The mental allergy to mechanical views on psychology

 Ego depletion, moment-to-moment happiness, sleep food, and exercise to improve our mental states. 

The common theme for all those is a technical/mechanical feeling analysis.
This type of analysis does not sit well with many. 

Ego Depletion has been criticized from various fronts. Theoretical issues, argued inability to replicate, and so on. 

But I am asking. Is it all about rational critique? Or is there a deeper motif here. 

Allergy to a mechanical view I suspect is central to the venom hurled towards the theory. 

Regardless of the substance of the criticisms, this deeper dislike to the mechanical view looms large over many of the critiques. Sometimes, it is said explicitly, even. 


Moment to moment happiness. What Daniel Kahneman calls "objective happiness". This is the experience of now over time. count the experiences of every moment over one's day and here is your "experienced happiness". 

Again, people simply do not like the theory. Which is why you do not hear much about it. Even though happiness researchers agree that this is an important facet and perspective about happiness. 


Here is another example of a mechanical analysis. 
Should one "solve" his feelings about past events?
And why?

a mechanical view is "you will end up recalling those events, so rather have them solved"
Note that nothing here is about "having your story solved" and "getting over it"

Rather, a mechanical calculation that you will end up encountering those thoughts by the natural flow of events in the future. So you are better off having those solved, rather than unsolved, which will cause fresh agony every new time you happened to memorize the events. (Meanings of Life book by Roy Baumeister)

At times, mechanical perspectives are true, or useful, or both. 

But I think humans are naturally not inclined to see things with those glasses. Moreover, I think humans are actively reluctant to accept those explanations, even when they are true and do have good evidence. 

This tendency is also influencing academics. Even when the thought process is supposed to be objective and facts-based, the natural human weaknesses are too strong to counter

Language learning tools

Another post will explain why language is so difficult, and add some ideas to help with it. 

1. Glossika.com  
This website is the greatest learning tool I have seen so far. 
It gives you sentences in your mother tongue and in you learned language. Text, audio, and IPA text, which will show you the very precise pronunciation of your learned words in any language, which incorporates all nuances of any new language, without relying you you fully learning the peculiarities the language from the get go. 

The value is that you learn sentences rather than dry boring grammar / vocabulary. And this is more intuitive too, and easier to remember. 

Additionally, it uses spaced repetition, meaning it will schedule for you repetitions of the sentences you studied in an order to help recall without being too repetitive. 

Always go through all the review sentences, I advice. 

Also, I recommend using the "listening only" - bottom of the screen while studying. 

The options allow you to change the speed. In which I prefer to use 125% (fast) for my source language, and 75% for my new language. 


2. Anki 
The anki app helps remembering vocabulary. 
In the anki website they do have multiple "decks" (packages) for studying most languages. Go find your most appropriate one. 

The beauty of Anki is that after each word, you give feedback as to how well you feel familiar with it. So it will repeat those words that feel new, and ignore the "easy" marked words fast. 

Choose your decks wisely, and invest time in researching the decks. 

The options also allow you to change the number of new words per day. But too many might not be a good idea in my experience.

TIP: you'll eventually get tired of Anki. however, you can easily perserve what you've already learned via anki with 5% of the effort. really. you just set "new cards" to 0 in settings. 

within a week or two, you'll only have to review very few cards per day. to preserve those words you've already memorized. 

in principle, you can do the refreshing of many languages already studied very fast if you don't add new words. 

3. Clozemaster.com
This website gives you sentences to complete and their translation. 
Using sentences, it has the charm of Glossika. And it gives you audio to sharpen your listening. 
Its multiple options include the option to say the sentence and see if google can understand you. 
Can be used free. But paying $6 / month for the pro version is worth it if you wish to not be limited in the daily usage. 


4. languagelearningwithnetflix.com

NetFlix subtitles in two languages at once. 
This is a fun way to improve your language while watching movies. 
It will show the subtitles in both your languages at once on the screen. 
The "Auto-Pause" option will stop the movie on each line in the subtitles, so you can study the lines fully and move on with a click on the keyboard. 


5. Right-Click translate in chrome
This chrome extension lets you right click a word and get it translated in a new google translate window. 
There is an option to have each new word opened in a new tab, or overriding the earlier one. 
Using the new tab for each word option will let you have those multiple words still open, if you wish to review them later. 


