One of the interesting things about lifehacking is that it seems to be one of those things where "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" - kind of like the kid who takes Philosophy 101, learns a little bit about syllogisms and formal deductive fallacies like ad hominems, and goes around being obnoxious while never realizing that actually, most deductive fallacies are valid inductive arguments. (If a Nobel physicist claims something about a random point in quantum mechanics, he really is more likely to be correct than a guy sitting next to you on the bus, even though if you wrote this down on a syllogism test, this would be flagged as an 'argument from authority'.) We might call this "the valley of bad rationality" http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Valley_of_bad_rationality
In the case of lifehacking, it's more a case of "the valley of bad economics": of knowing just enough economics to understand that saving time is valuable and worth paying for upfront, but not being good enough to take the analysis any further and consider things like 1) how much time you are actually saving on net, 2) how long you are likely to be using any system and receiving the gains you paid for, 3) and whether you might not be overestimating both figures.
Frequently, you find that even large apparent gains are not actually justified solely on the basis of saving time because of the uncertainty and discounting of future gains you need to do.
The striking thing is that even the most dramatic self-experiments like using melatonin to improve my sleep did not justify very time-consuming (and more reliable) experiments, and the most efficient thing to do would just take melatonin on the strength of my background information and subjective impressions of efficacy.
In regards to your first paragraph: I understand your sentiments, but speaking of "argument from authority" in specific...
I always took this to mean that we can't believe something just because an expert says it. In other words, an expert should be more correct than the guy on the bus, but an argument needs to stand on its own -- it doesn't really matter who says it.
So you wouldn't be flagged for saying the Nobel physicist is more likely to be correct. You would be flagged if you said he is correct because he's a Nobel physicist.
Is my understanding correct? Disclaimer: I've never taken any Philosophy class. :)
I don't know what you mean by 'just because'. If a Nobel physicist tells me that in 24 dimensions, it's true that you can't frobnicate the fooar while preserving bariconicity, I'm going to believe that indeed, you can't so frobnicate things 'just because' he told me that.
So would I. But why? Because I don't know anything about quantum physics, and he's supposed to have a good grasp of the truth of the subject, so I would just take his word for it (a small act of faith). But his word is not what makes it true or false.
If the most celebrated nutritionist told me that eating nothing but baked beans was the healthiest diet in the world, I wouldn't believe him 'just because' he's an expert. I know enough about the subject of nutrition to consider his Baked Beans idea demented. So, I would ask him to show some sort of evidence.
P.S. I'll be reading more of your Value of Information: 8 examples article. Very interesting!
In the case of lifehacking, it's more a case of "the valley of bad economics": of knowing just enough economics to understand that saving time is valuable and worth paying for upfront, but not being good enough to take the analysis any further and consider things like 1) how much time you are actually saving on net, 2) how long you are likely to be using any system and receiving the gains you paid for, 3) and whether you might not be overestimating both figures.
Frequently, you find that even large apparent gains are not actually justified solely on the basis of saving time because of the uncertainty and discounting of future gains you need to do.
To give some examples I recently worked through some numbers on various self-experiments I've done: http://lesswrong.com/lw/cih/value_of_information_8_examples/
The striking thing is that even the most dramatic self-experiments like using melatonin to improve my sleep did not justify very time-consuming (and more reliable) experiments, and the most efficient thing to do would just take melatonin on the strength of my background information and subjective impressions of efficacy.