I looked up my resolutions from last year, and suffice to say I've failed at almost all of them, albeit for a variety of different reasons. I succeeded in getting allowed back into grad school but failed at getting rid of my work backlog or keeping a sensible work schedule. I've mostly succeeded at not eating terrible food ALL the time, but not ( Read more... )

So I've recently fallen into the timesink that is Effulgence. The premise more-or-less being: take ultra-rational Bella from Alicorn's Luminosity/Radiance universe, and put versions of her in various fanfiction universes. Oh and it's a co-writing thing between two authors. It's well-written (otherwise I wouldn't be reading it, obviously), but after ( Read more... )

(Long time, no post, etc. Maybe one of these days I'll go into detail about what I've been up for the last semester or so. Also, the key insight that led to this post is due to my friend N ( Read more... )

So there's this idea, backed up by fairly solid studies, that a very large part of what most people think is 'talent' or 'genius' or whatever your preferred term for innate skill is, is actually just the result of a very long time spent practicing those skills. Around ten thousand hours or so, to be more specific - that's the amount of time most ( Read more... )

I have recently realised that i I ever want to be a Serious Intellectual (or even just do things that are cool but challenging, like programming pet projects), I'll need to cut back on my fantasy/sci fi reading  and game-playing hobbies. The reason? My 'thing', that dictates what I find the most interesting, is basically problem-solving. Present me ( Read more... )

The other day I had my friend over, who also happens to be the GM for our roleplaying group. While he was over we discussed various people and their behaviours, and why it was they behaved that way. Noting that most of the people in our social groups are quite intelligent and rational (more T than F, in Type-speak), there isn't much space for ( Read more... )

For the last two or three months I've been part of a regular roleplaying group, my first real one, with the GamesMaster one of my friends and the other players some of his friends who I've now gotten to know (Unrelated note: I've been part of roleplaying groups in the past but each time they haven't lasted past one or two sessions. Turns out it's ( Read more... )

How does one break conditioning? Or at least replace it with some more positive conditioning ( Read more... )