2018 Prediction Results

As in 2017, I made a number of predictions about how 2018 would go—fifty predictions, to be exact. Today, we're going to see how well I did.

Predictions left unmarked were correct, those struck through were incorrect. Two predictions are marked in italics because I can't decide how to score them. First, I not scoring my prediction that astronauts would launch from US soil. Virgin Galactic conducted a test flight that reached space by some definitions, but I should have stated clearly what would qualify. Second, I don't know whether the current state of Brexit negotiations indicate that the UK is "on track to leave the European Union"—and I'm not sure anyone else does, either.

PERSONAL/ACADEMIC

I will read 15 books this year: 95%
....20 books: 80%
....30 books: 60%
I will write an average of two blog posts per month: 80%
....three blog posts per month: 70%
....four blog posts per month: 60%
I will not experience a major political/religious/philosophical conversion: 95%
I will write more than 10,000 words of fiction this year: 70%
I will still be using Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr: 90%
I will remain single this year: 60%
I will vote in the 2018 midterm elections: 95%
I will not be hospitalized: 95%
I will not have my wisdom teeth removed: 90%
My French will improve this year: 60%
Jayhawk Rocket Design will begin constructing the hybrid rocket engine: 70%
I will graduate with my degree in aerospace engineering: 95%
....in May: 90%
....with a GPA 3.2 or above: 80%
KU Aerospace will place in at least one AIAA Design Competition: 90%
....two AIAA Design Competitions: 80%
I will no longer be living in Kansas: 60%
I will either find an engineering job or enroll in grad school by December: 95%

SCIENCE/SPACE

No successful human clones announced: 80%
No major progress on figuring out the "EM Drive": 70%
Falcon Heavy successfully launches this year: 80%
SpaceX Dragon 2 test-flown this year: 90%
....successfully: 80%
Boeing Starliner test-flown this year: 90%
....successfully: 80%
Astronauts will launch from American soil: 70%
Virgin Galactic tourist flights won't begin this year: 60%
Blue Origin begins crewed tests this year: 60%
No crewed flights beyond Low Earth Orbit: 90%
NASA Orion will remain on-schedule: 70%
No deaths in space this year: 90%
No country leaves the ISS Treaty: 90%

POLITICS/WORLD

Donald Trump will still be President at the end of 2018: 95%
Mike Pence will still be Vice President: 95%
Republicans will lose the House and/or Senate at midterms: 90%
Theresa May will still be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 90%
UK will remain on track to leave the European Union: 80%
No additional countries will leave the European Union: 70%
US Nominal GDP will finish ahead of the EU and China: 80%
Bitcoin will end the year valued $500 or above: 80%
....$1000 or above: 70%
....$10,000 or above: 60%
Fewer than 10 cases of wild polio will be contracted: 70%

META

I will remember to score these predictions: 95%
I will have been overconfident in these predictions: 80%
I will have been less overconfident than in 2017: 60%

Similar to last year, the last two predictions require me to do some of the analysis before I can actually score them. In theory, these could become subjective tie-breakers, but that isn't what happened this year.

60% predictions: 2 right and 7 wrong, for a score of 22%
70% predictions: 4 right and 4 wrong, for a score of 50%
80% predictions: 8 right and 3 wrong, for a score of 73%
90% predictions: 9 right and 2 wrong, for a score of 82%
95% predictions: 8 right and 1 wrong, for a score of 89%

Graphed, my results look like this:

Yikes.

This is clearly at lot more overconfident than in 2017, when I at least had a few categories that scored above the orange line. Laying further under the line indicates greater overconfidence, while laying further above the line indicates greater underconfidence. Perfect calibration is ideal, but it's usually better to be underconfident than overconfident.

By category, I did pretty well in Politics/World this year, and okay in Personal/Academic My worst category was surprisingly Science/Space. This seemed to be clustered on launch schedule optimism, which is more of a single-point failure than in any of the other categories.

My overall take-away from these results is that my 2018 predictions were actually a lot riskier than my 2017 predictions, even though I came away from those feeling rather silly. That was my first time trying to project exactly a year into the future, though, so to some degree that's expected.

I wanted to decrease my confidence this year, but it doesn't seem like I really did that. Instead, it seems like I made several less probable predictions and assigned these higher probabilities than they really deserved.

Low sample sizes obviously apply, but 2018 challenges the idea that I should increase the number of predictions for 2019. I'm hesitant to just add more predictions, because it would be easy to simply come up with possibilities I haven't thought about very much, and assign probabilities more-or-less randomly. It might be better to largely recycle the predictions which can be recycled, and try to get the odds better for the next twelve months.

Check back in to see which way I go.

Q4 Progress Report: December Week 5

We finished the house this week. Completely. We took the last of the stuff out, handed over the keys, and I watched as Mom and Dad signed the final paperwork. We're done. We even got paid in a timely manner.

It's a little weird to think about, if we're being honest. That's the place where I spent my entire childhood, and now I'm probably never going back there. I might not even go to that street again, despite still living in the same area. Even though this has been literal years in the making, I didn't really feel like I had full closure on the matter. But that's typical.

At least I'm feeling better. I woke up a lot less sick on Christmas Eve. I don't know if we would have finished had I not improved by the end of Christmas. As is was, we managed to have a relatively enjoyable holiday and finish everything up by the scheduled signing time.

Since that point, I've mostly been working on hitting my end-of-the-year blogging goals. I pushed out the rocket science post I'd been working on and my December links. Tomorrow, my scored predictions for 2018 will go up (unless something drastic happens between now and then). Ideally, I'll also have 2019 predictions up on New Year's Day.

I'd also like to do full reviews of my quarterly goals, and—conditional on the results—lay out some objectives for the first quarter of 2019. Those have less strict desired deadlines, though probably still within the next week.

I also need to re-up my Youth Protection certification tomorrow, and at some point it would be nice to start putting away the Christmas decorations. That will probably entail an extensive negotiation process with Dad, but I won't bother transcribing any details.

December Links

Crew launches to the International Space Station resume successfully after the failure of MS-10 in October. The crew of that mission will end up flying to the space station with NASA astronaut Christina Koch in February. Meanwhile, Russian cosmonauts performed an EVA to investigate damage to the MS-09 spacecraft, which was discovered to be leaking in August.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at the asteroid Bennu, beginning a three-year observation of the body which will conclude with an Earth sample-return in 2023.

