Monthly Archives: February 2014

Unteachable Things Hard To Teach, Study Suggests

From Journal of the American Medical Association: About 500 doctors (and a handful of nurses) in training participated in a randomized controlled trial on communication skills. Half received thirty hours of intensive state-of-the-art communication skills training; the other half didn’t. … Continue reading

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Fix Science In Half An Hour

You’ve probably heard about the crisis of replication in psychology. The problem is that replication is an unglamorous business; researchers would much rather do the sexier work of pushing forward knowledge with new results. So we need to make replications … Continue reading

Suggest A Comments Policy

Several people have now mentioned they don’t like the comments section of my blog very much anymore. In my response to Arthur deep in the comments, I wrote: I feel like you want to frame this as you being willing … Continue reading

More Links For February 2014

Meditating may decrease the need for sleep by about two hours a day. But you have to meditate about two hours a day to gain the benefits, so it all checks out. A predictable yet surprising consequences of how we … Continue reading

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In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization

[Content warning: Discussion of social justice, discussion of violence, spoilers for Jacqueline Carey books.] [Edit 10/25: This post was inspired by a debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook who has since become somewhat famous. I’ve renamed him … Continue reading

Effects Of Vertical Acceleration On Wrongness

Whenever someone sneers “Evidence-based medicine? You wouldn’t demand a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial of PARACHUTES, would you?” I feel a strong urge to use them as the control group in my double-blind parachute experiment. Of course, deep down inside I … Continue reading

God Bless Longecity

I am inordinately pleased by the existence of Longecity. This is a forum where people discuss supplements and nootropics. I started looking at it when I was conducting the nootropics forum, assumed it was similar to every other forum that … Continue reading

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Proposed Biological Explanations For Historical Trends In Crime

My debate on crime rates with Michael Anissimov has been long and meandering, but I think we’re starting to come to something of a consensus. I think (I don’t know if Michael agrees) that the evidence showing long-term decline in … Continue reading

Lies, Damned Lies, And Social Media (Part 5 of ∞)

[content warning: rape, false rape allegations. Some people have been linking this article claiming it says things it DEFINITELY DOES NOT, so please read it before you have an opinion.] (see also parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of ∞) … Continue reading

Nootropics Survey Results And Analysis

In case you are just joining us: nootropics are substances which purportedly improve mental functioning with relatively few side effects when used responsibility. Caffeine is a good example. It improves wakefulness and energy, and when used responsibly is so safe … Continue reading