One bad habit that I may have learned from fiction was making up split-second ideas, then getting attached to them. I used to be a hard international auxiliary language advocate because I had re-invented the idea in my free time, but discovered that it already exists. This is similar to the part of a story where the hero will think of a split-second genius idea to defeat the villain. Usually, this idea is always the one that works. I now think that translation technology and interpreters do a decent job for how available they are, and that activism work on that would be better spent on making translators available, among other things (I learn Esperanto for fun now).
Ari S
Karma: 30
From what I’ve seen, Sapiens has been widely criticized by scholars for not providing any new material and being made up of speculation. Examples for this are listed on Wikipedia’s page for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind#Scholarly_reception There’s also one example that explains how it gets the process of speciation wrong, which is something I have taken an undergraduate class on, and seems accurate to me: https://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/04/sapiens-page-5-crummy-one.html
I recently tried out two focus techniques, after journaling them down.:
Monoidealism (more specifically count to 10) +4/10
At specific times, like getting off the computer and getting out of bed, this was a really useful technique. The major weakness is that the thought to count to 10 has to appear to you while you are already in that flow state of sleeping, or social media, or whatever.
Gamification: +6/10
Using gamification (more specifically the website Habitica) was really helpful to me in being able to give me easy-to-visualize indicators of my success. I’d say it was a +8 this week, but it was not as helpful two other times when I tried it (with Habitica again, Guild of the ROSE skilltree, and Project Skilltree) which I would only give a +2/10. The reason behind this differential was that I had recently gotten in a habit of making a to-do list every week of all the assignments and other things I needed to do that week. So having that habit pile up on top of it was what I would guess, in hindsight, made me more responsive. It’s important to make sure that your gamification is connected to your most important life tasks, and not just extra self-improvement related tidbits. The boring stuff counts too! I would boost it up back to an 8 with this in mind, but I’m not exactly so sure of my judgement, so it could be a random thing.
These ones have stuck with me from before the journaling session, but they have helped me a lot.
Weekly To-Do List: +8/10
This is where I make a To-Do list of what I need to do for the week in a spreadsheet. This really helped me deal with some tough classes, and made my tasks much more manageable. The important part is remembering to delete items and add new ones at the beginning of every week. This one also makes gamification more effective, as I previously stated. That synergy, combined with helping me deal with some tough classes like Calculus II and Biology with Labs, is why I give it such high praise.
Collaboration with Others / Double-bodying: +8/10
This one has been a necessity for me. I use Focusmate as my go-to, since it is easier on demand, but study groups and other applications may work as well. This one isn’t new for me, as it has become a permanent part of my routine.
Upvoting because I think this shows people that AI can be autonomous. The main reasoning behind AI skepticism in my experience is that people don’t see AIs as autonomous agents, but rather as tools that merely chew up and spit out existing works into coherent sentences. This project would throw a brick into the “AI-is-a-tool” narrative. I am still concerned about this risks of advancing AI research, and would like to see some investigation into those risks.
I think democratic reforms in charities would work. The main issue with democracy is that you have uninformed people making the decisions with little or no knowledge of the subject matter, and they end up being manipulated by ideological zealots. However, if voters were limited to people within the charity, then it would be harder to manipulate those people because they have knowledge and expertise.
The Trump-Vance administration’s support base is suspicious of academia, and has been willing to defund scientific research of the grounds of it being too left-wing. There is a schism emerging between multiple factions of the right-wing, the right-wingers that are more tech-oriented and the ones that are nation/race-oriented (the H1B visa argument being an example). This could lead to a decrease in support for AI in the future.
Another possibility is that the United States could lose global relevance due to economic and social pressures from the outside world, and from organizational mismanagement and unrest from within. Then the AI industry could move to the UK/EU, turning the main players in AI to the UK/EU and China.
A rationality technique I am experimenting with now is using exercise to boost my energy during the middle of the day. It turns out energy boosts are more useful for me mid-day, because in the morning I am already energized. This is something that I usually do through exercise, but adding caffeine might be useful as well.
The most ambitious I could be would be spending twenty-five hours a week getting better at and doing activism for my internship.
This is more reverse planning fallacy than planning fallacy, but I thought it was important to mention. I remember most of my incidents of planning fallacy, like college admissions, and making a posterboard for my student group, but can’t tell you exactly how bad they were.
One of my worst errors was when I thought my morning routine, which includes brushing my hair, shaving, brushing my teeth, applying deodorant, and using topical acne treatment. I thought this took somewhere around 20 minutes, but it was only about 6 for each of the individual tasks involved.
I didn’t so much find any specific thing in particular, as I found a sensation of excitement that had been missing from my life. I thought about people I could talk to, games I could play, shows I could watch. I am excited to do this again next Hammertime repeat.
The graph doesn’t entirely convince me. For one thing, some people I know met in a way that was online dating, but it was on a Discord server and not through any sort of specific app. I’d like to consider this possibility because I am physically repulsed by dating apps, and I haven’t found any people that I’d find interesting on there.
This is my first article, so I’d appreciate any feedback!
This plan has been proposed before. It was called the Reber Plan, and was deemed infeasible by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after testing of a physical model of the Bay Area. https://boomcalifornia.org/2015/04/14/the-man-who-helped-save-san-francisco-bay-by-trying-to-destroy-it/
I think the main reason for the decrease of personal privacy is technological progress. There have been more back-steps (wiretapping, movement of communications onto the internet, ability for private messages to be screenshotted, normalization of video recording in public places) than forward steps (the Fourth Amendment in the United States, secrecy of voting). The main thing is that corporations and the government both want to enforce more surveillance policies now. I think it’s important to think about what that means and what consequences (if any) that would have on the general populace.