative or 0 to positive. A psychology for normal people.

Finally, the way that he exemplified the ideas in his talk right in his talk, by showing how they worked to make it interesting—I love that. Really shows the value of it, really demonstrates it, more than just having a list.

The whole problem with lack of confidence affecting performance in the real-world is that you constantly question and second-guess the reasons you’re not good at whatever it is you’re doing. This cleverly reframes the question to make us realize that. It reminds me of the idea of cultivating negative capability.

Are we in the beginning of seeing what it's really like to be in a melting pot with discrimination, and will we come to a more nuanced understanding of race in the future? Will we, potentially, tolerate "white-people only country clubs" as much as we do "Indian-only retirement communities"?

Great article about the Scandinavian system. Definitely an interesting take on the American ideal, though I wonder if there's a way to reach that regardless. The ideas on freedom and the free market are clear as well, and probably something that the current discussion with Piketty and inequality and all are a part of.

Great stuff. I've always felt like the stoic approach that is common in 'zen'-ish thinking and recent personal development stuff creates a fantasy world. We have to face the realities, but we need to be more resilient. What's the thing that we can do to compare ourselves and get better, without demotivating ourselves? Thinking about craft and not exactly result is a great way... craft gives us a way to think about how to do something, a way forward, whereas comparing results is one-dimensional—almost always "I didn't do this, so I suck".

Cool talk and good message. He also worries about how new power networks can act for harm, which I think is very true. The issue sis that a lot of these networks can’t control for quality. The egalitarian nature of them, e.g. Occupy, can erode quality and may necessitate a centralized power, or some distributed assurance of quality, to maintain coherence. Good talk though.

We need to think of trade-offs. In psychology, this is huge: we have cognitive biases, but they’re almost all beneficial in that they dramatically decrease cognitive load. And then we need to see what side or what balance we fall on, and carefully understand our convictions and actual values.

Limiting the degrees of freedom is a way of holding the performance of all the competing skills fixed, so all your attention can be devoted to the unfixed element.

“The Possibility of the Impossible” by Rob Phillips https://medium.com/p/57d142cc3dd3

Putin isn't as brilliant a strategist as some may put him out to be. His gains in Ukraine, in aggregate, are few, and three main things resulted: 1) a renewed interest in NATO security of Eastern Europe, 2) a tarnished Russian image especially due to the MH17 incident that makes Russia feared but not respected (Russia as a protector of state sovereignty is now a laughingstock), and 3) economic pressures from both outside (sanctions that affect Russia's economy and make it inward-facing, such as Europe's renewed interest in securing their natural gas e.g. from US not Russia) and inside (Russian entrepreneurs and executives who are now being sanctioned that are putting pressure on the Kremlin.) It's undone so much of Russia's image-building and whatnot such as Sochi. — Very interesting. The situation seems to have definitely backfired, especially since it has scared Western nations and tarnished its image. Economic factors could be fulcrums/wedges, which I think is the most salient point here. If Russia wants to succeed, its economy must, and that forces them to at least comply with the international order since the West still holds the cards. Might not be good in the long run, but if it prevents rogue states from doing these outlandish actions, maybe that's necessary.

Russia is no longer trying to change its population and mold it. A dictatorship is necessary for this, since voting and democracy assume the self-interest and self-determination is necessary. Thus lack of dualism means democracy might be able to possible.

Where is the real cost and complexity in a system coming from?

"...the inevitable responsible party is the person who bears the consequences of what is done." The responsible party is who the consequences happen to. It's really about incentives. Who really is incentivized to win in a situation? If you're a doctor, yes, they have an incentive to help you, but at the end of the line, you are incentivized to keep yourself healthy. If you're a bar, are you incentivized to keep your patrons relatively coherent? We need to make ourselves the responsible party and see ourselves as such when necessary. And act accordingly. Many of us seem to detach ourselves from that, maybe as a defense mechanism. We try to hold others responsible and some like that, if their incentives are out of line with our own. Might be something to write about later.