January Links

Ozy Brennan has some advice on writing irrational characters, which is an interesting position to take. This might not be interesting to everyone, but since I have trouble with writing things like "conflict", I found it an interesting read.

How much of the Internet—and specifically, the Internet economy—is fake? A surprising amount, it turns out, which has some concerning implications for a lot of conventional web business models.

Thought on sudden death, and what it means to see your childhood friends start dying. This turned out to be unexpectedly relatable: in the time since I saved this story, I learned that two of my elementary school classmates died of various causes.

Related: three perspectives for understanding global child mortality statistics.

Self-driving taxis will soon be sorta-not really available in Phoenix, Arizona.

Bill Gates's 2018 Year In Review. Discusses technology for education, medical research, and clean energy.

Scott Alexander asks what happened to 90s environmentalism. Through a series of case studies, the answer appears to be a combination of policy victories, alarmist predictions, and public apathy.

Speaking of the environment: during the government shutdown, the Libertarian Party organized volunteers to maintain trash disposal the the national parks. This is a slightly better media stunt than usual, and might fit in with a more effective electoral strategy.

Find out where your Congressional representatives fall on Internet/4th Amendment issues.

FiveThirtyEight on the history of approximating pi.

OurWorldInData discusses the demographic evidence that India's population growth is starting to decline. Projections indicate that the subcontinent's population will peak around 2060 at 1.7 billion, after which it may fall or level off—so we'll be waiting awhile to see if these models are correct.

The national college completion rate reached a whopping 57% in 2017; that is, slightly over half of students enrolling in any given year can be expected to earn a degree within six years. A lot of that comes from people going back to school during the Recession, but probably just racking up debt without improving their job prospects: new research suggests that the "skills gap" was an employer response to a glutted hiring market rather than a genuine problem.

On that note: SpaceX is laying off about ten percent of its workforce. It's unclear whether this is strictly a financial decision, a shift towards business operations model, or a combination of the two.

One of the Hubble Space Telescope's primary cameras experienced an anomaly earlier this month and was out of operation for a couple of weeks, but has since returned to normal status.

Starting in 2021, NASA will be conducting new experiments to grow food plants on the International Space Station. If this works out, it'll be an important step on the road to space colonization.

OSIRIS-REx enters orbit around Bennu, setting a new record for the smallest body orbited by a space probe and the closest approaches (without landing) to a celestial body.

Ever wonder why mercury is a liquid at room temperature? Turns out, we didn't have the answer until 2013, when scientists were finally able to confirm the long-standing hypothesis that relativistic effects in the electron cloud explain the element's low melting-point. The main challenge was performing so many quantum mechanical calculations, which modern computing finally allows.

Q1 Progress Report: January Week 4

It's been a month—a full 31 days—since we sold the old house. And nothing about my life feels any different.

Little of any major significance was accomplished this week.

Q1 Progress Report: January Week 3

Productivity is still on the slow side of the quasi-exponential upswing. Our internet connectivity problems lasted through end-of-day Tuesday—just long enough for me to come down with a cold again. I suspect it was another round of the nasty bug I had before Christmas, but it's not as though I have any lab tests to support that hypothesis.

Before that, though, I spent a bit more time at the public library, getting a little more acquainted with what they have to offer for independent researchers. I was able to download stuff to use later, which was valuable, but I also found simply the change in environment does help. I've seen this before, but to a lesser extent; it will be interesting to see if the effect holds for longer in a non-collegiate library.

The forecast called for another winter storm this weekend, so we spent some time preparing for that. Thankfully it turned out to be much less severe—only a dusting of snow at our house, not even enough to warrant shoveling the driveway. I had a number of different social events lined up for this weekend which might have had to have been cancelled if something more dramatic had happened, so I'm quite happy that it didn't. (Yes, I enjoyed writing that sentence.) My family may be investing in a snowblower soon, but that's a matter for another day.

