Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
Gates' Law: Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or, ...
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learning
Stability vs Acceleration
Written: September 30, 2018 | Released: August 13, 2021
I think one of the big choices to be made in life (once basic needs are well met) is whether to try to optimize more for a life of stability or for a life of acceleration. There is a tension between these two types of lives because they imply making different decisions in many realms.
From what I can tell, the significant majority of people on this planet (even among those who have their basic needs already well met) seek a life that...
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Redesigning High School from Scratch
If you were redesigning high school education from scratch, what material would you include in the curriculum (assuming it's a well funded high school), that is generally not taught in high schools today?
Some classes that I might want to include are:
Thrive: staying happy and healthy.
This could include:
Cognitive-behavioral therapy skills training (to help ward off depression and anxiety)Emotional control strategies from dialectical behavioral therapyBehavioral activati...
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How to learn from mistakes
Suppose that you'd like to make fewer mistakes. How do you go about actually learning from the ones you've already made, rather than repeating them?
The first step is to admit to yourself that you've made a mistake. Trivial errors, like accidentally putting the container of orange juice in the freezer, are easy enough to come to terms with. But for more serious matters, or matters that involve pride or shame, our minds often recoils at the pain caused by acknowledging we've screwed up. We make ...
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Novel Ways of Carving Up Knowledge
Normally we divide up the elements of knowledge into the traditional categories of history, literature, math, physics, chemistry, psychology, fine arts, and so forth. We are so used to these divisions that it may not even occur to us that knowledge can be split in plenty of other ways. But imagine, for instance, a school that offered the following subjects:
Making Observations
Formulating Theories
Making Predictions
Testing Predictions
Developing Happiness
Making Observations coul...
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