Cassini data confirms that Saturn's rings are a transient phenomenon and will disappear within a few hundred million years.

Virgin Galactic completed a powered test flight that, by some definitions, crossed the boundary into space. SpaceShipTwo achieved an altitude of 83 kilometers (52 miles) which is above the line the US Air Force uses, but not above the Kármán Line. I'm torn on whether to count this towards my 2018 prediction that astronauts would launch from the United States. The pilots will be receiving commercial astronaut wings from the FAA, but I should have explicitly stated what counts.

More good news: the Federal Railroad Administration approved new rules last month that would bring the regulations on US passenger rail cars in line with European standards. This will allow American railways (i.e. Amtrak) to import passenger cars directly from Europe and Asia. Currently, imported cars require extensive modification even though the foreign standards result in lighter and safer rail cars.

Ever wanted to read Rationality: From AI to Zombies in physical book form? Now you can, at least part of it. MIRI is releasing reworked versions of two volumes as ebooks and physical printings. I'm looking forward to having the entire collection on my shelf someday.

That said, there's still a lot of good material in the Less Wrong archives. For example, Yudkowsky discussing the tradeoff between popularity and correctness.

More discussion on using prediction markets to determine the direction of scientific research.

Scott Alexander looks at the polling data and concludes that "Trumpist" positions have gotten less popular since Donald Trump launched his Presidential campaign. In a related story, support for  the president among the active duty troops has been declining continuously, while support for General Mattis remained high. Note that both of these articles were published before Mattis's resignation as Secretary of Defense and the government shutdown.

Gwern discusses Littlewood's Law as applied to global media and how paying attention to fantastically rare events can break our brains. Further reading: Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People. The title is a bit hyperbolic, but gets at the idea that many active internet denizens are way, way removed from the societal baseline.

Ranked-choice voting wins in Maine as incumbent Rep. Bruce Poliquin drops his lawsuits against Jared Golden, who won the ME-02 Congressional race on later-round preferences.

Ozy Brennan discusses ways that the effective altruist movement can make itself more attractive to centrists and conservatives.

Why do success and failure compound? To put it simply, momentum. This seems relevant to some of the problems my family recently overcame, and hopefully can avoid repeating.

Q4 Progress Report: December Week 4

I caught Mom's cold.

She ended up getting antibiotics for it; I don't have nearly as bad a case of it (assuming that it is, in fact, the same cold), so I'm not planning to go to the doctor at this time. Mom is getting better, thankfully.

Hopefully I'll wake up feeling better tomorrow. This has really put a damper on Christmas preparations, and our expected closing on the house. That should take place later in the coming week, however, so hopefully next week's review will be a little more exciting.

Q4 Progress Report: December Week 3

It was a busy week. I'm tired.

I think we're done with the interior painting, which really just leaves a once-over on the floors left to do before we're in the clear to hand the property over. I'm not removing the painting supplies though until I get confirmation from my parents, though. Of course, I'll still need to keep the yard up, but that's a different sort of struggle.

That said, the last few days haven't felt much like a reprieve, because other factors naturally come into play. Most notably, I've been to three (3) social functions of various sizes in as many days. Mom is also fighting off a cold, so I've been looking to manage an even higher percentage of household tasks than usual.

Oh, and we put up the Christmas tree tonight. No decorations yet, but I'll get into that in the next few days.

I had intended to get a haircut on Friday, but just...didn't. On the bright side, it's a bit warmer, which is when I prefer to get them anyways. It is beginning to get annoying, though, so the incentive is definitely there.

My other major goal for the week is to push out a blog post on some elementary rocket engineering principles, with derivations. I'm having a lot of fun with my notes, so the incentives are there, too.

Ideas, Ideas Everywhere—And Not A Word To Write

Since NaNoWriMo ended, I've been having a lot more trouble writing than I'd expected. Maintaining that level of output was obviously extremely difficult, but I had figured that cutting back my daily allowance would make things easier.

No dice. I dropped to 1000 and then 500 words a day, and I'm still not really feeling any desire to keep pushing on that story. Part of the problem is that I'm running into a complex part of the plot which I'm not really sure how to execute, so writer's block is hitting pretty hard. That's...to be expected, I guess. Part of the reason for doing NaNoWriMo was gaining a bit more experience writing something besides the early introduction to a book.

The thing is, it's not like I'm out of ideas for stories. I just sort of...burnt out on that particular story.

If I had other active projects, that probably wouldn't be as much of a problem. But I haven't worked on anything recently—any fiction project, to be clear—that made it past the early planning stages. I've got scenes, characters, subplots running around in my mind, but nothing that really resembles a coherent story arc.

Of course, as I've remarked before elsewhere, I find it difficult to develop conventional plots because I just don't alieve in evil. Whenever I'm trying to set up a conflict, I find it extraordinarily difficult to come up with a reason that the characters couldn't solve the problem before the first act.

Maybe I should just double down on that. Surprise, the rest of this sci-fi thriller is actually a rom-com!

It's not like I have any reason to believe I'd be better at writing romance, but at least then I don't have to make excuses for having happy characters. Probably. I don't actually know what's standard in those sorts of books.

We'll see what happens. I've thrown some words on the page with no clue where they'd go, but got some feel for writing that atmosphere and mood in the process. I'm unlikely to salvage it; other ideas are more appealing. Maybe I'll play around with plots over the weekend and run with one of them next week.

Is it almost Christmas already?

Q4 Progress Report: December Week 2

Writing has slowed down a lot, though that's arguably due to other factors. For instance, we've tentatively accepted an offer on the house already, which led to some mid-week crunch that I hadn't previously been expected. If this goes through, the property turn-over won't happen for some time, but it's nice to have a date on the calendar for that.

My parents' participation in a Christmas market for church, on the other hand, was entirely expected but nevertheless took up a good deal of time. I also had the pleasure of doing a phone interview this week, but—though not entirely expected—wasn't an interruption to my overall routine.

This week is mostly going to be focused on continuing the turn-over prep, though I think my parents are in the Christmas spirit and want to decorate before some company is over on ... Wednesday? I can't keep their schedule straight. I'm a little skeptical that that will happen but we will just have to wait and see. A higher priority for me is a haircut—it's getting to be time again and I'd rather not have just had one during all the holiday going-outside-and-back-in-again. Complete opposite of a rest if you ask me (but of course you didn't).