We're also taking steps to deal with certain issues we had to neglect in the later stages of the move. For instance, a plumber is coming this week to deal with a broken toilet that's been laying neglected for some time. That, however, necessitated some organizational work in the bathroom and the adjacent room to allow the plumber space to work. Of course, that organization needed to be done at some point regardless; the current mess is emphatically not the final configuration for that space.

That said, I think I was over-extending myself earlier in how much cleaning time I was allocating per day—especially on days I had nominally set aside for other purposes. A long daily to-do list is not conducive to getting the handful of really important items done. I know this, yet somehow find myself forgetting. It's more useful to skip writing or cleaning for the day and actually finish a job application, then to have too many things hanging over my head when I already got a later start than I'd intended when setting up my list.

It's tempting to suggest making the to-do list in the morning, but evening!Nathaniel does not trust justWokeUp!Nathaniel to remember everything he has to do today. For the same basic reason, I keep a weekly list of the larger action-items.

This week, the non-recurring action items aren't all that exciting. I'd like to finish the thesis I've been reading, and finally start the ball rolling on my own graduate applications. I have a few job openings to apply to, as well, and plenty of routine studying to do.

I may also start working on another technical project I've been mulling over for a week or two now, but that will probably depend on how much time I have left over. Finishing my current blog post is the higher priority. The good news, however, is that putting in slightly more time has proven to yield better progress, so there's still a lot of capacity for simple "throw more time/effort/resources at it" type solutions to the things I'm trying to do. All it takes is a choice.

Q1 Progress Report: January Week 2

Short post this week because of the winter storm that hit Kansas City. My house has power, but we lost cable last night, so I'm typing this with data on my phone. One of our acquaintances wasn't so luck; we lent them a sleeping bag and took over some warm food. If their power isn't back tomorrow they can visit us during the day (though I've been tracking KCP&L's progress online, and it's pretty steady).

This week I mainly focused on setting up a decent routine. Progress has been slow; I'm starting to spend time working at the public library to improve my environment. I expect to ramp that up next week. Unfortunately, another cold is making its way though the family, so I've been dealing with that amid the snow and my other responsibilities.

This coming week my goal is to continue establishing a productive routine and use that time to pursue my various goals. This will probably require more autonomous operation, but having spent the weekend largely cooped up with my family, I can't say that that's a bad thing.

Objectives for Q1

Heading into 2019, I am continuing my experiment of setting up quarterly goals. Whether I succeeded at my Q4 goals depends on your interpretation, but the results thus far are insufficient to draw a clear conclusion. So here we are.

This time, I'm grouping my objectives into four (4) focus areas. Arguably, my actual goals are more ambitious this time; however, some of these activities are self-reinforcing. Others fall under the same heading, but represent different ways of achieving that objective.

For instance, applying to jobs and graduate school do not produce mutually compatible outcomes, but that's okay, because they're alternate ways of moving into the next phase of my professional life. That's the first objective area.

The second objective area is self-directed studying. Here, I will continue reading textbooks and working exercises (I'm about 40% of the way through Rocket Propulsion Elements). I've also been reading some technical papers and would like to resume programming in other languages besides MATLAB. If I'm making good progress, I might try to work on some sort of technical project (programming or otherwise), but that's a secondary or even tertiary goal.

The third objective area is organization. This sorta ties in with the previous two, because a lot of my academic materials didn't come back from undergrad in the most orderly manner, and because if I move out, I'd like it to be a smoother transition. Even if not, cleaning up the house benefits the whole family and is long overdue.

The final objective area is writing. The main sub-objective is finishing my monthly blog posts in a more timely manner. This is achievable simply by allocating time regularly, as I found during NaNoWriMo. (This insight informs all of my objectives for the 1st Quarter.) Ideally, I'll begin posting more frequently than once or twice per month, but we'll just have to wait and see whether that happens.

