I started a thread on the CapMag forums and was told about this
forum, so I figured I should bring this up here as well.
There was an objectivist exercise scientist and bodybuilder named
Mike Mentzer who, after a great deal of both theorization and
in-the-trenches expirementation, discovered that much of the
conventional wisdom on exercise is not only useless but harmful.
I tried his program instead, and got wonderful results. But the thing is
that I never would have heard of this guy if someone in the
CapMag forums hadn’t made an announcement about him when he died
a few years back.
I also discovered a guy named Thomas Hodges who took a similair
scientific approach to studying dating and romance (from the
man’s perspective) and *also* found out the hard way that the
conventional wisdom on the subject was dead wrong. And I never
would have heard of or benefitted from his work either if he
hadn’t made an Ayn Rand reference in one of his online articles
(I got a hit on a web search).
This bothers me. Many of us want to improve, but in the same way
that a well-meaning activist can do more harm than good if he
doesn’t know what causes to fight for, so we can end up damaging
instead of improving ourselves if we don’t know what changes to
make (and how to go about it). It’s great that there are people
like Mentzer and Hodges who challenge commonly accepted beliefs
and do the dirty-work of figuring this stuff out for us, but it seems
that most people (like me) just don’t ever hear about them (to our
loss).
For myself, having improved both my physical and social prowess
thanks to these guys I’d like to turn now to mental prowess.
Perhaps some of you know about people who have done similair work
in such areas as speed-reading, increasing one’s ability to focus or
gaining improved (or even photographic) memory?
Hence this thread, and another just like it by the same name over
in the CapMag forums. I think it would be very useful for many
of us to have a central repository of links, book titles, etc.
concerning such people and their work. That way when one of us
wants to do some self-improvement, we know exactly where to look
for information on how to do it *right.* So if you know of any
others like Mentzer and Hodges who have learned the hard way what
works and what doesn’t in some area of self-improvement
(especially if you’ve had personal success using their techniques
and can vouch for them), post some basic info here and add your
knowledge to the pool.
I’ll start things off: anyone interested in what’s probably the
best bodybuilding program out there should head to
www.mikementzer.com and those men looking for help in the romance
department should go to www.doclove.com or go to the "dating and
love" section of www.askmen.com and check out the repository of
free online “Doc Love” articles.