There's also some administrative stuff on the horizon—changing over accounts that are still using my school email, making sure files are organized, and maybe working on some writing for the next month. I may take a break from my current NaNoWriMo draft and focus on some other fiction project, or perhaps doing a few end-of-year blog posts is in order. I'll probably decide tomorrow.

Oh, and happy Smallpox Eradication Day!

Q4 Progress Report: November Week 5/December Week 1

December is here, which means we're two-thirds of the way through the fourth quarter of 2018. Or, to put it another way, there's less than a month left in the year.

As previously mentioned, I completed NaNoWriMo last month. The book itself is a long way from finished, but I've got some momentum now. Over the coming weeks I'll be putting a lot fewer words on the page each day, but that's in part because I find the difficultly of the marginal word rises non-arithmetically past a few hundred. Two thousand words (per day) is considerably more than twice as hard as one thousand words. At least right now; that may change as I get a bit more practice.

I also managed to push out a proper blog post as well as my November links before midnight Friday. That was a little closer than I like it, but manageable.

Over at the other house, I've been retrieving the last stragglers from the garage and finishing up the paint touch-up. That's been going faster than expected, which is good because the house is officially on the market.

Since between these changes my free time is slightly increasing, I've been going to a few more social events and, as predicted, ramping up the job search. I'm also hoping to work on some writing projects—there's some posts I'd like to do on some engineering topics to better explain them to my non-aerospace friends and family. Provided I manage to avoid getting roped into too many holiday activities, keep an eye out for those.

NaNoWriMo Takeaways 2018

I won NaNoWriMo this year. I've never done that before.

Truth be told, I've never even come close. In 2013, I started planning a story but didn't commit any words to the page before turning my spare attention back to school work. In 2015, I got about about 13% of the way towards a reduced goal before losing focus. Since then, I've had to much on my plate to even naively think that I could complete.

Having now made the time commitment to write 50,000 words in the course of a month, I can say that I was right to wait. It's possible to accomplish a lot in the course of a month with a few hours every day, but during undergrad I certainly didn't have that many extra hours to spare. As a graduate, though, the equation in a little different.

My novel is nowhere near finished, but it's satisfying to have gotten so far into a fiction-writing project. As it turns out, my past attempts have been suffering, at least in part, from analysis-paralysis. My desire to plan out the story in intricate detail interferes with my ability to just sit down and put words on the page. Niven's 17th Law.

From here on out, my plan is to write about a thousand words per day, without worrying about it if I happen to fall behind one day. If I can keep that up, I'll be at 80,000 words by the end of the year. Whether the book will be done at that point is an entirely separate question. Once it is, I can start revising the draft in the direction of something publishable. I don't know if I'd ever want to publish this, but that's a matter for another day.

November Links

SpaceX is undergoing some reorganization to accelerate the timeline for Musk's satellite internet project.

Arguably related: Aerospace America on the perilous road to Mars.

French artist Thomas Appéré renders Ryugu in comparison to several major cities, which gives a nice sense of scale.

Scott Alexander has been particularly prolific this month and I'm wildly behind. The major items include updates on ketamine, SSRIs, marijuana and preschool, with a new Much More Than You Wanted To Know on the latter.

Long-time rationality blogger Kelsey Piper does a Vox Explainer on Nick Bostrom's vulnerable world hypothesis. It's a worrying read, and it's not clear what we can do about it. World government is often brought up in this situation, but it's not obvious that that would actually reduce long-term existential risk.

A new (?) rationality blog argues that rationality is not systematize winning and discusses why this formulation is so controversial in the first place.

Robin Hanson on funding prestige science.

Speaking of which: scientists finally isolate enough specimens of a long-elusive microorganism to sequence its DNA. It turns out that they represent an entirely new supra-kingdom of life.

Doing statistics on an illustration from Jurassic Park.

Senator Sasse (R-NE) discusses the impact that high-fidelity photo and video manipulation could have on the future of journalism and political trust.

What the end of World War I sounded like.

Our World In Data looks at income inequality in 83 countries and concludes that's there was no global trend between 1990 and 2015. Certain regions and many individual countries saw significant rises, but enough countries saw insignificant change or reduction to defy a clean narrative.

Data does not suggest that corporal punishment is good for child development, and countries than ban it tend to have less violent crime among youths. The researchers are careful to note that this doesn't necessarily prove anything: countries which ban spanking are probably different in other ways, as well.

The surprisingly sensible case for building a Congressional dorm. Representatives-elect who can't afford DC rent until their salaries take effect in January are making a lot of headlines, but there's also pragmatic reasons to consider such a project. It reduces the barrier-to-entry for relatively regular citizens to run for office, and bipartisan room assignments might improve the political climate on Capitol Hill.

In what may be a related story, Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA)—yes, that Joe Kennedy—wants House Democrats to focus on a positive-sum economic ideology, rather than the current left-right conflict.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, the argument for reforming the party primary system gets stronger.

US crops are rotting in warehouses as farmers suddenly can't sell their crops to China. Grain silos are full and farm bankruptcies have doubled since 2014. It's almost like tariffs are bad for the little guy. New Zealand, on the other hand, abolished farm subsidies in the 1980s and now their agricultural industry is stronger than the rest of their economy.

Another pro-market solution: Congress might actually vote on a carbon tax. The proposed bill, which has bipartisan support, would remove a lot of existing emissions limits and substitute a flat fee per ton of CO₂ released. Because this would raise consumer prices, revenue from the tax would go into a citizens dividend for a net benefit to poorer Americans. Personally I'd prefer to spend the money on a broad-spectrum strategy to improve our energy economy, but creating a mini-UBI would certainly go a long way toward passing it.

Exciting news from the Supreme Court: civil asset forfeiture is probably going to be ruled a violation of the Eighth Amendment. This is the latest from the interesting coalition between Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch on criminal justice reform.

Q4 Progress Report: November Week 4

We are perilously close to being done with the house. Yesterday, we transported the remaining couple pieces of furniture and the majority of the remaining stuff in the garage, plus miscellaneous tools and the like. Dad and I also raked nearly all the leaves on the lawn, which was convenient ahead of the snowstorm we got today.

Since we're getting close, I'm planning to dial back up the job search this week with a new round of applications. Things have been a bit slow in the lead-up to Thanksgiving—having both parents around more does hell for productivity—but we're looking at a few weeks of relative normalcy before the Christmas season really kicks off. There's really not that much more touch-up work to do, so I should have plenty of time to focus on longer-term goals.