I would also like to work on fictional projects again, though I've had some serious writer's block since the first week of December. If I allocate time to writing and revision, that may or may not clear up; I haven't really been in this situation before. There's also some ideas for long-form nonfiction stirring around in my head, but making a commitment would be premature at this time.

The same goes of any other major projects I could throw out, so I'll refrain from making unwarrented hypotheses. I would say that my objectives for Q1 look more like laying foundations and doing preparatory work rather than trying to achieve any particular goal. The results for particular goals were mixed in Q4. Perhaps this strategy will perform better.

Weekly reviews of my progress will be continuing each Sunday (unless something dramatic happens, in which case: no promises).

January Week 1

I haven't finalized my objectives for Quarter 1, so I can't really call this a weekly progress report, but in the interest of habit maintenance allow me to review the first week of 2019.

I did successfully prepare my 2019 predictions and write a review of my progress in Quarter 4. These writing goals I achieved early on, which was satisfying but reinforced my impression that my time is not adequately structured to produce quality writing on a daily basis. That is something I will be working on over the coming days and weeks.

An important component of the equation is building up momentum, so to speak, such that I can sustain reasonable productivity. Towards that end, I'm planning to work away from home some days, while also making a point of engaging in high-return leisure activities. Already, these's been a moderate uptick in socialization, and I'd like to continue that trend into the new year.

In the shorter-term, my major objectives for the coming week include putting away the Christmas decorations, resume applications, and working on some basic writing. I'd like to push out another post about aerospace engineering on my main blog, and perhaps get back into fiction projects. Additionally, I will be continuing with my independent study plan each morning.

Fall 2018 Quarterly Review

Back in October, I laid out some focus areas and strategies for the final months of 2018. I intend to do this again for the first quarter of 2019, but before that, it's worth taking the time to reflect on how well I did at meeting my Q4 objectives.

I had major objectives in nine (9) different areas. Of these, I achieved three, did not succeed at two, and made progress on four. Let's look at each of them in turn while considering how the different focus areas interacted with one another.

The most obvious success was selling our old house. That took a long time, a lot longer than anyone really expected—my facetious prediction of 2019 from last January very nearly turned out to be correct. It was correct, if you're limited to two sigfigs. Because this took almost the entirety of the quarter, some of the projects I might have had time to undertake if we had finished earlier went undone.

The other successes are somewhat less dramatic: competing in (and winning) NaNoWriMo and finishing Introduction to Flight. Neither of those went particularly impressively, but I managed to complete them while working on the house and dealing with other aspects of family life.

One aspect of family life that none of us managed very well was organization. I was specifically hoping to organize some of my possessions in advance of the possibility of moving out. (I had wanted to do this at the old house before Mom and Dad decided to move, but they sprung the announcement on me before any significant progress could be made.) I will probably be able to fold my own organization into the process of getting things set up in the new house, however.

Similarly, I did not make any real progress on the possibility of applying for graduate school, because we couldn't really afford it. We'll see about that this quarter, depending on how my continued job search goes.

Speaking of which: I made some continued progress in the hiring process in the fourth quarter, but did not secure employment. (I'm still waiting to hear back on the results of some of my phone interviews.) I don't feel that I submitted the sorts of quality applications I had been hoping to when I set aside Mondays—later switched to Tuesdays—for that specific purpose.

The same goes for my other nonfiction reading goals, and programming. I did well on the latter during October, culminating in an extensive blog post. Since then, however, I've barely touched MATLAB at all, let alone working in other environments. For the former, meanwhile, I managed to work through a few papers and presentations, but still have a lot of material waiting on my desktop.

In both cases, I see this as a failure to allocate time to goals. The problem, of course, was not that the goals were unimportant, but simply that there wasn't time for everything and they fell by the wayside. The lesson here is paring down one's objectives to what's reasonable with the time or resources at hand. This applies equally to the final focus area, nonfiction writing, where I managed to continue pushing out monthly blog posts, but didn't get very far with anything more expansive or frequent.

