Life Advice Repository
Looking thru the Repository Repository I can’t find a nice category for a lot of real life or self help advice that has been posted here over time. Sure some belongs to the Boring Advice Repository but the following you surely wouldn’t expect there:
Lets start with lukeprog’s all-time favorite
What other real life advice would you like to see here?
There are also very good posts that might be relevant to a rationalists life but could also go into some Rationality Advice Repository—but then all of LW falls kind of into that category. Some examples:
AnnaSalamon’s Checklist of Rationality Habits
Rationalist Judo, or Using the Availability Heuristic to Win
I see that I’m unable to draw a clear line on what falls into this category and thus suggest that specific rationality advice of ‘this kind’ be left out.
I’d say Elo’s sleep advice and useful apps threads belong on here, as well as that thread a while back about scientific ways to get over a breakup.
Link to the sleep advice: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mvf/a_very_long_list_of_sleep_maintenance_suggestions/
Do we have a basic financial literacy category? It’s perhaps well known to most LW-ers but I know we get the occasional aspiring rationalist high school / early college student and this stuff really isn’t taught in school.
There is http://lesswrong.com/lw/la6/financial_effectiveness_repository/
Repository repository thread, for reference. edit: I can’t read
Actually the first link in the post.
Could one say that the human brain works best if it is slightly optimistically biased, just enough to have benefits of the neuromodulation accompanied with positive thinking, but not so much that false expectations have a significant potential to severely disappoint you? Are there some recommended sequences/articles/papers on this matter?
Optimisim/Pessimism is an one-dimenional way of looking at it. I don’t think it’s helpful. If you focus a lot on doing gratitude excercises you are doing positive thinking but that doesn’t create false expectations.
Good point. Once again I’ve overlooked the third alternative. :)
Parenting advice: The applicable threads aren’t short on useful advice, but it’s not really on parenting—more philosophical. Quite dissapointing. The notable exception, and I don’t apologise to his naive contemporaries is Gunnar’s work.
Believe it or not, The UN ranks parenting styles, allegedly, and the Triple P program tops the list.
It’s useful for special needs parenting and regular parenting and for the rare and special breed that are parenting researchers.
One only has to google ‘evidence based parenting’ and see the Blogspot blog topping the list as a starter indication of the paucity of actual academic parenting research, in spite of the apparent lucrativity of entering the field. I suspect many young researchers or grad students specialise in an area too early, and do not get serious around relations young when many are starting our research, to consider the importance of parenting research.
All LessWronger’s thoughts on these matters appreciated.
Life advice..?
Future is uncertain, eat dessert first.
:-P
Dessert is tasty even when you’re already full, so if you’re going to eat some eat it first to avoid obesity. This might not work if you have a strong habit of clearing your plate even if you don’t need more food.
Related life advice: Get smaller plates, you’ll eat less.
The law of marginal utility satisfaction says no. But it’s still true that you need to watch how much you eat.