Yearly Archives: 2014

The Slate Star Codex Political Spectrum Quiz

Directions: Select either (a) or (b) for each of the twelve questions. 1. Neo-Nazis are holding a demonstration in a small town, waving swastikas around and shouting about Hitler. They seem to be pretty peaceful so far, so the First … Continue reading

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Links For March 2014

The fax machine was invented in 1843 and fully automated in 1881. I feel like the engineers of those days must be laughing at us for needing digital technology to transmit information. Someone checks to see if any papers by … Continue reading

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Book Review: The Perfect Health Diet

After I dissed saturated fat on Facebook a friend told me to read “The Perfect Health Diet”, which usually doesn’t work. But he also offered me a free copy, which does. If you can’t get a free copy, you can … Continue reading

Do Life Hacks Ever Reach Fixation?

In Searching For One-Sided Tradeoffs, I argued that people’s “life hacks” probably occupy a restricted range. If the life hack had nothing going for it, it would never become popular and you wouldn’t hear about it. If the hack had … Continue reading

The Comment Policy Is “Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite”

There is an ancient Sufi saying beloved of the Buddha, which like a surprising number of ancient Sufi sayings beloved of the Buddha, originates from a book of preachy Victorian poetry. It goes: Before you speak, let your words pass … Continue reading

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[CORRECTION] Mountain View Meetup 3/4

[a previous version of this post said 3/3, but upon closer investigation it is more likely 3/4] Speaking of one-sided tradeoffs, for the next two weeks I’ve traded Detroit for the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve already got plans to … Continue reading

Searching For One-Sided Tradeoffs

Suppose you are an admissions official for a moderately prestigious college, which is neither the best nor the worst in your state. Your job is to look over people’s SAT scores, high school GPA, and essays on How I Overcame … Continue reading

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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