Seth’s blog

This comment was made recently on an earlier post:

I am so glad I found this blog.

My daughter has had coughing fits for 24 months (she’s 5 1/2 yo).

Inhalers, several doctors, nothing helped. She routinely coughed until vomiting. After one 10 hour coughing fit I reached my limit and scoured the web.

After putting in her whole medical history as search qualifiers I found this [post]. The prior eczema and antibiotics were key indicators.

After 3 days of drinking 1 probiotic shake a day, she showed very marked improvement. After 1 week, no symptoms. This is a girl who’s been unable to run and play for 2 years. Who woke up coughing and gagging most nights.

After 6 weeks of the same regimen, she still shows no symptoms and is running and playing full blast.

The pulmonary specialist discounts the results we’ve seen as a fluke . . . we’ll see. Previously my daughter’s lung capacity was measured at 47% of expected.

“Unable to run and play for 2 years”! I’m impressed. Not only (a) the improvement is huge, but also (b) it resembles verification of a prediction, not just something a theory can explain, (c) it wasn’t obvious to “several doctors” or (d) the rest of the Internet, and (e) after it happened it was dismissed by an expert, even though the evidence for causality is excellent. The verification aspect reminds me of Pale Fire:

If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a skin, that island is no myth.

Describing those who made money in the subprime mortgage market, Michael Lewis said this:

They were outsiders to the market that they were betting on. And in addition, they were, in many cases, personally curious people, not clubbable members of the group. And I think that was a key to the success. I think that the fact that they didn’t feel compelled in any way, on any level, to think like other people gave them an advantage.

This is what Thorstein Veblen said about Jews in a 1917 essay titled “The intellectual pre-eminence of Jews in modern Europe.” Being outsiders gave them freedom of thought. Lewis may have read that essay. A few years ago, he compiled an anthology of economic classics, one of which was Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. I mentioned this essay earlier.

:) :> :~) — I’m bad at emoticons. But I appreciate other people’s work. From an article about the Lehman report:

“So it’s legally doable but doesn’t look good when we actually do it? Does the rest of the street do it?” one Lehman employee asks another in emails included in the report. The answers, respectively, are yes and no, followed by a smiley face.

A few days ago I quoted an editor who works for Rupert Murdoch as saying that journalists care too much about impressing their colleagues and winning prizes and not enough about helping readers. Here is Walter Pincus, a Washington Post reporter, saying the same thing:

Editors have paid more attention to what gains them prestige among their journalistic peers than on subjects more related to the everyday lives of readers. For example, education affects everyone, yet I cannot name an outstanding American journalist on this subject.

I quote this to support the Veblenian view I’ve expressed many times on this blog — that scientists would rather do what gains them prestige among their peers than what helps the rest of us, who support most science. I think it’s hard to understand the success of my self-experimentation (e.g., new ways of losing weight) until you understand this aspect of science. I was successful partly because my motivation was different.

I’ve spent seven months living in Beijing. Since that started (October 2008) I’ve wanted to learn Chinese. I’ve tried many things. Now, finally, I think I’ve found a method that works for part of it (written vocabulary).

There are four aspects:

Content. I’m learning the basic 800-odd words covered in Learning Chinese Characters by Alison and Laurence Mathews, which are those required by a certain standard Chinese Language test (HSK Level A). I use their make-a-story method for each character.

Study Method. I use Anki. It’s like flashcards, but with a near-optimal mix of old and new cards. Comparison of Anki with similar software. When I used actual flashcards, I didn’t do a good job of mixing old and new cards. I found a Anki deck already made for the Mathews book. The Mathews will be glad to know that the (free) Anki deck plus (free) Anki software make their book more valuable. I constantly consult it for help.

Catalyst. I walk on a treadmill to make studying pleasant.

Minimalism. When I told a Chinese friend I was just learning the meaning of each character, not the pronunciation, she frowned. After that I tried to learn the pronunciation, too. But now, trying to learn the pronunciation at the same time, the whole thing goes too slowly. The pronunciation is much harder than the meaning and less useful. Learning just the meaning is much faster and makes the whole thing seem more doable.

More The origin of Anki-like programs. An approach similar to the Mathews’s.