Speaking of personal large projects, NaNoWriMo is continuing well. I'm still on track, though 50,000 words is nowhere near the actual length of this draft. I'm not really sure if I'll go back and revise it when I'm done, but I am planning to continue at about 1000 words per day until it's done.

I'm planning to push out a proper blog post this week, in addition to the monthly links post over here.

The Third Thing

Almost a full year later, I think that I finally remembered the third thing from my followup post on accidental life outcome patterns. I'm not completely certain that this was the third thing I had in mind at the time, but definitely adds to a general perception of things going downhill all at once.

Specifically, my longtime barber had an accident sometime in the summer of 2016. This barber, Bud, had been cutting my hair since before I could process speech—since I could grow actual hair, in fact. He was at least in his 80s around the time of his motorcycle accident, and what his family described on the answering machine would be serious at any age. I'm still not sure if he recovered but he definitely couldn't continue cutting hair.

This is notable for me because a) yet another reminder of human frailty and b) I never asked Bud what the normal haircut he gave me was called. I haven't been truly satisfied with another barber since then. I don't really think "short" is a complicated request, yet I keep coming out of the barber shop looking the way I used to go into it. If I had a bit more time to burn, I would just go to different shops on a rotation until I tricked them into getting it short enough, but I don't, so I haven't.

Compared to the other things, this consequence for me personally is kind of trivial, so I'm not massively surprised that I forgot it. Also, it falls into a slightly different category: not something which had finally started going well, but an erstwhile constant that suddenly disappeared. Even so, it adds to a generalized perception that things suddenly fell apart in the late summer and autumn of 2016.

In reality, however, the conditions were all set for failure modes to occur; I just hadn't noticed and/or acknowledged them yet. Picking up on problematic trends before they become serious problems is a useful life skill, so I guess this combined ordeal will be a valuable experience in the end. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that many—if not most—personal and family problems confronting the socio-economically well-off are artificial and could be avoided with a much smaller amount of foresight than we need in practice.

Oh well. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Q4 Progress Report: November Week 3

This week's update is late, but for good reason: we were working on the house tonight until close to the time that I'd usually be going to bed. However, I'm extremely pleased with the result. Aside from a single table and a few cleaning implements, there's nothing left inside the house proper. There are a number of items still in the garage, but those won't be a serious issue for showing the property. Allegedly, some realtors are coming to take a look this week.

Between that and a Thanksgiving party, I didn't have a great deal of time to write today, so I've managed to fall behind again, though I successfully caught up over the course of the last week and built up a small margin. Between that and the few hundred I did manage to get out, the situation is far less serious than before. My goal is to catch up tomorrow, but whether or not that happens is another story.

The only other big things that are coming to mind from the last week were some plumbing issues, but it appears that I successfully resolved those. However, poor drainage from those sinks has been a persistent problem, so I'm not ready declare total victory just yet. I'll be keeping that under observation as the week continues.

Q4 Progress Report: November Week 2

Big thing this week was the midterm elections. I'll probably write a more detailed post on the subject later, but for now let's just say my decision to stop paying attention to politics was probably the right choice given how watching the results come in (and reading the analysis) negatively affected my productivity.

Among other effects, I continued to fall behind on NaNoWriMo for the first part of the week. I've since recovered and started regaining ground, but I'm still several thousand words behind. I've crossed the 10,000 word boundary I mentioned in my 2018 predictions, though, so that's a positive. Right now, it's unclear whether I'll ever feel like sharing this story with the world, but it's already for a symbolic "first novel" even if it never sees the light of day.

I've also recovered on my sleep schedule, though that's still in the tentative mood. Since cold weather tends to aggravate my tendency to oversleep, I found a hack in my behavior: when I get out of bed to turn off the alarm, go to the thermostat and turn it up to the daytime temperature. Even if I turn back in, I'll be less cold later on—and have a task to motivate moving around keeps me awake longer. Generally speaking, that helps people avoid sleeping.

There's no particularly noteworthy goals for this week besides continuing along all fronts.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 5/November Week 1

So what happened this week? It's been such a whirlwind that I really haven't managed to catalog all of it narratively. I had to sit down and look over my weekly to do list to properly make this post, if that says anything.

Underlying all of this, of course, was continued work on the house, mostly in the cleaning and yard-work department. I've also started the final round of paint touch-up, which I'm not going to estimate the quantity of thanks to my past experiences with planning fallacy. Overall, though, I would say that I'm satisfied with our progress in that regard.

After a lot of struggle and some forensic computing on my own programs, I finished the astrodynamics project that I've been mentioning all month, which you can read about on my WordPress blog. I'm honestly quite happy with the result and it's given me a lot of ideas for other, less complex writing material.

Speaking of writing, once Halloween was over and all zero of the Trick-or-Treaters we got this year had left, I began my NaNoWriMo project. So far I've done better than in all of my previous attempts, though given that it's only November 4th that doesn't say all that much. I'm under-quota for today, though only by a few hundred words, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. There will be a lot more work before this idea will be remotely ready for widespread consumption.

I can probably catch up tomorrow, though I'm also planning to do up a summary sheet on the candidates that'll be on our ballot Tuesday for the election. I still haven't decided which candidate I prefer for most of the downballot races, so this will be primary for my benefit, though of course I'll be sending to my parents so that they can make a quasi-informed selection.

Aside from that, well, more of the same. Hopefully I can make NaNoWriMo fit in my schedule; my plan is to get my words in before lunchtime and dive into other obligations after that point. The end of daylight savings time works in my favor here: I'm not moving my sleeping hours at all, just getting up a hour "earlier" compared to everyone else. I'd been wanting to make this change regardless, so being reminded about the time change was a present surprise. (For the record, I still favor making Daylight Saving's Time permanent).

October Links

The German Aerospace Center's MASCOT "rover" successfully detached from the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft and landed on the asteroid Ryugu. The probe completed its intended scientific observations before battery power ran out.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe flies by Venus, lowering orbit to approach the Sun. The spacecraft has now set a new record for distance from the Sun. Closest approach is expected for November 5th.

Boeing wins the contract for a new Air Force training airplane, set to replace the aging-but-storied fleet of T-38 Talons.

