News and the delusion of relevance

I told a friend I am not following the news.

the moron says I am "detached from reality"
Now almost all news are of zero relevance to my life. Reading the news is living in a fantasy world, where irelevant things take center stage.

besides news makes me unhappy, and stupid. I am not doing stupid things no matter what "reality" and other nonsense are invoked to justify it.

I suspect that reading the news is a weakness for most. The rest is justifications 

Why fine tuninng works. And why nonody gets it right

Fine tuning is what is usually played in ICU (intensive care). You manipulate every bodily parameter in every possible way. And it works wonders in critical cases.

Common sense suggests, that without any new theoretical advance, similar forms of fine tuning should work. But they need caful parametrization, adherence and lots of experimentation and rigorously studying the data all along.

In a less sophisticated way, but i guess successful case, i think this lady managed to treat various maladies with endless play of supplements. She seems to check all the time the effects, and she did it for twelve years. So lots of data, lots of fine tuning.

Every success case here cannot be generalized.
This is probably why most grand scale supplement studies failed to show effects, while for people with specific conditions we have a lot of successful randomly controlled studies. these games are not generalizable. (beside the need for combinations etc.)


But the public is blind. polarized poinions prevail.
either one believes in complementary medicine and (to whatever level) scorns rigor. placebo effects never occur. etc. 

Or, he is a technical believer in institutional experiments. Anything that is not completely done under the umbrela of the full protocol is irelevant. 
An example to this blindness is the selenium experiment for cancer prevention (SELECT). it found no effect. 
Supporters of selenium claimed that selenium helps to those with baseline deficiet in selenium. 

makes sense. no? the author of the selenium trial has not even bothered to check the data for this. He has all the data. and the idea that selenium works for those with baseline deficiet is the most expected possibility (its a priori reasonableness is even higher than that of flat supplementation works!).
But he only said like "the trial showed negative results" and refused to carry even the simple test for which he had ALL the data on hand! dismissing it as secondary analysis


We need rigorous thinking even when outside the formal experimental design!

And fine tuning seems a very very lucrative route that is highly ignored, but which can ameliorate many ails when done correctly

Nested vs. Unnested thinking

Nested thoughts assumes stage one enforces the possibilities on stage two. It brings illogical behavior. I generally assume that with sleeping more i will have more energy. But when i slept little, assuming that game is over is depressive, and may not be smart. It is locking oneself into the assumptions of stage one. The delressive..... The use now. First, the assumptions of stage one use the average expected value of the stage one plan. I must sleep enough, because on average my theory is that I am functioning better with enough sleep. Once i have not slept, we are now, where i need to see if now i am exhausted, not if i should have been tired. Nested thinking locks you in the theoretical generalized thinking of stage one. Closed mindedness. Nested thinking does not accept new possibilities. Now, even if i Am tired, i may find comoletely new plans. Nested and unnested thinking are two different models to assess the world. Both have realistic aspects. Somehow, nested thinking is delressive. And i suspect is how more depressed people think. I like more unnested thinking. But i hope i am not overdoing it with stupid openmindedness. But the reason i am thinking that way, is because i am very irrational, and was always much better with getting out of trouble than in not entering it. I also found outting a line osuk costs a major aspect of rationality. Hence nested thinking is not good for me. More to the point i hate it. I would leave the meitculous utilitarian calculation of which way is more "rational" to those that can bear self forcing via rationality.

Not worth doing

Worth but not worth doing There are many things that are really worth doing. But they are not worth doing. When doing refers to the action of doing, rather than having them done without the effort. It is better to be on time. But it may not be worth doing. If doing entails obsessing for two hours to make sure you come on time (+ the later pain and discomfort when not arriving on time) it is not worth even to have it on your list.  So it is usually really best to be on time, but when accounting for the cost of doing it, it is not worth it. (and accounting to later pain when late, not even worth having it on your list...) Small improvements usually are the same. Lofe can be wastly better if we introduce nedless small improvements. I mean it. Because a million small improvements accumulate to even a completely different life. But usually the small things a not worth the effort and place in mind of *doing* them. Here comes the knowledge part. When people do not do something, they usually make themselves beleiving it is worthless. Just to be able not to do it (there is a natural bias that if something has value we must do it, so it is easier to avoid something by having a full belif it is useless.). The second reason is to feel comfrotable about not doing it. We fool ourselves that it is totally worthless in order to feel good. A wish person undstands that if its not worth doing it is not worth to do @even@ if it has some value. No pain. Because it makes no sense to do.  And.... No stupidity. You still acknowledge its value. Sometimes, the knowledge of this small value is useful. 