6. Graded readers

Those text are similar to what young children use in earlier years in school. 
Those use simpler grammar, and intentionally simple vocabulary. 
Just google "graded readers" + language you learn, and dig into the various links and forums. 
Some of those text are absolutely great. 


7. Spotify lyrics

If you are ok in a language, listening to songs while reading the lyrics carefully can be a boon. 
I am going through the lyrics word by word and looking them up on the dictionary. 
If you go and sing some of those songs to natives, it can be quite hilarious. Great fun

PS. Three ways to find songs here are:
Top charts of the country (inside spotify: search -> charts -> country name+top 50 / viral 50)
country name + music (under search)
Use the Shazam when outside and hearing a song you like. It can also show synchronized lyrics, or open in spotify for you. 

8. On click one-word translator apps etc
Having at one click a translation without having to move apps and re-type the word, is a huge advantage for studying. 
Android:
Quick Dictionary. Some settings to get it going. and then right click, quick look. 
WordReference. I found it good for french. Has various languages / options. 

Google Chrome
Dictionary by Google
Right-click translate. Uses Google. settings allow having a new tab for each new word. and various languages. 
Google the word with "define" and you will get the dictionary definition. You can use this extension to have this option on the right click menu once a word is selected Context Menu Search

iOS (Ipad Iphone)
right click a word and click "define" / "Lookup" and it will show the dectionary entry of it. 
You can change the dictionary to get your desired language added

Kindle.

kindle reader has a build in dictionary feature.

you touch a word and wait, and the dictionary definition of it will pop up.

There are kindle dictionaries on amazon kindle store for most language. 

buy those, and add them as system dictionaries in the kindle settings 

See also next tip 9. 

9. Never ever translate sentences. 

You want to learn a language. Not to walk on google translate crutches. 

Using google translate for sentences, webpages etc gives you zero language learning. 

You want to look up single words, and slowly figuring out what is being said. This teaches you the language. 

As irritating this is. I strongly recommend avoiding full sentences translation.

AFTER you have gone word by word, and somewhat figured out a sentence, you might use the full sentence translation as a verification. But not before....

Never translate sentences. You want to learn the language, not have Google translate for you!


10. For English pronunciation/accent. 
Elsa Speak

I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to have a good English accent. Rather than a difficult-to-listen-to "non-native" pronunciation. 

You might be understood. But it takes more effort for the person you talk to. This extra brain work, be it 10% of 30% of his brain, harms the conversation. Not only does it take away from the mental space needed to talk with you. It also demotivates him. People will get tired of talking to you faster. And not because you are boring or anything. But because it is more difficult. And less information is transmitted. 

Elsa Speak is an amazing app
It listens to you speak English, learns all your pronunciation issues, and gives you very detailed exercises, and feedback on each word and sound. 

I am using it myself. Even though my current English pronunciation is decent. I want to get to 100% rather than the current quite good but not yet fully there.

 

11.  three pronunciation tricks.

11.1. separate theory and practice. 

IPA etc  remember

11.2. read aloud intentionally.

we might already know 75-90% of the correct pronunciation, but it's just not automatic and we lazy our way into very bad pronunciation.

taking a book and slowly reading aloud one page, while paying attention to each word correct pronunciation can sharpen and improve primordial massively. no teacher needed.

11.3. Google transcribing (talk to Google keyboard, or to the Google app), and see if he gets you correctly.

talk again and again until Google understand you. 

great truck to improve your pronunciation without a teacher.

PS. a memory maintenance tip

if you use spaced repetition tools (anki,glossika), you'll eventually get tired of learning new items, or your item list will end.

either way, you can maintain your memories over time by not leaving new items and just repeating the old ones this familiar with. 

This takes nearly no time. in Anki, you might have to spend 30 seconds/day to maintain a 3000 word list. this is super easy.

you can change the anki settings to not show new cards, and within 1-2 weeks your daily card number will be very low. 

Student debt forgiveness. The interesting argument for why it "feels right"

Recently, many are talking about forgiving student debt. 

Countering are policy analysts and economists raising various policy and fairness arguments against it (see Justin Wolfers at Freakonomics, among many others). 

So, is the case for student debt forgiveness senseless?

I will argue that it has a deep logic to it. Even if one does not ultimately agree to the proposed policy. 

The education system, argues Bryan Caplan, is mostly about signaling. 

You prove to employers that you are smart, hard-working, and docile.

