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Those are very different contexts (but the answer is no, they are not effective against me). I don't make decisions based on purely visceral reactions, nor do I advise it. I think there may have been some miscommunication... I was saying that those tactics don't generally work, that I do not recommend them, even if I happened to be an exception.
Just as a data point: the emotional manipulation tactics (i.e graphic videos) were effective against me. (Mostly because I was unfamiliar with the process before. I didn't know what happened) They tend to be effective in people especially sensitive to graphic images, I think, but I realize that in general it's not a tremendously effective way across the population spectrum. If it was, everyone (or at least everyone who has watched those videos) would probably be vegetarian at this point. This is not the case.
My reason for vegetarianism is, at its core, a very simple one. I'm horrified of violence, almost by default. And I tend to be extremely empathetic. I'm emotionally motivated to treat animals with kindness before I am intellectually motivated. The discrepancy in lw might depend on personality differences. Or sometimes you can get very bogged down in the intellectual minutia trying to sort everything out, and end up reaching a plateau or inaction (i.e, the default).
I think I see what you mean. I didn't mean memorizing vocabulary per se (Guessing the Teacher's Password), but getting to practice old concepts and apply them to new problems. There's a tendency to forget conceptual processes if they're not used. An important aspect of education is that it's remembered, in general. To use an example, I'd sure like it if I remembered most of what I learned in Bio II, or psychology I, and so forth. I mastered those courses at the time, but I've forgotten them, so it's as if I wasn't educated. I suppose, there's a fine line between mastery and memorization, but mastery, I should think, is the combination of real understanding and recall. One cannot exist without the other.
Fantastic. I was thinking about how spaced-repetition should be applied in colleges recently. Namely, if it were set up in a way that everything we ever learned could be habitually recycled throughout the course of our education (and lives) with an electronic training program. It could use an algorithm, like Anki, to find out when the "right" time to bring up a certain concept again would be. That way, you could stay just as afresh of everything you learned in year one as in everything you're currently learning. It would take only a little time each day to upkeep your memory. Seamless, high-level mastery as the goal.
Religion and Science by Bertrand Russell was interesting and informative. As a bonus, it's not that long.
A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.
(To speed through books, I use VLC player, and then adjust the speed to 1.2X)