The autodidact advantage. 2 : Much more aspects

The weighting problem. In reality, the distribution of the importance of different parts of knowledge, is highly skewed. Some ideas are immensly more  relevant than others. I suspect that formal training makes you treat all knowledge with the same importance (got to pass exams;))

Very exciting to think freshly and at your own interest and pace.

Since everyone thinks that formal education is where the wisdom is, there is much more place to invent and learn in the less trodden way. It is like digging gold in a new continent. You do not dig gold in newyork city center.

Since most formal training is not teaching you much, it is a huge waste that can be utilized to much more effective study.

If you want a hundred papers looking for minor variances of known phenomena maybe you are better off with those people who are "in the trade". If you prefer a single breakthrough, you may be better off trying to listen to foreigners

Being AD, you can concentrate on the areas where you have the most advantage. i.e. you can optimize your learning inline with your personal strengths. (remember the 20/80 adage "You win by entering the races where you have an advantage, not by striving to improve your performance in 'the race'" – The 20/80 principle P.142).
You may also focus your learning toward your goals.


The mistake of selection. Some notice that people with degrees are sharoer on average. Yet the degree is probably not the cause. Smarter people have higher chance to enroll and finish formal studies. 
Most of the effect of formal degrees is to signal who is capable. Possibly the study itself is not adding (there is no easy data on how much of  degrees effect to salarie is signaling  and selection, but it is very plausible)


Looks like learning and reading without the purpose of passing exams and writing a paper may be much more optimal. Because you can do shortcuts, and once you get the point you are done.


AD is a selection toward true interest in the topic, and a real interest may increase truth seeking and investment is whatever needed to know better. But formal learning is usually oriented toward a goal, and when your goal is to accomplish your PhD, truth and intellectual curiosity is not the highest value.


{copied}"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world," wrote George Bernand Shaw. "The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." 
we need sutodidacts that are not in the habit of accomodating themselves to the system

The autodidact advantage. The beginning......

Ultimately Being autodidact is about creativity. The difference between predictable ways of doing knowledge and autonomously chosen wyas, is what differs institutionally taught thinkers and self learned. Creativity and self created order is a double edged quality. But only a moron will say that predefined order is always better.

Autodidact is about enjoying learning and thinking. When you are free, you tend to learn with joy. In enjoyable ways. You choose the most interesting subjects and so on. 
Ultimately, the more you enjoy the process the more productive you are. And more creative ( good mood breds ceativity, research shows)

Self study has more relevance. You have no system to force you, so you gravitate towards what is naturally most interesting. Which is usually the more relevant questions


More practically oriented. 


Better odds for interesting findings. Much of academ is about doing thing is a quite known way. Hence, many people act similarly and may get incrementally better results, but not much unexpected breakthrough. Autodidacts have better chnaces to find really new things (steve jobs was thinking differently)


No domain insulation. Much insights come from combining different fields. Autodidacts are less field secluded.



Do not listen to phds about this
The self interest of the phds is against autodidacts. Every critic of this that has a phd, is suspect. As he has a strong self interest to exalt the value of his institutional (and overvalued) "knowledge"

Why voting is rational

Assume the value of difference between two candidates is half a trillion dollar (reasonable with crises, iraq etc.).

With twenty or less million votes being critical, the probability of a. Sngle vote changing who is president is 1/20,000,000. 

The expected value of a single vote is the soceity value ($500,000,000,000) times teh probability of the vote being pivotal. * 1/20,000,000

==== $25,000 value of a single vote. 

This is the value for soceity.

Thus, if voters care about their soceity as a whole, they are very reasonable in spending one. Hour to vote and giving. The public $25,000 in value.