To get those papers, a student spends years and a fortune. And might leave with $100,000 in debt.

Going to the job market, one isn't intuitively seeing that his education has neither helped his current job - it mostly does not at all. Not is it visible how it improves one's job prospects. 

That CVs of those without a degree are not looked at is true and known. But this is not that visible to be felt and experienced as worthwhile enough. 


The full feeling of unfairness is a summary of the multiple factors:
1. The education itself is very wasteful. Not adding much value. 
2. The cost is extreme. And it is made expensive by various idiotic and irrational aspects of "the education system"
3. The effects on employment are random. Not all are benefitting. Especially the drop outs. 
4. Most effects are not visible enough to feel justified.  


Thus, the policy analysts might be right. But those two groups are talking at cross purposes. 

Students straddled with debt, feeling to have been dealt an utter injustice, have a point to feel that forgiving this debt is justice done

. 
The policy analysts are doing a completely different analysis. About fairness in total in society, and about the consequences of forgiveness, economically and for future students.

I hope I helped both camps understand each other slightly better.

The idea market deficiencies.

1. Mixing up certifications (degrees that people get to help getting a job) and research / education. One might even split research and education. But certification/signaling is the big problem for me. 

2. There is no market nor collaboration system for small ideas, or partial ideas. 

As an academic, you either publish a paper or not. So small but very good ideas of good value do not have a good vehicle. Both to get accumulated, found by others and recombined. And to get credit / value from (incentive)

3. No incentive and no funding for infrastructure / quality / connections of data. 

The lack of linking between papers to their refutations is partly because nobody has done it, because no institution invests in infrastructure. 

This complaint is also that showing that a paper is flawed isn't getting rewarded, or not even getting published!. (@jamesheathers

 and @sTeamTraen have elaborated on this a few times)

Skeptics finding faults in the literature should be richly rewarded. 

But no one pays for those things for whatever reason.... 

PS. Thought triggered by this MarginalRevolution post 

Why can't we optimize our life like iPhone is optimized?

The intuitive wonderment of "why can't we optimize life" can be demonstrated by comparing own life to an iPhone.

Look at the unbelievable optimization seen in your recent smartphone. It is optimization upon optimization. All laid to utter perception almost.

Your life? maybe you know whether 1 vs 2 spoons of sugar is best (fun fact. nobody does 1.3 spoons, even though this will be taste optimal for some certainly!)

The answers to this wonder are a good start for considering the difficulties of life optimization.

1) its machinery. Humans a complicated, unstable, and hard to pin down. There is no "0.46% of boron-oxide" type consistency and simplicity.

2) Economics of scale.
You can invest $10 billion in the machinery of producing CPUs. But this one system will produce millions of units.

In humans, each one might need its own system. No economics of scale.

3) The agency problem.

In order for someone to create an optimization for you, he needs to earn money from it.
In phones its simple. Apple creates them, and gets paid if they are good enough.

Is anyone going to get paid $10,000 to make you healthier?

Of course, one can make pennies by selling a book, or ads on her diet site.
But the money earned is minuscule in relation to to value created.

This means that nobody is going to invest $2,000 to reliably make you healthier.
Even if the value of making you healthier is $100,000, nobody is going to get paid serious money to make it happen.

Apple makes billions to make phones.
Get you to be healthy?

maybe one can get some google ads cents. 

Optimization and its dicontents

Optimization here means colloquially.

"I want to optimize my life" etc.

Why is it so difficult? (either to optimize life or any other real life targets)

First, lets note the implied definition of this elusive yet tempting optimization

Its is always beyond the obvious. Nobody goes "I have not slept, let me optimize my sleep and go to bed". This is technically an optimization. But it is too obvious, and a given to be included.

We will normally optimize our lives, cooking, etc without resorting to explicit optimization talk.

Optimization talks about the less obvious, usually ignored, yet still plausibly achievable plans.

Thus, optimization will normally be somewhat marginal. Not marginal really, but veering towards the margin in terms of added value.


Difficulty and not being obvious is another feature of so-called optimization. The reason is as above. Adding more salt to a dish might be marginal in value, but is so easy to do that it sin;t included.


Those definitions in themselves explain some mysteries about optimization. Why it is not always done. They also lay the ground to deeper study optimization, how it might work, and why so often it either is not initiated, and why it sometimes actually fail.