Cue: focus without the fear of being interrupted, or the pre-emptive anxiety associated with it. Just accept and surrender to any interruptions and try to do your best to not get jostled.

• what's the difference in arsenic content in organic vs non-organic crops?

Public Health
Air Pollution
The Revision of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directive-a case for consequential epidemiology

• epidemiologists actually have influence on politicians! their work changes standards in a significant way! inspiring example.
• big debate with farmers over methane emissions
• how does the EU help with compliance? what are case studies on non-compliance? how to reduce the burden on farmers?
• to read: EU Impact Assessment Report SWD/2022/545
  • what is the disease burden of air pollution?
• to read: EU Ambient Air Quality Directive

What To Do Next
Career thoughts:

• There's a need for decision makers who understand science and who are more empathetic to public and environmental health issues. And decision makers who can ask the right questions to scientists who can then do "user-driven research".
• There's a need for science communicators that can help scientists, who tend to be research focused, organize the public and put pressure on decision makers.

Productivity Porn
I like the metaphor of "cognitive load". I seem to be able to increase and decrease it at will when watching videos or reading. If the load is too light, I can spawn a parallel but interconnected thread in my mind. If it's too heavy, I kill a thread or offload something to my notes. This feels good and focuses me more. It also seems to organize the body.

I'm most curious if any addicts with neurological damage managed to recover healthy cognitive capacity. I'd trust whatever productivity course they're selling.

• Maybe: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

"Dopamine Loading" is the EASIEST way to get ADDICTED to studying

• basically, start with boring stuff, end the day with high dopamine activity
• taking high dopamine breaks throughout the day messes you up and destabilizes you. it's really hard to get back to work after
• he also links carbs to dopamine, eating a high carb meal and watching tv before bed for dopamine reasons.
• he's tuned his system to expect the nicest rewards after a long day of work, then going to sleep.
• ends his videos with "may god guide us on the right path"

It's clear I can't trust my mental impulses. I need to reason backwards from the contribution I want to make. If I want to contribute to ending the health and environmental crises, I'll need to do difficult rigorous work, which requires a certain tuning of mind.

What does task or context switching do to brain chemistry?

Tools For Thought
How I progressively deloaded taking notes

• i love this guys energy. reminds me of a canadian version of a bay area study asian
• supports my theory that geniuses don't take notes and so notes should be tools for communication and connection.
• geniuses learn things the first time
• non-geniuses have to use tricks like producing interest or analogies to get the information encoded in their brains, but eventually, their brain will just subconsciously do this. this was a very interesting take.
• training your brain to absorb more without offloading into notes makes you more genius-coded

The keyword "Loading" seems to be popular with the algorithm right now.

Science of Education

• He has another video on blooms taxonomy, and how each level in bloom's taxonomy is a skill that can be practiced and improved.
• He also makes an interesting point that these skills are innate in us. They all arise from child-like curiosity. But since we lose that, or school is just boring, we must consciously apply this skills to what we're learning.
• Remembering is the foundation of the pyramid, and creativity is above analyzing and evaluating.
• Cognitive efficiency is apparently the metric that some science of education people target.

Science of Education/Errorless Learning
Applied Behavioral Analysis: Errorless Learning

• An educational technique to reduce frustration in learning for kids with autism or behavioral issues
• Focuses on giving children the answer and having them repeat it (like drilling), emphasizing what is called explicit memory rather than implicit or unconscious memory.
• Also key is to not react when the wrong answer is giving. You just give them the right answer after repeating the question to yourself. It seems like an extremely non-violent way to teach.
• Another take is you want to go slow enough to not make any errors the first time. And that errors are the result of inappropriate speed or other conditions. They are not a natural part of the learning process.
• Those with memory impairment can actually crystalize incorrect responses, and so avoiding all errors is ideal for them.
• Apparently it is most popular and widespread in animal training.
• It can also be framed as always selecting tasks at the perfect level of difficult to induce flow states.
• Another key: if one learns without negative stimuli, one does not exhibit aggressive behaviors! We are motivated only by positivity, not the avoidance of pain. It sounds like the Garden of Eden.
• Errorless learning beats trial and error learning.
  • The pigeon experiments basically show that errorless learning is possible if the "wrong" choice is easy to avoid at first, and the ability to make a mistake is increased over time.
  • Basically, at every stage of learning, you want to assure success, and not overwhelm the learner to learn by trial and error.
  • This of course works for learning in a "right"-"wrong" setting, but perhaps not for research. It may also work for moral or behavioral instruction.
  • It's used for example, to rehabilitate Parkinson's patients.

Here are it's applications to Learning Math
And I absolutely believe this: "Seeing maths worked out in real time, with failures, and how a professional deals with failure, is essential for learning, and at the reasearch level. I remember thinking after an all day session with Michael Barratt in 1959: "Well, if Michael Barratt can try one damn fool thing after another, then so can I!", and I have followed this method ever since. (Mind you his tries were not all that "damn fool", but I am sure you get the idea.) The secret of success is the successful management of failure, and this is perhaps best learned from observation of how a professional deals with failure."

Which is why candid livestreams are so important in the absence of professional apprenticeships.

Education/Traditional Education
Memory Techniques
Memory palaces started with Roman orators. Romans would overlay the speech into their homes and walk through their home to reproduce the speech. "In the first place" is a transition phrase borne out of the memory place.

I wonder if, for something like US history, a concrete representation of America can be built over time. And reproducing threads of history would be taking different walks through this landscape at different times. It's probably what geniuses and history lovers do automatically. And so others can replicate the technique until it is a subconscious ability.

I pray this all carries over into the next life.