Project Euler is a start on your last request.
freyley
Karma: 331
One difficulty with the least convenient possible world is where that least convenience is a significant change in the makeup of the human brain. For example, I don’t trust myself to make a decision about killing a traveler with sufficient moral abstraction from the day-to-day concerns of being a human. I don’t trust what I would become if I did kill a human. Or, if that’s insufficient, fill in a lack of trust in the decisionmaking in general for the moment. (Another example would be the ability to trust Omega in his responses)
Because once that’s a significant issue in the subject , then the least convenient possible world you’re asking me to imagine doesn’t include me—it includes some variant of me whose reactions I can predict, but not really access. Porting them back to me is also nontrivial.
It is an interesting thought experiment, though.
And in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, no one trusts the Aes Sedai, because after they vow to always tell the truth, they learn how to twist their words to get what they want anyway.
Someone who would tell the truth in a way that they knew would not convey the truth would not hold my trust.
Children need pretend. Don’t squash their play. That’s not to say that you should tell them things that are false. They’ll generate plenty of fantasy on their own.
This was exactly my thought, and I now wonder whether it’s possible to determine via experiment. So how do you give the information to the subjects but not have them think that the researchers know it.
A confederate who’s a subject and just happens to gossip about the thing is one way—if the researchers proceed to deny it, you might be able to split them into groups based on a low status confederate versus a high-status confederate, and a vehement denial vs a “that study hasn’t been verified” vs a “that was an urban legend.”
Or providing a status signal that it’s better to have a “bad” heart—having a high status researcher who says “sure, we may live less long, but there are all sorts of other benefits they’re not telling us about”
It’s really hard to separate the information from the humans passing on the information.
reversed stupidity
followed by
dissolving the question and mind-projection fallacy.
Very few tricks have worked for me for the long term. Exercise helps, as does eating well. Most tricks I’ve tried, including scheduling tasks, taking days off, changes of location and taskcard systems, have only given me the benefit of any change—a few days of productivity, followed by return of akrasia.