This month in exponential curves: half of all human experience has happened since the 14th century. 15% happened to people currently living. Almost a third has happened during the life of the oldest person currently living. There's been a bit more turn-over in world's oldest person than usual this year, though it's hard to establish the "normal" range for a sample size this small.

This month is ballistic curves: the Soyuz launch failure. The spacecraft set to carry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin aborted after a launch vehicle failure, landing safely in Kazakhstan. At this point, it's unclear how the Soyuz ISS launch schedule will be adapted, but Roscosmos is carrying on with uncrewed Soyuz launches as the investigation continues. Results are expected in the next week, with current speculation focusing on a failure of a side boosters to separate cleanly from the central sustainer stage. The next Soyuz launch date has yet to be announced, but will need to come relatively soon. Neither commercial crew capsule is ready for flight (arguably because Congress raided the funds to pay for the Space Launch System), so either another Soyuz will have to go up by January or the ISS will have to go uncrewed temporarily.

It's been a bad month for space telescopes, as well: Chandra and Hubble both went into safe mode this month, but have since resumed science operations. Kepler, however, has exhausted its fuel supply and was officially retired by NASA. Losing Kepler is less of a blow to the astronomy community given than TESS is now operational, but still a sad moment.

In related news, NASA is winding down the efforts to contact the Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10. The probe may still be capable of operations if the solar panels are covered by dust, so listening won't cease for several more months, but NASA wants to focus its resources on Mars InSight's arrival next month.

Internal prediction markets may or may not be something of a corporate fad lately, but Robin Hanson argues that anonymous "bad-news boxes" will work just as well. They're a lot easier to implement and so far seem to have a proven track record.

National Review discusses problems with the technocratic left, in a way that really illustrates the contradictory meanings of the word technocratic in contemporary discourse. The story's examples are interesting but ultimately less important than the fact that "evidence-based policy" often entails cherry-picking the evidence. For me, though, that's not a condemnation of basing your policy on evidence so much as a reminder that epistemic honesty is difficult and rarely cleaves cleanly down ideological lines.

Scott Alexander's latest musings on consciousness.

Sarah Constantin reflects on turning 30.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 4

Fall allergies are having an effect, but nevertheless I made satisfying progress this week. All of the major remaining action-items on the house are complete, so at this point all remains is basic cleaning and touching up the paint. I'm confident that the house will be market-ready within a fortnight, though I'm not in charge of the paperwork so that might end up delaying matters.

Since we're nearly there, I am still intending to attempt NaNoWriMo this year. My planning is a little spotty but gradually coming together. Most of my writing effort has been directed at some sticky blog posts that I'd like to push out by the end of the month.

The goals for this week, then, are the necessary writing and continuing the cleaning/painting process. I've also instituting a small change in my weekly schedule, swapping Application Mondays with my normal off-day on Tuesday. Normally I find that I'm pretty tired after working on the house over the weekend, so it's easier to recuperate on Monday and then prepare a quality application.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 3

Despite some hurdles, I made good progress this week. Several of the major remaining items for the move were checked off this weekend, and we should be meeting with the realtor to start the process of putting the house on the market. Most of the remaining tasks are pretty simple (aside from perfectionist touch-up work that I'll probably be doing until we hand over the keys).

There were some challenges at the new house this week as well, primarily a clogged drain that took some proper plumbing work to fix. That's been solved, however, and we shouldn't have serious trouble with it again.

I also spend some time working on various projects of my own, including the astrodynamics project I've alluded to previously. That's been almost entirely wrapped up and I should have the blog post finished within a few days (though I'll admit that I said the same thing last week). I also finished Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (Goodreads review here) and I'm perilously close to finishing Failure Is Not an Option. All told, it's been a good week for my reading progress.

This coming week has no dramatic plans besides meeting with the realtor and attending a Halloween Party next Saturday. My blog post should be up in a few days, and I've begun my serious NaNoWriMo planning. Aside from that, things are going relatively well provided no new preventable emergencies rear their ugly heads.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 2

I made decent progress this week, though I wouldn't say I hit all of my targets. The only one I would say that I unequivocally achieved was completing a few solid job applications (plus routine chores which I don't bother mentioning).

However, I made decent progress in a number of areas. First of all, my sleep schedule is nearly under control, and I don't see any major reasons to expect that to change. I'm reworking my morning routine and this will probably help reduce the friction to getting up when there's not a specific deadline, and it's easier to go to bed on time when you've been up since early morning (believe me or not).

I also finished reading Introduction to Flight and have moved on to Rocket Propulsion Elements. I'm not planning to write a proper review, but left a few comments on Goodreads. My astrodynamics project is also wrapping up nicely. Writing it up won't take too long and may be finished by the middle of the week.

The move continues, but incremental progress isn't particularly interesting to report.

Specific goals for this week include maintaining the schedule and, hopefully, getting a haircut. I'd also like to update the about page on my blog (which is a touch out-of-date) and finish reading Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. It's been an interesting read, but at this point having a third book in the rotation—which I read primarily on my phone, at that—is feeling more complicating than educating.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 1

Unsurprisingly, my Q4 objectives are already proving difficult to pursue, both for the reasons which I outlined on Monday and some which I didn't adequately foresee. These include a splitting headache yesterday, which more-or-less incapacitated me for the afternoon, and the fact that my Dad took some additional leave around Columbus Day. Given the way my family approaches projects, that's not good for my progress.

I did succeed in submitting some job applications on Monday, plus some smaller applications each day during the week. I have a couple lined up for tomorrow, which I intend to pursue regardless of whatever plans les adultes have concocted. If time permits, I'll join them for a specific task later in the day, but I'm not exactly eager to head back over there.

My engineering studies have continued relatively well. I'm rapidly approaching the end of Introduction to Flight, though working the exercises for the remaining chapters will probably drag it out for another week or two. My progress through the various papers that I've lined up to read has been less impressive, but again there were some disruptions which may or may not prove periodic.

Additionally, I've begun working on a small astrodynamics/programming project, the results of which will appear in a blog post relatively soon. Getting into MATLAB again is frankly quite satisfying and a nice supplement to Anderson's exercises.

Also on the creative front, I've been toying around with ideas for NaNoWriMo, but nothing definite yet.