The high level lesson here remains more-or-less the same as always: set reasonable goals based on your true values while accounting for planning fallacy. I did moderately well last quarter, but could have done a lot better. I will be taking this into account in the coming months and trying to set my Q1 objectives with that in mind.

Predictions for 2019

As in 2017 and 2018, I am making a set of predictions for what will happen in 2019. At the end of the year, I will come back and score them to see how accurate I was. The rules are the same as they have been for the past two years.

PERSONAL/PROFESSIONAL

I will read 15 books this year: 95%
....20 books: 80%
....30 books: 60%
I will read three technical/science/engineering books this year: 80%
....five books: 60%
I will write an average of one blog post per month: 90%
...two blog posts per month: 70%
I will still be using Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr: 80%
I will remain single this year: 60%
I will have my wisdom teeth removed: 60%
I will not be hospitalized this year: 95%
I will compete in NaNoWriMo: 80%
...and succeed: 70%
My French will improve this year: 60%
I will not begin learning Russian this year: 70%
I will begin learning a new programming language this year: 70%
I will either find an engineering job or enroll in grad school: 90%
I will still be participating in the Less Wrong/SSC community: 90%
I will attend some sort of Solstice event: 70%

SCIENCE/SPACE

No successful human clones announced: 80%
KIC 8462852 will not be satisfactorily explained: 80%
No strong evidence of extra-terrestrial life found: 95%
The Mars InSight lander will still be operational: 90%
Both Voyager spacecraft will still be operational: 80%
Hubble Space Telescope will still be operational: 90%
JWST scheduled to launch on or before December 31, 2021: 70%
SpaceX conducts Demonstration Mission 1 successfully: 90%
SpaceX conducts Demonstration Mission 2 successfully: 70%
Boeing conducts the Orbital Test Flight successfully: 90%
Boeing conducts the Crew Test Flight successfully: 70%
Falcon Heavy will fly at least once this year: 80%
SLS scheduled to launch on or before December 31, 2020: 70%
Virgin Galactic tourist flights will not begin this year: 60%
Blue Origin begins crewed test flights this year: 70%
No Chinese crewed space flights this year: 80%
No deaths in space this year: 90%
No country leaves the ISS Treaty: 90%
Sci-Hub will remain easily accessible from the United States: 80%

POLITICS/WORLD

Donald Trump will still be President of the United States: 95%
Mike Pence will still be Vice President of the United States: 95%
Donald Trump will still be planning to run for re-election: 90%
At least one new US government shutdown will occur this year: 80%
More than 5 major Democrats (current or former Governor, Senator, or Representative) announce Presidential bids: 90%
....more than 10: 70%
At least one major Republican announces a Presidential primary challenge: 70%
United States will not go to war with a nuclear power: 90%
United States will not enter a major new war (>100 US casualties): 70%
Theresa May will still be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 80%
UK will leave the European Union: 90%
No additional countries opt to leave the European Union: 90%
North Korean government will not be overthrown or displaced: 95%
North Korean government will not begin major liberal reforms: 95%
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: 60%
Fewer than 25 cases of wild polio contracted this year: 70%
Fewer than 100 cases of vaccine-derived polio this year: 80%

META

I will remember to score these predictions: 95%
I will still be overconfident in these predictions: 80%
I will be less overconfident than in 2018: 60%

I am making sixty (60) predictions this year, which is the same number as in 2017 (ten more than 2018). This change is attempting to balance sample size against my tendency towards overconfidence. Additionally, each category besides Meta has an equal number of predictions, which will let me do more direct comparisons at the year-end analysis.

I am still not willing to bet money on these predictions, though thinking about $1 bets did help me reduce my confidence. (Maybe I'll write something about my 2012 election bet later in the week.) Hopefully next year I will feel sufficiently confident to follow Bryan Caplan's advice. That will, of course, depend on the results of this year's predictions.

Come back in twelve months to see how I did. In the meantime, happy New Year!