I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)
Related: a few years ago, I researched advance medical directives. They're surprisingly easy to make in the USA. They made a federal law about it in 1990, so you just have to fill out a short form (which differs for each state). The forms for each state are all available here.
The main decisions are:
designating someone to make health decisions for you, when you're unable
providing general guidance on whether to prolong your life in various situations
whether it's ok to donate your organs to others
Fill out the form, store it and some copies somewhere sen... (read more)
Well worth asking a lawyer, because they know some ins and outs. My wife and I did this after our first child was born. It was a few hundred bucks to get wills, general powers of attorney, and healthcare powers of attorney for both of us. (Our situation was simple: leave everything to each other or the kids if we both kick it, and designate a guardian for the kids). We'd have gotten living wills but haven't decided what we want them to say.
The lawyer put in a bunch of things we would never have thought of, e.g.:
Making the will sibling-proof (it divides everything equally amongst all children we might end up having, which turned out to be 2)
Waiving the requirement that our out-of-State executor post a bond
Authorizing the executor to open safe deposit boxes and the like
0majus
You can get a warm fuzzy feeling from doing it yourself with a downloaded form (say from Nolo) or a cheap app (like WillMaker), but there are subtle ways to mess up, so professional advice is highly recommended. Doing it yourself, you may tend to shy away from thinking about low-probability or painful scenarios, and you don't get to debug it by changing it and trying again. A will is just one part of estate planning, and sometimes a will isn't needed (if the estate is in a trust, its beneficiaries take precedence). Usually you'll need to coordinate the will and your insurance coverage, at a minimum. But don't procrastinate; you can really get burned by having no will at all. In Texas, for example, if you die married and intestate (no will), and you have kids by a previous marriage, your spouse is legally bound to give half of the estate to his/her step-children immediately. Probably not what you would have planned.
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)