The goal for this week is merely to maintain the schedule. Once the ground dries somewhat, I'll be devoting more time to dealing with the leaves over at the old house, along with the various projects I need to do inside. A good deal of them are relatively small, but quite a few have to be done a particular order, so getting those ones out of the way has been a major stumbling block in recent weeks.

Objectives for Q4

As we head into the last three months of 2018, I want to lay out my broad-strokes goals to concentrate upon for the remainder of the year. These aren't targets to hit, exactly, so much as areas in which to focus my efforts.

This is partially motivated by the fact that my output during the third quarter, despite being better than the first part of the summer, still leaves me feeling unsatisfied. Generally speaking, I've found over the years that living with my parents seriously impedes my productivity. There are a lot of potential explanations for this, which I've explored before at-length. We won't be rehashing those in detail today; suffice to say that certain individuals in my family wouldn't recognize priorities if an ordered list knocked on the front door. It seems that I'm constantly pulled between contradicting goals, with insufficient time to manage any of them adequately.

I suspect, however, that a big part of the problem is switching costs. These are really easy to underestimate if one isn't used to thinking in those terms, but are almost always non-trivial. My new strategy in Q4 is to break down my days of the week by objective, and, hopefully, focus on those objectives each day. This is, to some extent, a self-signalling strategy. By committing a certain amount of time to each major activity area, the emotional parts of my brain will better trust me to work on the various projects that it wants to see completed.

Note, however, that this takes some time to go into effect. I'll probably have to put my foot down on some of these issues, because, again, I'm the only person in this household not completely drowned in planning fallacy.

There are two major objectives for the rest of the year, both of which have some supporting objectives. The first is finding employment (or, alternatively, committing to grad school). The second is finishing the interminable project. Let's look at each of these, and their supporting objectives, in turn.

The single biggest change I'm implementing are Application Mondays. From here on out, the primary goal for every Monday is working on job applications. I don't necessarily have to submit them on Monday, but I would like to make progress. I've held off on a number of openings because I felt the need to really concentrate on them, but no opportunity to do so has ever materialized. Instead of waiting for the improbable, I'm designating an entire weekday to the job search.

There are two weekdays set aside for personal tasks and household chores, during which I may also work on applications. I do not expect to make much progress during the other four days of each week.

Supporting my efforts in that regard, I will be continuing and, hopefully, expanding my program of self-education. I've been reading John Anderson's Introduction to Flight to shore up my foundations in aerospace engineering, and to maintain something of my edge. Unfortunately, this has taken longer than expected. I would like to finish it before the end of the year, and move on to a more interesting book.

Studying engineering materials will remain on the agenda every day of the week, though it will remain a relatively small item (less than an hour each day). This does not mean just reading textbooks, but also working though the maze of technical papers that I've accumulated on my desktop. Several of these are several hundred pages long, so getting them read and filed away before the end of the year may be a real feat.

I would also like to practice my programming skills again, as well as expanding into a few new languages. That is a secondary objective, however.

The other major change which I am instituting is again a matter of compartmentalization. I am reducing the number of days each week which I'm spending on the house. By planning around this fact, however, I hope to dedicate more hours in total to the project. I will be spending two weekdays on whatever tasks I can complete individually. Weekends, if the past several months are any indicator, will be spent on tasks requiring two or more individuals.

This should enable us to finish the project in relatively short order. I'm hoping that the house will be on the market by the end of the month.

Indeed, I would like to have things finished well in advance of November, because I'd really like to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I have some ideas which would be interesting to attempt, but I need a larger segment of unstructured time than is currently available for that to be practical. I will decide on a particular option closer to November 1 if participation is looking viable.

There are also a number of blog posts I've been meaning to write for some time. My hope is that this new schedule will also better serve my ambitions in that department. I don't think my prediction of two posts per month will end up being accurate, but I can probably manage four or five before the end of the year.

My final motivating for finishing the move in short order is that, should employment not be forthcoming, I need to start the process of applying to graduate school. That will require a good deal more money, which will not be available until the house is sold. I would like to have had that process started by mid-November if nothing turns up in the meantime.

I will attempt to keep the hypothetical reader apprised of my progress along these objectives.

August/September Links

Ocean floor mining may finally happen, though plenty of people are having their usual reaction to any suggestion that technological civilization might need natural resources to continue operation.

Scott Alexander: The Tails Coming Apart As Metaphor For Life. I'm not sure how to describe this, but definitely recommend reading it.

Mental health research: treating the prodrome.

New from LessWrong: Strategies for Personal Growth. Old from LessWrong: Reason as a memetic immune disorder.

Arguably related: Duncan Sabien on the representativeness heuristic and Bryan Caplan discussing understated cultural differences.

Russia plans to stop transporting US astronauts starting early next year. Given the recent Soyuz leak, that might not be the worst thing, but it's unclear whether commercial crew capsules will be flying by that date.

American Enterprise Institute reports that the middle class is shrinking, but because household inflation-adjusted income is rising. Their data suggests that the number of households making less than $35,000 has also been falling over the last fifty years.

On the subject of increasing your income: here's the College Info Geek podcast on how to start investing, even in debt.

Writing: Always Harder Than I Think It Will Be

I'd hoped to write a proper post for my longform blog about Atlas Shrugged day, but it's not really coming together adequately. I'm not ruling out making that post at some point in the future, but it's not going to happen today.

The post I want(ed) to write is an explanation that Atlas Shrugged is not a conservative novel. It's not even really a libertarian novel, either, but that's besides the point. Actually, it's not. Not entirely. The problem I'm running up against is explaining complex philosophical distinctions in language which I can expect my non-philosophical friends and family to understand. I could launch into a rundown of the different epistemological and ethical schools of thought underpinning Objectivism and the various strains of conservatism in post-war America, but that's not really the sort of thing that will fit in a medium-length blog post.

Or at least, not at my current writing level. I need a lot more practice (and more feedback) before I'll feel comfortable making that sort of attempt on such short-order. I would have liked to have written that post over the course of several days, but the circumstances this week did not really permit it.

Complicating the matter for me personally, today marks two years since my parents announced their decision to join America in throwing all caution and sanity to the wind. Because that decision dramatically affected my last two years of schooling, and because the incident which prompted the blog post's original idea also happened at school, it's all quite tied together in my brain. I'm not sure I'll be able to unwrap it all until I'm less tired, and I'm not sure if that will really happen until I get a job or finish that interminable project.

