BC SCIENCE
Saved by @jacobhtml

THREAD
The world is littered with hacks and quick fixes.

Magic routines, butter in our coffee, special supplements, exotic foods. All promising to transform our lives.

Nearly all of it is BS. Here are 12 science-backed "hacks" that actually work.

 Read a Book.

An expert in their field has taken their vast knowledge and distilled it to what's most important. Writing forces you to make difficult decisions on what's important and what's not. Writing demands clarity. You're getting an expert's lifetime of work for $15.
Talk to people who know more.

The best way to "hack" knowledge? Have a conversation with those who are informed. They've done the hard part of figuring out of sorting through the mess of information AND making sense of it. Having a conversation brings clarity for application.
Show up, no matter what.

Day after day. Sit down to write. Get out to exercise. Whatever the task you're trying to master, just keep showing up.

If you show up enough, you'll get better.
Sleep.

Just getting your 8+ hours has enormous benefits from the psychological to physical. Sleep is when your body restores & grows with its highest output of growth hormones, & when your mind processes and coalesces information. Translating knowledge from superficial to deep
Move. Often easy. Occasionally with ferocious intensity.

Get out and move. Most should be easy to moderate so you can keep coming back day after day. Some should be moderate/hard. And very occasionally you should "go see god" to remind yourself what going to the well is like.
Find Nature.

Being outside can increase creativity, mood, and well-being. Just being near nature, according to one study, was equivalent health-wise to being 7 years younger. Even just looking at pictures of nature can do the trick, improving mood and performance.
Form Lasting Relationships.

One of our fundamental needs as a person is to belong. If we satisfy this need, our health and motivation improve We're more likely to persist, and tackle difficult challenges.
One study found that being with a friend or loved one made challenging tasks appear to be a bit more manageable. Another found that being around a loved one, decreased our stress response to frightening things.

Feeling like we belong allows us to feel secure in who we are.
Surround Yourself Wisely

Moods and behaviors are contagious. Research from the Framingham study found that sadness and happiness rippled through the town. Living nearby a friend who becomes happy increases your probability of becoming happy by 25%
Research has found that sitting close to a high performer improved performance by 15%.

Sitting close to a low performer decreased performance by 30%.

Surround yourself with people who lift you up. https://t.co/KTms7fVddp
Challenge Yourself Ever So Slightly

When life is too easy, we get bored and unmotivated. When we don't have a shot at winning, our motivation wanes and we give up.

Find challenges that are in the sweet spot of just beyond your current capabilities. A slight stretch.
For most, don't diet.

Find something that is sustainable. Dieting is akin to going all-in on the latest exercise fad, lasting for 3 weeks and giving up exercising for 6 months…It's much better to find something that is sustainable for you.
What you find sustainable will be different from me and friends and family. That's fine. Eat real foods and limit heavily processed ones. Your diet isn't your religion or who you are.
Behave like a Kindergartner...(on some things!)

Follow your interests. Go deep when something catches your eye. But don't be afraid to ditch it and move on to the next thing if it no longer meets your needs. Don't tie your identity too closely to what you do. Explore the world.
Have a purpose that's greater than yourself.

A self-transcending purpose allows us to persist a bit longer, perform a bit better. In physical pursuits, our brain loosens the reigns allowing us to dig a bit deeper.
In life, according to a Harvard study, those who had meaning and purpose in their life lived longer and healthier lives. https://t.co/NWSXGyOziZ
None of these things are real "hacks." In fact, they are all pretty boring and straightforward.

Move. Sleep. Belong.

But that's the point. We spend so much time looking for shortcuts when the boring stuff right in front of us has a much bigger effect.

Choose the boring stuff!
Most of us need to focus on the 99%, not the 1%.

We are seeking the silver bullet, when the reality is we need to zoom back out and nail the basics before we even consider the final 1 percent.
If you enjoyed this thread, I tweet threads about the science of performance 2x per week, so follow along!

If you like deep dives on topics, consider checking out my free weekly newsletter.

Thanks for taking the time to read my work! https://t.co/Esomf74PKg

More from Science

Santa Fe Institute
Santa Fe Institute
@sfiscience
"You don't see radio changing gradually and suddenly become radar. #Darwin's theory doesn't work for #technology, and we have to make a new observation."