Hence, an underlying theme of my writing attempts over the past eighteen months or so has been trying in vain to communicate the concept of a self-interest beyond immediate vanity and status-seeking. This concept is entirely absent from the conservative (and liberal) vocabulary—Protestant work ethic was born of contradiction—and my efforts to introduce a more consistent alternative have not gone over particularly well.

There's really no reason to expect a blog post explaining that a book where the protagonists have a lot of extra-marital sex and practice extreme civil disobedience maybe isn't the most conservative thing would go over any better.

Questioning Marginal Actions in Context

I've been on Goodreads for nearly three years, and for most of that time I've been very diligent about registering the precise edition of the books I'm reading and closely tracking which page I'm on. This has seemed like that natural way to use the platform—I've found it genuinely strange that some of my friends use the default edition of every book and never update their progress within them.

Recently, however, I decided to stop tracking my internal progress. There were a few reasons for this decision. Partly, my desire for legibility is probably in the 99th percentile of Goodreads users, and so the tools aren't really there for progress tracking at the level of fidelity I prefer. Many books are missing editions, and there's huge inconsistencies between publishers on how to assign and measure page numbers. At a certain point, it's easier to chose the closest available edition and stop worrying about whether I should use the textual or PDF page number.¹

The other reason is inconvenience. Logging my current page after reading is trivially easy in itself, presuming a good network connection. Once I'm done, though, I'm using my phone. I've found that this dramatically increases the likelihood of distracted Internet browsing, especially when I'm reading before bed. In practice, this negates much of the benefit from reading at night, and frequently cuts into my designated sleeping time. This is naturally sub-optimal, and an easily avoidable cost.

For the time being, I'm going to continue tracking my progress in academic books.² Everything else, though, gets simple updates. I'll even wait till the next morning if I finish a book before bed—Goodreads' expectation that I'll want to rate and review the book immediately after shelving it as "Read" is honestly quite annoying and probably reduces my likelihood of reviewing it in a timely fashion (it's now an additional task instead of a single, larger task).

Considered by itself, the cost of logging my reading progress is totally worth the value it provides in satisfying my desire for legibility. When I consider it in the greater context of daily routine, I find that that benefit is not worth the additional costs in the form of sleep-schedule disruption and additional mental load.

I'm toying with another decision in this same vein, which is the actual reason for writing this post. Since an unpleasant exam experience a few years ago, I've been using Khan Academy to review basic math and science material for the purpose of maintaining my scholastic edge. This probably helped me during the last two years of my undergraduate career.

Now that I've graduated it's more of a hindrance than a help. Not because taking a few minutes to review basic material is not worth it, but because it necessitates certain changes to how I go about my day. In particular, one of my favorite features of Khan Academy is the daily streak counter.³ However, logging in every day means booting up my computer every morning, because I'm quite likely to forget if I don't do it in the morning. This isn't a huge burden in itself, but has a history of diverting me from whatever tasks I need to be doing because now I'm on the Internet.

To be clear, listening to Sal explain multivariable calculus or the history of the universe over breakfast is not a bad thing in itself. But that time would be just as educational reading a book, which would probably better serve my long-term goals. For a period shortly after I resumed using Khan Academy, I did read at breakfast most weekend mornings, and did Khan Academy in the afternoon.

For the time being, I plan to continue using Khan Academy, but I'll probably make the shift once I'm living in a space of my own. The current set-up of my parents' household makes it much more valuable to break my fast in isolation than it was in my apartment (cf. shifting registers). I also lost my last streak on graduation day, so maintaining the streak is an easy way to track how long I've been unemployed. Once that's changed, however, such a measure won't really be necessary.

Hopefully these two examples illustrate my broader point about marginal actions—namely, that things which are good in themselves may be outweighed by the costs of integrating them into one's life. I think that many people could be a lot happier if they tried to predict such consequences before agreeing to new hobbies and obligations. With a little practice and self-honestly, it's not that hard to see the downsides in advance.

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¹Physical books are more difficult than PDF ebooks, which are more difficult than Kindle ebooks. (Kindle will give you a percentage estimate, avoiding the page number problem entirely.) With physical books, front matter may also be included in the page count. Given that that's one of the indicators I use to determine which edition I'm reading, it can get quite confusing. (No, I don't go so far as counting the actual pages. I make an educated guess and get on with reading.)

²That said, I make relatively small progress compared to the book length on a typical day, and so it might be awhile before I finish Introduction to Flight. I might decide against tracking whichever book I choose to read next.

³This was also one of the reasons why visiting my parents during school was dangerous—the disruption to my routine made me lose some very long streaks.

July Links

The big news a month ago was Justice Anthony Kennedy stepping down from the Supreme Court, which led to a big discussion of what the Court will look like without its moderate tie-breaker. Reason Magazine countered that Gorsuch was more liberal than Kennedy last year. 538 can't even agree with itself about Kennedy's politics and how the President's nominee would change the Court.

The hunt for Planet Nine turned up results closer to home with the discovery of twelve new Jovian moons. This brings the total count to 79.

India tests a crew capsule abort system. Their human space program is a long way from orbital test flights, but it's reassuring to see another nation taking steps to join that exclusive club. Scott Manley discusses the test and its context.

The UK, meanwhile, is finally planned to resume launching from their own territory with a new spaceport in Scotland. The United States is also inching closer to launching crews from American soil, with the first commercial crew assignments to be announced next week.

Underreported old news: improved planetary science models explain the asymmetrical Martian magnetic field.

Scott Alexander reviews the latest attempt to resolve the Fermi Paradox. This argument is strongly early-Filter, i.e. intelligent life is extremely rare. I don't have the statistical background to comment on their reasoning, but research to pin down the base numbers continues. For instance, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is warming up before it takes over the search from Kepler.

Alyssa Vance discusses the doublethink of "meritocracy". Simply put, institutions like to play favorites while also maintaining that their scions are selected on objective merits. You obviously can't have it both ways, but realizing that this is what most people think constitutes meritocracy explains their previously-unfathomable opposition to it.

For a more extreme example of institutional failure, here's a first-hand account of cult-level abuse arising inside a college department. It's a painful read, but ultimately not very surprising given that the school provided all the risk-factors by conscious decision.

Liberal Currents tackles the claim that racism arose from the Enlightenment.

May/June Links

Recent analysis of Magellan data suggests that Venus may have plate tectonics unlike those observed on Terra and Mars. This intermediate form may be a product of Venus' unusual atmosphere-interior combination, which makes the crust a lot more fluid than on other terrestrial planets.

After 46 years out-of-print, new copies of John D. Clark's rocketry history Ignition! are finally available. Get your copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from Rutgers University Press.

Scott Alexander and his readers discuss basic income versus basic jobs.

Here's an interesting optical illusion: the Troxler effect. Stare at this fuzzy image long enough, and your eyes or brain will edit out the entire thing. Wikipedia says that the cause is still uncertain.

Does studying ethics increase ethical behavior? There's not enough research to tell for sure, but initial results aren't exactly promising. Depending on what future studies find, this may help open up some space in undergraduate curricula.

Speaking of opening up space, Falcon 9 fairing recovery is coming along.

NASA extends the Juno mission to 2021. The spacecraft was supposed to enter the Jovian atmosphere later this year, but that timeline was based on a 14-day orbital period. Propulsion system issues in 2016 precluded this, however, and Juno remains on its initial 53-day orbit. This extension will allow scientists to complete their observational plan.

How to talk like Mr. Rogers.

Charles Stross explains why books are the length they are. Unsurprisingly, the answer has more to do with technology and economics than literary tastes and artistic merits.

Supreme Court rules that cell phone location data requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

Political Endorsements: What Gives?

I understand the overall concept of political endorsements—one states their opinion on who would make the best candidate for a particular office. This makes perfect sense.

During the 2016 Presidential primaries, however, I noticed something odd: all the discussions of the endorsement primary assumed that each endorser would endorse one, and only one, candidate. This seemed a bit weird because there were really three races going on (for the nomination of each major party¹). Once the nominations are in, it makes sense to endorse one of them, but until then it make ssense to endorse a candidate for each nomination.

Look at it this way: I would rather have the best possible candidate from each party in the final race.² Elections would be a lot less stressful if I liked all the candidates, and had to choose the best rather than the least-terrible. Party officials should like this, because tempting swing voters and moderate members of the other Parties would improve their odds of winning.

Endorsing a candidate for each nomination is a potential way of communicating this information. It's gameable, certainly, but also improves the odds of the final office-holder representing the wider values of their constituents. Letting the opposition parties know which of their candidates you prefer seems like a net-beneficial disclosure.

Maybe this is my idiosyncrasy as an independent showing, though. I'm no longer a committed partisan and vote for candidates that can be expected to reliably represent my values in office, regardless of the letters after their names. Party officials aren't generally receptive to their elected members deciding for themselves—they'd rather everyone vote with the Party line than entertain the possibility of internal dissent. This is the biggest issue with the idea, I suspect. No one in the major parties would like to give up a seat to a candidate outside their organization, even a sympathetic one.

Remind me why we tolerate whips, again?

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¹The Green Party's primaries weren't even remotely competitive, in contrast to the other major parties.

²Where "best" indicates alignment with my values, rather than probability of winning.

Some Things I Didn't Learn in Undergrad (And Really Wanted To)

Since graduating earlier this month¹, several people have mentioned to me that you should never stop learning. I don't object to this statement, but I find it somewhat puzzling. I went into aerospace engineering because I enjoy astronautics, and this field moves fast enough that the only alternative to maintaining technical competency is sliding into obsolescence. Naturally, that does not appeal to me.

But this biggest issue is that I don't think I really learned enough in college. I mentioned this in passing to one of my professors, who assured me that most students from our department pursue graduate studies. That helps, but not a lot, because there's more that a few areas that I want to learn more about. To better structure my thoughts on the subject, let's discuss some of the areas which we didn't really cover, but I had really hoped we would.

Nucleonics. Technically, this one is my own fault. I started at a school which offered a nuclear engineering minor, and I had the credit hours (thanks to AP) to pursue it. Unfortunately, I didn't really understand how the college course system worked, and blew those slots on entrepreneurship classes freshman year.² Trying to work ahead in my science coursework would have probably been a better use of my time.

Heat Transfer, on the other hand, strikes me as a widely-applicable subject for aerospace engineers in general. It does not appear to be standard in undergraduate plans of study. You can probably take it as a technical elective, but those slots are limited, and instead you're more likely to push it to graduate school. Letting M.E.'s have all the fun seems a bit strange, but whatever, there's a lot of ground to cover and plenty of heat transfer books out there.

Launch Vehicle Dynamics is a little more specialized but still something would would expect to discuss. Aside from a few problems with extremely unrealistic assumptions, we didn't cover this in any real detail, not even in astronautics classes. This is probably an artifact of KU's program being particularly airplane-focused, and other schools may handle it differently.

Manned Spaceflight. Pretty much everything we covered was unmanned, though "everything" at my school consists of two (2) space systems classes. Manned spaceflight builds on unmanned spaceflight, but there's a lot of material there which we simply did not discuss. Last year's class got some of it because their AIAA design competition involved a crewed mission, but mine didn't. I'm hoping to get my hands on a relevant textbook in the near future.

Advanced Propulsion—specifically, nuclear-thermal propulsion, which motivated my desire to study nucleonics. In retrospect, this was probably a touch optimistic and is a much more common subject to find graduate students learning, but a more flexible plan-of-study might have made undergraduates taking additional rocket classes plausible.³

Computational fluid dynamics and compressible aerodynamics represent the latest additions to this list, and were ultimately my own decision. Both are offered in most curricula, but undergraduates usually don't have room in their schedules unless that is the particular area they intend to specialize in. Taking these classes would have necessarily entailed giving up other electives. I cannot help but wonder, though, whether their stripped-down components could have been included in a more versatile plan-of-study.

If I were to offer any overall theme to this post, it would probably be that underclassmen generally have insufficient information to make intelligent decisions about their education. All too many students end up in the wrong major for their interests, or in the right major at the wrong school, or even at the right school yet mess up their plans-of-study in the first few semesters.

I don't see any easy solution to this problem beyond better advising to underclassmen and prospective students. Perhaps the best we can do is better explain the challenges and minutiae of engineering education, and hope for the very best.

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¹That's three of my 2018 predictions satisfied, incidentally.

²To be clear, entrepreneurship was interesting and will probably still prove valuable, but nuclear engineering strikes me as a much better subject to study in a formal context.

³Note that whether additional classes are available depends on the school. It's worth looking into course listings and developing a preliminary plan of study before Decision Day.