- W Brian Arthur at SFI today

#evolution #innovation #invention


"Novel technologies are constructed from existing technologies. These offer themselves as components for the construction of further technologies."

- W Brian Arthur at SFI today

#evolution #innovation #invention #technology #engineering #design


Unlike the two-parent #inheritance typical to (but not ubiquitous among) #complex organisms, #technology inherits features from n parents - a "vast ancestral #network" more like horizontal gene transfer networks in #bacteria.

W Brian Arthur on sumulating #invention on a chip:


Does #Archaeology support the Theory of the #AdjacentPossible - that #innovation is combinatorial, persistent, cumulative?

In short, yes. SFI's Tim Kohler on the #Paleolithic data of #technology #evolution & the #prehistory of the infamous "hockeystick" curve:

😉 @SAPIENS_org


#Economist Roger Koppl of @SyracuseU presents a model for the #AdjacentPossible at SFI.

Output = "a combinatorial explosion" or #singularity, albeit one that arguably occurred millions of years ago, or in the distant future (since the model doesn't specify t = 0):
SCIENCE
Robbie Andrew
Robbie Andrew
@robbie_andrew
"NO LONGER BEST IN THE WORLD"
UNEP's new Human Development Index includes a new (separate) index: Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI). News in Norway is that its position drops from #1 to #16 because of this, while Ireland rises from #2 to #1.
Why?

https://t.co/aVraIEzRfh


Check out Norway's 'Domestic Material Consumption'. Fossil fuels are no different here to Ireland's. What's different is this huge 'non-metallic minerals' category.
(Note also the jump in 1998, suggesting data problems.)
https://t.co/5QvzONbqmN


In Norway's case, it looks like the apparent consumption equation (production+imports-exports) for non-metal minerals is dominated by production: extraction of material in Norway.
https://t.co/5QvzONbqmN


And here we see that this production of non-metallic minerals is sand, gravel and crushed rock for construction. So it's about Norway's geology.
https://t.co/y6rqWmFVWc


Norway drops 15 places on the PHDI list not because of its CO₂ emissions (fairly high at 41st highest in the world per capita), but because of its geology, because it shifts a lot of rock whenever it builds anything.
SCIENCE
Advertisement
Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner
@LeaKissner
Next up at #enigma2021, Sanghyun Hong will be speaking about "A SOUND MIND IN A VULNERABLE BODY: PRACTICAL HARDWARE ATTACKS ON DEEP LEARNING"

(Hint: speaker is on the

In recent years ML models have worked from research labs to production, which makes ML security important. Adversarial ML research studies how to mess with ML

For example by messing with the training data (c.f. Tay which became super-racist super-fast) or by foiling ML models by changing inputs in ways humans can't see.


Prior work considers ML models in a standalone, mathematical way
* looks at the robustness in an isolated manner
* doesn't look at the whole ecosystem and how the model is used -- ML models are running in real hardware with real software which has real vulns!


This talk focuses on hardware-level vulnerabilities. This is particularly interesting because these can break cryptographic guarantees (because those are outside of their threat models)
e.g. fault injection attacks, side-channel attacks
SCIENCE
Medical Nemesis
Medical Nemesis
@Medical_Nemesis
All modern research questions frame your mindset and self-frame research paradigm. Broad thinking: how little of everything can a citizen survive on; how cheap can your upkeep be? /1


When an American patient lands in an Austrian hospital for a back problem, a doctor tells him to perform a set of exercises.

- How many?
- Do you have anything else to do? /2

This interchange illustrates two mindsets colliding at bedside. How little can I get away with vs there is no limit to effort when it comes to your wellness. /3

When you were robbed of movement, somebody started selling you exercise. To understand that digging a ditch, to build a house, or to carry a child around, or waking to your grandparents for an hour is not the same as jogging on a treadmill... will reveal what research hides.
/4

When I talk about doing a purposeful activity outdoors, I look at complexity of movement, purpose, meaning, sun, and air, even an opportunity to meet a neighbor... that is now reduced to a calcium pill, vitamin D, an antidepressant, an osteoporosis shot, and an oxygen tank. /5
SCIENCE
Sean McClure
Sean McClure
@sean_a_mcclure
@engexplain @nntaleb 1/10
Science is assumed to be “evidence-based” but that term alone doesn’t mean much. What constitutes good evidence? How is evidence being used? Is it supporting or refuting a hypothesis? Was the hypothesis and experimental design predetermined or found ex post facto?

@nntaleb 2/10
The reality is you can find “evidence” for almost any narrative. Limit the sample size, cherry-pick studies, etc. Systematic reviews, meta analyses, and randomized controlled trials are all susceptible to selective interpretation/narrative fallacy.

@nntaleb 3/10
At the heart of the problem is the over-reliance on simplistic statistical techniques that do little more than quantify 2 things moving together.

@nntaleb 4/10
Take Pearson’s correlation, based on covariance. Variation can increase simultaneously across 2 variables for countless reasons, most of which are spurious. Yet this simple notion of “causality” undergirds much of scientific literature.

@nntaleb 5/10
Information-theoretic (entropy based) approaches on the other hand can assess *general* measures of dependence. Rather than some specialized (linear) view based on concurrent variation, entropy encompasses the amount of information contained in and between variables.
SCIENCE

You May Also Like

David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
POLITICS
Sam Rocha
Sam Rocha
@SamRochadotcom
THREAD

I get asked for writing tips a lot. Of all the ones I’ve given, here are a few of the ones that seem to hold true and remain somewhat universal or at least mostly unobjectionable:

#amwriting #writingtips

1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

2. If you don’t read you cannot write a lot or well. Sure, maybe you can read like a maniac for a decade and then read less after that, but without some large volume of intake, there will never be a meaningful output.

2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

3. All writing is writing if one decides to treat it that way. If one takes some degree of intentional will when sending emails, posting on social media and writing notes and marginalia, then all of that can count as meaningful daily writing.
ALL
Advertisement
TXgrlWatching\U0001f4bb\u2694\U0001f6e1
TXgrlWatching💻⚔🛡...
@VeritasTXgem
Thread A History lesson for the MOAB:
1. The United States of America is not and has never been a Democracy, we're a Federal Republic tied together by the capital Laws of the Constitution.

Everyone in the country is about to get a harsh lesson on what this really means...

2. In 1871, February 21: Congress Passes an Act to Provide a Government for the District of Columbia, also known as the Act of 1871.

With no constitutional authority to do so, Congress creates a separate form of
government for the District of Columbia.

3. A ten mile square parcel of land (see,
Acts of the Forty-first Congress,” Section 34, Session III, chapters 61 and

4. The act — passed when the country was weakened and financially depleted in
the aftermath of the Civil War — was a strategic move by foreign interests
(international bankers) who were intent upon gaining a stranglehold on the coffers and neck of America.

5. Congress cut a deal w/ the international bankers(Rothschilds of London) to incur a DEBT to said bankers. Because the bankers were not about to lend money to a floundering nation w/out serious stipulations, they devised a way to get their foot in the door of the United States.
HISTORYLESSON
katya adler
katya adler
@BBCkatyaadler
Again, at such a key moment in UK and at such high political levels, evidence of deep misunderstanding of EU: The PM is under pressure in some quarters to delay #Brexit vote to allow her first to “improve” deal in Brussels BUT EU is determined not to budge at this stage

2) All EU leaders watching tomorrow’s vote. Of course they want to avoid a no deal #Brexit BUT they feel the deal - so painfully negotiated between EU and UK - is too fresh to re-open. Clarifications, yes but fundamental renegotiations, no.

3) The EU’s international reputation as a tough deal-maker is at stake here too. If Brussels now suddenly “gives in” to U.K. on EU red lines (eg backstop) then that would weaken the EU’s reputation in future trade negotiations with other non EU countries

4) Also on backstop the EU is unlikely to cave in to favour a relationship with a leaving member state (UK) against the explicit wishes and ignoring the deep concerns of a continuing member: Ireland.

5) Both the EU and the PM signed up to a guarantee to protect the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. If either the U.K. or EU can leave the backstop unilaterally then this clearly is no longer a guarantee.
POLITICS
Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez
Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm
Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
ALL